We have not generated very much cash yet.
We are sanguine about this, as always, because we will make some in the end, one way or another we always do. Mark is at work as I write, and we are going to exchange places very soon.
I will not be sorry about this, because it has been a very fully-occupied sort of day, and I will be pleased for the opportunity to do absolutely nothing whatsoever, with a clear conscience, and actually this is why I am writing to you here and now, before I set off.
Things became difficult last night.
It all started when I went into the conservatory for Guffy’s cat dish to refill it with her ridiculously expensive cat food, and discovered a giant slug in it already, feasting on cat food at something like fifty pence a slug-mouthful.
I don’t know how slugs manage to get through the nuggets of dried cat food, I had never really imagined them as being in possession of teeth, but clearly they must be, I can’t imagine that they merely suck Royal Canin Special Digestive Enzyme Magical Anti Cat-Diarrhoea Gold Plated Cat Food.
I was not pleased.
Mark rescued me from the slug and removed it to the compost heap. Usually that is Oliver’s job but he had just sent me a WhatsApp message telling me that he was intoxicated in London, so I imagine it will be a few days before he is any use for such helpful activities
I was incensed at the slug intrusion, and scattered the conservatory flower beds liberally with slug pellets.
Please do not get on your high horse about this. It is perfectly all right to use slug pellets in a house where there are not very many hedgehogs. Slug pellets are only wickedly anti-woke when applied to your bedding plants in the Great Outdoors. This is because almost nobody on the planet cares about the well-being of slugs.
Despite this, it turned out to have shockingly upsetting after-effects.
Guffy was having her dinner whilst I did it, and watched me in disgust before disappearing grumpily back into the house, tail held high. Then half an hour later I came out of the shower to get in our newly clean-sheeted bed to discover, to my utter horror, a large and squidgy cat accident distributed all over it.
There are no words so I won’t bother, you will have to use your imaginations.
Suffice to say I went rushing downstairs and collected Guffy, after which I explained to her in no uncertain terms that this was unacceptable feline behaviour and must cease forthwith.
She glared at me and fled.
I changed all of the sheets.
We contemplated the event both before we dozed off last night, and again over coffee in the morning. Guffy does not usually come upstairs. She must have made a special journey in order to relieve herself.
We were just considering why she might have done this when she appeared at the bedroom door.
She looked at us sitting up in bed for a frozen moment, and turned tail to depart.
Then she pooed extensively all over the landing.
To say that we were horrified does not do justice to our shocked fury. Quite clearly she had made the special journey up the stairs with the expressly decided purpose of pooing in our bed again.
Mark dashed after her and brought her back to view the scene of her dreadful crime.
I like to think that my wrath can be terrible to behold, but it has nothing on Mark’s, not least because his wrath is not provoked very often. He was very livid indeed.
He roared.
We cleaned it up.
When order was restored we tried to work it out. We have long experience of animal management, and one of the things we have learned, rather painfully over the years, is that if you upset an animal, one of their ways of being revenged upon you is to poo in your sleeping patch.
Do not listen to these idiots who say that they like animals better than people. Quite clearly they do not really know any.
We considered all of the ways in which we might have upset Guffy.
It was a while before we realised that it must have been the slug pellets.
Guffy uses the conservatory flower beds as an occasional lavatory convenience and quite clearly does not like them being full of little blue salty things. Obviously it had upset her excretorial routine, and she had decided to teach us a lesson.
I can’t tell you how indifferent we were to her distress.
We have inserted her into the slug-pellety flower beds several times today in order that she learns to overcome her misgivings.
She is not pleased.
She will just have to get used to it.
It is a cat’s life.
