A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Marjorie is home! She dropped over the wall on Saturday evening, just before dusk and told me all about her holiday. Apparently, the cottage Judith had rented, was in the countryside and there was great scope for hunting. Marjorie managed a frog, three birds and a goldfish which is impressive by any cat standards. Judith’s sister visited and there was lots of gossip and seemingly endless hours of cross stitch, as they caught up on family news. Marjorie said she missed me and wouldn’t it be nice if next year I was allowed to go too? I wasn’t sure about that, as half a mile in a car makes me hysterical and watching all that needlework would send me into a coma. In any case, who would keep control of my garden while I was away? But to keep Marjorie happy I agreed it was a lovely idea and hoped she’d forget about it. Giving her a quick, appreciative lick behind the ear, I suggested we had a stroll down to the sea front for a scoop of Rodent Ripple to celebrate her return and on the way, pay a quick visit to Mikey, the young Tabby I’d adopted. 

We could see through the window of Mr Mistoffle-Teas that Mikey was having a fight with one of the other cats on a large cat tree. I tapped on the window and gave him a stern look. Unfortunately, while he was distracted, the other cat managed an unfair swipe and Mikey did a double summersault off the tree, onto a nearby sofa in a movement worthy of an olympic gold. With what I felt was an heroic recovery, he got up, shrugged and came to the window as good natured as ever. “That’s my boy!” I thought proudly before reminding myself that actually, he wasn’t. 

Mike and Jackie Jones son, Dylan (Number 5) has finished university. He arrived home almost transparently thin and spent the first week in bed, suffering from ‘extreme exhaustion’. Despite the heat, Mike, who was mowing the lawn in a lovely floral shift dress and white pumps, told Queenie he thought there genuinely had to have been a mix up at the hospital at his birth as he just wasn’t like anyone else in the family. It was, he said, like having “a weird nocturnal pet” that took up space, cost you money and gave nothing back. Queenie asked if Dylan was depressed, to which Mike responded that he didn’t think so but he was making Jackie lose the will to live. In order to engage in any communication, they had to enter his bedroom and control their gag reflex, while navigating piles of dirty clothes and petri-dish plates, to find him buried somewhere under a slowly disintegrating duvet, illuminated only by the dubious light of social media. At the suggestion from Mike that he might like to get up and find work, he said he was mining crypto currency and in any case, going out to work wouldn’t be conducive to his gaming hobby. Mike wondered if they could get him a job as an advert for birth control.