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It's not all beer and skittles having an outside cat. Lock him inside I hear you say. Forget it. He'd tear the house apart and wreck our ear-drums. This morning Ollie didn't arrive for breakfast.
I'm an alarmist. Something had happened to him. He's always there in the morning - either he's stayed in all night or is screaming at the bedroom window. I had to do it. I walked down to the corner and looked at the busy main road. Nothing. I called "Ollie, Ollie, Ollie," from one end of the street to the other. Nothing. My imagination was working over-time - two hours had gone by - it was mid-morning. I was certain he had climbed into someone's car and been taken heaven knows where. My poor darling - he could have been taken anywhere, after all there is a motel nearby. I found myself sniffing - Ollie alone and friendless in some distant city. Why, oh why, hadn't I persevered with the plastic ball on his collar containing his address. But he'd always ripped them off. As the morning went on my gloom increased - poison, locked in a garage, big dogs, the list was endless. I would never have another cat, I decided. It was all too painful.
I was so busy with my mournful thoughts that it took me minutes to become aware of a strangulated sort of noise at the door. The cat was on the doorstep with his gums around the largest dead rat in creation. He dropped the rat and smirked.
"Don't smirk at me," I yelled. "You gave me a fright. And don't try kissing me. You've just been gnawing a dead rat, remember!"
Humans are strange creatures. Why did I yell at the cat when I really wanted to hug him? Ollie understood. He knows all about the odd habits of humans. He left the rat on the doorstep. It had been a long, satisfying night and he needed his breakfast.
It's amazing how deep a hole you need when you bury a rat the size of a cat.
Editor's note:
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