mrs hhn's Zoo

7.13am

A guilty voice from the kitchen: "househusbandnot?" I recognise this voice. It is the one when mrs househusbandnot has done something wrong by trying to do something right. I hear it mostly when mrs hhn has given all her spare cash to a Big Issue seller and doesn't have any money to get home, or when she has accepted an invitation for us - rather than herself - to someone I don't like's place for supper, or when she has told her best friend that I [hhn] would love to go to her best friend's fiance's stag night after I [hhn] have expressly indicated that I don't want to go to it. This is the voice mrs hhn uses when she is about to tell me that she and her mother have agreed it would be nice if we all went on holiday together soon.

7.14am

"Yes" I reply, lying in bed and waiting to see what mrs hhn could have done so early in the morning.

"I may have let a cat into the flat." This possible "may" proves to be a definite "have" as a cat jumps onto my stomach.

mrs hhn sticks her head cautiously around the bedroom door. "Can you get up and give it some food and a cuddle. It looks a bit lonely."

"I'm not getting up for a cat."

"You have to. You know I can't touch cats."

"So why did you let it in?"

"Because it looked a bit lonely."

7.16am

The cat looks at me. I look at the cat. The cat dives under the bed. I get up, pull the cat from under the bed, and put it on the kitchen balcony with some milk. (mrs hhn has locked herself in the bathroom to avoid the cat action.)

7.30am (or thereabouts)

mrs hhn has unbarricaded herself from the bathroom.

"If the cat is lonely, will you give it some lunch?"

"No."

"You could give it some fish, or some cheese?"

"And then it will want to be ours."

"Cats like fish..." [a pause for me to have a chance to think about what a sad thing a hungry cat must be] "...and cheese. There's some in the fridge. You could have lunch together."

7.40am

mrs hhn goes to work, but not before I have stepped up onto my high horse, and reminded her that this is how we (that would be me) ended up with a wormery that requires much maintenance that mrs hhn bought without telling me, and then took one look at it and decided that the wormery and, more specifically, its wormy contents were disgusting and she could not bring herself to go anywhere near it.

I've just been into the kitchen and checked the balcony. The cat is basking in the sun, showing its milk-filled stomach to the sunshine. Animals 1, hhn 0, mrs hhn a no show. Which is cool. It's just a bit of milk, and a dumb cat that has lost its way around the balconies behind our flat. But it is reminding me not to let mrs hhn get any (more?) animals unless she signs an agreement to actually deal with them in some shape or form. I know she thinks she is doing the right thing - and she probably is - but the accelerated process from the doing to the not wanting to have anything to do with leaves me with a lunch date with a cat, which I don't really need today. (The really annoying thing is that mrs hhn knows that by lunchtime, if the cat is still around, he/she/it and I will be best friends, and I will have fed him/her/it all our best fish and cheese, and will be considering going up to town to buy him/her/it lots of cat toys.)