Listening to: Alley Cat by Bent Fabricius Bjerre
Having mentioned The Colonel in my last post, I feel now is an appropriate time to introduce him. My nearest neighbour, he is not a bad soul, apart from recurring bouts of malaria, deafness and a foul temper. The malaria he got in the army, the deafness he got because of an unfortunate incident with the viking re-enactment group, and the bad temper, well, that is just a God given talent. All in all we get on fine, but we got off to a less than auspicious start.
I was sleeping like a log – probably one that sounded like it was being sawn, but a log none the less – when I became aware of a noise, a wailing breaking into my dream. Despite a vague hope that it was someone making late night black pudding, I realised that it was my cat MacCrimmon in trouble. In the darkness, I could see nothing from my window, so armed with the vision of a medal from the cat protection league, I went outside.
It didn’t take long to find the problem. MacCrimmon was stuck and mighty unhappy, on the roof of my neighbour’s house, my newly moved in pensioner neighbour. I started the same way I try to fix any problem – a long hard stare. That having failed and the cat not looking any happier, I tried cat whispering – “jump you bastard!”
The cat looked no happier than he had initially, so armed in the knowledge the cat would not do the same for me, I went to get a ladder. Propping it up against the wall I started climbing. As I drew level with an upstairs bedroom window, the curtains were suddenly thrown open by an unhappy old man, with the best pressed pyjamas I have ever seen. Worse still, I heard a noise at the bottom of the ladder. The cat was on the ground, looking up and I swear, laughing at me. So, I did the only logical thing a man trying to climb onto his neighbour’s roof at 3:00 a.m. can do … I waved.
I have a dog now.
Listening to: Fluffy by Gloria Balsam
Atomic Crofter 