I Offended The Cat

In our current house, the owners installed a cat flap in their bedroom door. "It's so the cat can get into the room", they explained, "without having to leave the door open and have to heat the space." They left a fancy little heated cat mat on their bed and that was where the cat spent most of the day, apart from coming out for lap time in the evening and running late night zoomies up and down the hallway.

The cat also has asthma, which means she is prone to coughing fits at times. "Don't worry about the coughing fits" said the owners, so we didn't.

Begging for a scratch at lap time.

 

One day the cat had a particularly persistent coughing fit with a grand finale consisting of prodigious amounts of cat vomit spread over the cat mat and the owners' bed. Roger, home alone at the time, held his nose and frantically stripped linen and washed off vomit. The cat, obviously much relieved, took herself off to have some dinner and I arrived home to find Roger staring in dismay at a wet yellow stain on our home owners' merino wool winter doona.

Thank goodness for washing instructions on the label, is all I have to say because I'm sure that our home owners didn't want to pause their walk across Scotland to solve How To Wash A Doona games over international messaging. I wasn't game, despite label reassurances, to just pop the doona into the washing machine. Instead I had an orgy of soaking and scrubbing and spot washing followed by artfully draping the soggy doona under the bathroom window to catch whatever sunlight filtered through the cold and inclement weather.

Mmm, not hanging anything out here.

 

The cat meanwhile took herself back to her owners bed and settled into their under-doona. Visions of further cat vomit related disasters danced before my eyes and without fanfare I ejected the cat and placed a strategic chair in front of the cat door. The cat, to say the least, is unimpressed. She sat sadly on the chair and complained about the loss of her heated mat, even though I installed it on the couch just for her. She rejected my lap and sulked on the back of the couch before gracing Roger with her preference. She turned her back when I attempted to engage her with a silly cat toy.

The favoured one.

The doona dried with neither residual sign nor smell of cat vomit, and I even ironed the cover before remaking the bed. I reinstalled the cat mat, squeaky clean, under a watchful cat gaze. The cat took her rightful place on her owners bed, ignoring me all the while.

She sits on Roger's lap instead of mine, and follows him about the house when chin rubs are needed.I remain snubbed, on the pointy end of cat displeasure. How long does a cat grudge last, you ask?

Time will tell.

I am back where I belong. Go away, insignificant, interfering human.