A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 24th September 2020

Christine and Barry live at Number 34. They had a small lottery win some fifteen years ago and have been spending their time between The Avenue and their flat in Costa Del Sol. Due to COVID, they decided to spend this summer in the UK. Originally from modest childhoods in Bethnal Green, where Barry’s father was a career criminal and Christine’s, a failed getaway driver, they feel very contented with their lot. Barry loves boats and recently, having purchased an inflatable dingy with an outboard motor, he’s become a member of the local yacht club. He and Christine spend their weekends having lunch at “The Club” and mingling with wealthy, sailing types. This Sunday, Christine, perpetually brown from years of laying on a Spanish sun bed and sporting yet a new set of acrylics, enjoyed a monster salad of crayfish and lobster. Meanwhile, her husband, bedecked in blazer and nautical trousers, sat, napkin tucked into his shirt collar, wrestling with a plate of mussels, engaging anyone who will listen, on a discourse about tide times. This is particularly relevant, as the bay is rocky and Barry’s particular vessel is susceptible to punctures. Whenever I find myself in their garden, the sun is perpetually “over the yard arm” and it’s “Sangria O’clock”. By six of an evening, Christine is invariably in a chick-flick coma and her ruby colour lipstick has begun to seep up through the expensively moisturised wrinkles around her mouth, giving her, at a quick glance, a sort of victim-of-homicide look. Barry meanwhile, arms resting on his ample stomach, sits holding a cuban cigar, in a hand bedecked with gold sovereign rings (a legacy from one of his late father’s more successful bank jobs). With an air of self-satisfaction and shrouded in cigar smoke, he belches and invites me aboard for a few leftovers. How could I refuse? 

On Friday, I sensed something was wrong as I wasn’t allowed breakfast and Queenie was pacing around, not taking any notice of me hammering on the cat flap to get out. Eventually, I was put in the dreaded cat cage and placed in the car. Immediately I began to wail, in the hope some passer by would call the authorities and report my abduction. Queenie drove recklessly with her fingers stuck through the bars of the cage, trying to pacify me. After narrowly avoiding wiping out two elderly pedestrians on a zebra crossing and a head-on collision with a delivery van, she parked, carried me into the vets and handed me over to a woman in a mask who said she could collect me later that afternoon. That was the last thing I remembered. When I woke up in a strange room, I attempted to get to my paws but they didn’t work very well and I fell over, wondering if this was how Queenie felt at the end of most Friday nights. I waited for what seemed an eternity, during which I did a thorough check of my body to see if any thing was missing (given the last time I was put to sleep, I woke up unable to reproduce!). Finally and to my relief, Queenie came and collected me, muttering something about it costing a “King’s Ransom” to get my teeth cleaned and if only I’d been a little more co-operative, all this upset could have been avoided. Sitting in the car, feeling groggy and with a sore mouth, I wished I’d known the punishment for not accepting the brush and fish toothpaste ambush. In hindsight, I decided, I’d have much rather gone with that as an option!