The Diary Of A Killer Cat

He nailed up the cat flap. Would you believe this man? He comes down the stairs this morning, and before he’s even out of his pyjamas he’s set to work with the hammer and a nail.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

I’m giving him the stare, I really am. But then he turns round and speaks to me directly.

‘There,’ he says. ‘That’ll fix you. Now it swings this way –’ He gives the cat flap a hefty shove with his foot. ‘But it doesn’t swing this way.’

And, sure enough, when the flap tried to flap back in, it couldn’t. It hit the nail.

‘So,’ he says to me. ‘You can go out. Feel free to go out. Feel free, in fact, not only to go out, but also to stay out, get lost, or disappear for ever. But should you bother to come back again, don’t go to the trouble of bringing anything with you. Because this is now a one-way flap, and so you will have to sit on the doormat until one of the family lets you in.’

He narrows his eyes at me, all nasty-like.

‘And woe betide you, Tuffy, if there’s anything dead lying waiting on the doormat beside you.’

‘Woe betide you’! What a stupid expression. What on earth does it mean anyway? ‘Woe betide you’!

Woe betide him.

7: SATURDAY

I hate Saturday morning. It’s so unsettling, all that fussing and door-banging and ‘Have you got the purse?’ and ‘Where’s the shopping list?’ and ‘Do we need catfood?’ Of course we need catfood. What else am I supposed to eat all week? Air?

They were all pretty quiet today, though. Ellie was sitting at the table carving Thumper a rather nice gravestone out of half a leftover cork floor tile. It said:

Thumper

Rest in peace

‘You mustn’t take it round next-door yet,’ her father warned her. ‘Not till they’ve told us Thumper’s dead, at any rate.’

Some people are born soft. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

‘There goes Next-door now,’ Ellie’s mother said, looking out of the window.

‘Which way is she headed?’

‘Towards the shops.’

‘Good. If we keep well behind, we can get Tuffy to the vet’s without bumping into her.’

Tuffy? Vet’s?

Ellie was even more horrified than I was. She threw herself at her father, beating him with her soft little fists.

‘Dad! No! You can’t!’

I put up a far better fight with my claws. When he finally prised me out of the dark of the cupboard under the sink, his woolly was ruined and his hands were scratched and bleeding all over.

He wasn’t very pleased about it.

‘Come out of there, you great fat furry psychopath. It’s only a ’flu jab you’re booked in for – more’s the pity!’

Would you have believed him? I wasn’t absolutely sure. (Neither was Ellie, so she tagged along.) I was still quite suspicious when we reached the vet’s. That is the only reason why I spat at the girl behind the desk. There was no reason on earth to write HANDLE WITH CARE at the top of my case notes. Even the Thompson’s rottweiler doesn’t have HANDLE WITH CARE written on the top of his case notes. What’s wrong with me?

So I was a little rude in the waiting room. So what? I hate waiting. And I especially hate waiting stuffed in a wire cat cage. It’s cramped. It’s hot. And it’s boring. After a few hundred minutes of sitting there quietly, anyone would start teasing their neighbours. I didn’t mean to frighten that little sick baby gerbil half to death. I was only looking at it. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Can’t a cat even look at a sweet little baby gerbil?

And if I was licking my lips (which I wasn’t) that’s only because I was thirsty. Honestly. I wasn’t trying to pretend I was going to eat it.

The trouble with baby gerbils is they can’t take a joke.

And neither can anyone else round here.

Ellie’s father looked up from the pamphlet he was reading called ‘Your Pet and Worms’. (Oh, nice. Very nice.)

‘Turn the cage round the other way, Ellie,’ he said.

Ellie turned my cage round the other way.

Now I was looking at the Fisher’s terrier. (And if there’s any animal in the world who ought to have HANDLE WITH CARE written at the top of his case notes, it’s the Fisher’s terrier.)

Okay, so I hissed at him. It was only a little hiss. You practically had to have bionic ears to hear it.

And I did growl a bit. But you’d think he’d have a head start on growling. He is a dog, after all. I’m only a cat.

And yes, okay, I spat a bit. But only a bit. Nothing you’d even notice unless you were waiting to pick on someone.

Well, how was I to know he wasn’t feeling very well? Not everyone waiting for the vet is ill. I wasn’t ill, was I? Actually, I’ve never been ill in my life. I don’t even know what it feels like. But I reckon, even if I were dying, something furry locked in a cage could make an eensy-weensy noise at me without my ending up whimpering and cowering, and scrabbling to get under the seat, to hide behind the knees of my owner.

More a chicken than a Scotch terrier, if you want my opinion.

‘Could you please keep that vile cat of yours under control?’ Mrs Fisher said nastily.

Ellie stuck up for me.

‘He is in a cage!’