Sunday Column May 25th 2014 Cat odour

I stared at the cats and they stared back with that sort of insolence I have never appreciated. They have the temerity to stand before their better and endeavour to make me feel unwelcome in my own house. Appalling, but that is the case every day. This should give you a small mouse-hole look at my life, and it is the reason why I have more than a few times appeared at my club in a jangled mood.

I think it was the great poet Horace who wrote in 30 BC “A clean mind avoids cats.” But I cannot, as my wife Kitty sees no life without the presence of her cats Pericles and Bertram. What she does not seem to grasp is that her life also includes me, and I don’t want the bloody cats. And there it stands, you see, a terrible standoff of the sort that Napoleon faced campaigning in Egypt after Nelson sank his ships, cutting off his escape. I tremble and perspire like the Emperor pacing in his tent at Alexandria upon hearing the news of the fleet’s destruction.

I have asked myself many times the question: Why do I have such problems living in close contact with my wife’s cats. I have rubbed my temples hard in the past over this very question. I believe it has to do with the fact that they are twins and work together in a sort of other-worldly way.

I appear to be the target of their nefarious personalities and it began on their first day in our abode. I have mentioned in earlier columns that Pericles and Bertram had been returned many times (19) to the patient pound from whence Kitty got them. It is common knowledge she was fooled by their smiles and winks into thinking they were normal. She was also convinced by a whimpering employee to not break them up, which I think was the great crime of this situation: Two sociopathic minds instead of a manageable one, working in tandem. It is not unlike the Ford brothers in poor old Toronto. They can’t both be kept on the mat without one of the fools biting someone’s ankle, if you know what I mean. They feed off one another.

A typical morning starts with my ever-present optimistic smile playing across my lips, tearing to the kitchen for morning tea prepared by our cook, Mrs. Bleak. My mind bounces like a ping-pong ball at the prospect of eggs and bacon accompanied by brown toast slavered with marmalade, hooray. What do I find? The cats, after two bowls of expensive blue tuna, in their kitty litter, facing me bug-eyed while creating an affront.

Now there are many things I expect when I walk into the kitchen for breakfast: Nice smells, the Times Colonist, a smiling wife and a sweet “Good morning.” Instead I am faced with an eye-watering odour that staggers me as I attempt to cover the Smythe-Brown nose with my handkerchief. The real challenge for me at the moment is not to wring both their necks. They appear to be laughing! Can we not put the awful cat toilet somewhere else, for heaven’s sake? As if that is not enough, the cats begin to lick their privates before my formerly hungry eyes. It is too much! I moodily push my heavily lathered toast away, as only a glass of water will keep me from gagging. Needless to say, my morning is ruined and I stumble to the club looking for redress and an early martini.

The very fact that I have to suffer this by myself is ludicrous. I mean does my wife not smell the same thing I do? Why is no one else up in arms over this? I am met by other grey-faced mems, no doubt with their own cat stories.

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