The Return Of The Killer Cat

4: Stuck up the tree

GIVE HIM HIS due, he tried everything. He cooed. He cajoled. He wheedled. (There’s not much difference between cajoling and wheedling, except wheedling’s more whiny.)

Then he tried threatening. ‘You’ll miss your supper, Tuffy.’ (Scarcely a threat to make me tremble, given what was on offer.)

Then simple nastiness. ‘You can stay up that tree till you rot, Tuny!’ (Charming.)

The fact is, I wasn’t faking it. I was dead stuck. Don’t think I would have chosen to spend half of my morning on one side of the tree, listening to him getting rattier and rattier…

‘Come down at once, Tuffy! Get down here!’

… and the other half on the other side, listening to Melanie on her knees, with her hands together and eyes closed, praying and praying…

‘Oh, please, please send me something soft and furry, just like Tuffy next door, to put in my straw basket and cuddle. I’ll give it my comfiest pillow to sleep on, and feed it fresh tuna and cream.’

Fresh tuna! Cream! Didn’t the little lady know I had missed my breakfast?

After a while, I couldn’t stand listening any longer. I moved back to the other side of the tree. (Who could blame me?)

The vicar was clearly getting hungry too. After a while, he left off threatening me and went inside to make his breakfast. (No yesterday’s grub for him, I noticed. Through the window came the sweet smell of sausages and bacon.)

They always say that breakfast is good for the brain. It certainly stoked up his little patch of grey matter because, a few minutes later, he came down the garden carrying a stool.

And climbed on it.

And he still couldn’t reach me.

I wasn’t being difficult. I really wanted to come down. If he had managed to reach up even nearly high enough, I would have been prepared to drop in his arms. (I might have scratched him a little, but hey! Cats are famous for being ungrateful, so why worry?)

In fact, I actually tried to help, creeping towards him along the branch. But then the branch started sinking. (That’s diets for you. Hard to keep to.) And as the branch got thinner towards the end, I weighed it down more and more, till it practically turned into a dry ski slope.

I didn’t dare go further, so I stopped.

But watching the branch sink under my weight did seem to have given the vicar an idea…