A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 25th March 2021

I’ve decided I don’t like my regular brand of food anymore and much prefer tinned tuna or freshly cooked chicken. This week it led to a daily argument with Queenie who says that as she’s stockpiled boxes of my  erstwhile “favourite” food as a precaution against Brexit shortages, I’m jolly well going to have to eat them. Clearly she didn’t finish reading the “owning a cat” manual before she picked me up. Two days of hunger strike did the trick and by Wednedsay, she was back in the kitchen slow cooking chicken breast, telling me I might have won the battle but not the war. Really?

In addition to the eating disharmony this week, I got excluded from the bedroom at night because every time Queenie turned over, I grumbled at being disturbed and walked over her head to get back to the right position, or woke her up periodically by licking her face, to get my head rubbed. She said she couldn’t cope with the menopause and this added sleep depravation and so I could come in for a cuddle when she woke up. As I’m an all or nothing kind of guy, I scratched at the bedroom door at all night in protest and as that failed, when she did choose to let me in, I just ignored her. I’m pleased to report after two nights exclusion and a damaged door, I’m now back in the bedroom. 

In The Avenue, there’s been mounting excitement at the prospect of the easing of lockdown next week. To celebrate, Queenie has organised four picnics in as many days with different friends. Not that any of them will have anything to talk about, having been in solitary confinement, or confined with their partners for so long. After ten minutes of swapping stories about the different ways they’d considered for killing their spouses during lockdown, I’m sure they’ll all decide they’re missing “Homes Under The Hammer” and will make their excuses. 

Queenie has been talking to a man called Derek, on line, for the past few weeks. He’s a solicitor with four children who live with him on alternate weekends. As she’s hardly Mary Poppins, I have no idea how she thinks any relationship with him has a cat in hell’s chance of working. I can only hope his internet connection goes down permanently, before she agrees to meet him or I’ll have to come up with an inventive plan to put a swift end to it before my home is turned into a modern day version of The Waltons.  

On Tuesday there were men in the street planting the replacement trees that some of the residents had clubbed together to plant. That immediately put Queenie in a good mood. She said initiatives like these showed how a community really could pull together to make up for gaps in council funding. I think it’s a great idea too – more birds!