A Cat Called Merlot

Thursday 18th June 2020

Queenie’s spent most of the afternoon on-line, in a bad mood, frantically sourcing hair extensions, having given herself a COVID-cut. There’s no prospect of getting an appointment with her hairdresser until Christmas and she has a date next week.  Human hair is odd as it just grows in clumps in parts of the body, rather than evenly all over, like ours. Their obsession with hair is perplexing. I don’t understand why, like cats, they don’t have a good seasonal moult. They also seem permanently dissatisfied with hair colour and they keep changing it. In my opinion if you’re born a Tabby (with natural streaks), you don’t aspire to become a British Blue! 

Hector Crosby, who lives next door to us, has grey, tight curly hair and a sunny disposition. On Sundays, his beloved wife, Martha, normally goes to church but at present, because of being classed as ‘at risk’, she’s still getting spiritual nourishment on-line. As the weather was lovely on Sunday, Hector and I hung out at the end of his garden and he described, once again, his childhood on the island of St Lucia. He told me he came over as part of  ‘Windrush’ but apparently he wasn’t treated very well when he arrived and he hated the cold weather. I find it sad anyone could treat Hector badly. We sat in a dappled spot, under his apple tree and listen to the sound of Miles Davis wafting out from the battered record player he keeps in his brightly painted shed. It’s really all very relaxing. Hector is partial to a tot or two of rum and, by the time Martha logs off from The Lord, spiritually cleansed, Hector is uplifted by spirit of a wholly different kind. At one o’clock, it was time for lunch and he loosely wove his way back up the garden, in carnival mode and playing air trumpet, to be greeted by a shrill  admonishment from the depths of the kitchen. There was absolutely no point in me hanging around by the back door, in anticipation of a treat, as Martha’s belief system doesn’t extend to cats.

Yesterday afternoon, a pair of crows were going mental in next door’s wild garden. They were defending their nest against a magpie that had breached their territory. I was hiding under Queenie’s deckchair as it was all kicking off and nobody sane would risk trying to break it up. As they’re so pre-occupied with flapping and screeching, it was a hunting opportunity but I’ve been on the receiving end of a big, angry bird more than once and frankly, as Matt at Number 20 would doubtless tell me (from the safety of the pub), “Mate, it just ain’t worth it!” 😉 

This morning, Queenie’s mother, Lydia, left a voice message to see if she could “be in her COVID bubble?”.  She said she was already in six other bubbles up and down the country and wasn’t it fun? Queenie told her brother, Stephen, that Lydia was treating it like an Ibiza foam party! 

BIG news this week: Lola and I are back on! She hopped over the wall on Wednesday, looking glorious in the only way a tabby can and apologised for her behaviour. Head and heart parted company and I forgave her. Queenie was out, so we went back to mine, shared some cat-nip and chilled out, listening to Cat Stevens.  

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