Cat-flap conundrum

I moved into my current home about three years ago, and for the longest time I was all but banned from going outside. Well, that's not strictly true. The reality is that the people would have to open the door for me to go out and come back in. Finally, they got bored of that -- though let me tell you, I got bored a lot sooner -- and they decided to put in a cat-flap.

When I say "put in a cat-flap", I really mean "have a cat-flap put in" because they are both so useless at DIY that I can only imagine what sort of disaster they would make of it.

I got very excited when I heard Man on the phone calling glaziers to get quotes for the job. And when I finally heard him book one in, I almost leapt for joy. (Of course, had I actually leapt for joy, I would have made sure they weren't around to see it. I'm not a circus monkey, for Christ's sake. Or worse, a dog.)

The glazier man came and he removed the bottom panel from the gorgeous uPVC back door. He then took the panel and the cat-flap with him to his van, which was parked outside, and this is where he did the cutting and fitted the unit. All very exciting. Then he brought it back in and commenced to replace the panel. Only to realize that the panel was not square and he had put the cat-flap in the wrong place. See the photograph below.

How can people be so dumb?! If we cats had opposable thumbs, idiots like that guy would be out of work.

Gotcha, you buggers!

All last week, the woman had to get up earlier than usual and travel to London for work. And the man had to get up with her and drive her to the railway station each morning.

I noticed that they had set their alarms for 6.45am. Little did they know that the Cat Alarm® was set for a whole hour earlier... Ah, the fun I had seeing their little bloodshot eyes 60 minutes before they wanted to open them!

Today is Saturday. Nobody needed to leave the house today. I thought about waking them regardless. But then I decided it's better not to. After all what could be more annoying? I heard them talking about "why couldn't I have let them sleep during the week". I laughed so much I had to run to the litter box.

What time is it? Oh, I know... payback time!

I would like to apologize to the fellow felines who read this blog for my prolonged silence. I have a very good excuse, though: in late July, out of the blue, the bastard People decided to take another holiday. They grabbed me by the scruff of my neck just as I as waking up and too sleepy to impose my will, stuffed me in the carrier and took me to the cattery, where they left me for another week.

I was most annoyed, not least because there were a couple of Siamese cats there. The moment I saw them, I knew sleep would be an exercise in futility, so I summoned all the voice in my little lungs and begged, pleaded with the People, howled like a banshee... "Please do not leave me here! You know I like my daily 20-hour nap nice and quiet. How will I catch my beauty sleep with this mewing racket?" They looked at me, squeezed their ugly human features and said to each other, "God, he can out-miaow the Siamese! Must be the Oriental blood in his veins. Oh, how genius! Oh, how fab! And hasn't he got the most harmonious voice?" Oh, buzz off, you bastards. I'm expressing displeasure here. Do. You. Not. Get. It? Bleedin' idiots.

Anyway, upon my return to the house, I hatched a little plan to exact revenge. Called "Blair Witch Cat" after the final scene in The Blair Witch Project, the plan is tried and tested, effective and it doesn't even require much effort on my part, because the People are really quite gullible. So, fellow felines, listen up and feel free to adopt this whenever your humans start overstepping their boundaries and going on holiday twice in the space of eight weeks.

The other night I started staring at the skirting board under the dining room window. I turned my back to the People and just stared at nothing in particular. Every now and then, I made a swatting motion or curled my whiskers as if to indicate the presence of a mouse there. (Fortunately for me and the success of my evil plan, a section of that skirting board doesn't quite reach the floor, making it the ideal hiding spot for a rodent that I might have caught and -- ooops! -- accidentally dropped during playtime.)

The Man fell for it hook, line and sinker. Indeed, so finely tuned are my powers of suggestion, that he even started to detect the smell of decaying mouse emanating from the area. The Woman's nose is not quite so sensitive (or paranoid), but she is afraid of mice, so talk of rodent corpses from the Man and my odd behaviour (remember, I'm still staring at nothing here) made her think that there was indeed something mousy going on.

Out came the humane mouse trap and the peanut butter and daily checks to see if the trap has got a little furry friend inside. Fools! There ain't nothing there! Mwah ah ah ah!!! I wonder how much longer I can string them along...