The Return Of The Killer Cat

1: How it began

OKAY, OKAY! so slap my teensy little furry paws. I messed up.

Big time!

And okay! Tug my tail! It all turned into a bit of a one-cat crime wave.

So what are you going to do? Confiscate my food bowl and tell me I’m a very bad pussy?

But we cats aren’t supposed to hang about like dogs, doing exactly as we’re told, and staring devotedly into your eyes while we wonder if there is some slipper we can fetch you.

We run our own lives, we cats do. I like running mine. And if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s wasting the days and nights when the family are on holiday.

‘Oh, Tuffy!’ fretted Ellie, giving me the Big Farewell Squeeze. (I gave her the cool blink that means: ‘Careful, Ell! Stay on the right side of cuddle here, or you’ll get the Big Scratch in return.’) ‘Oh, Tuffy! We’ll be away for a whole week!’

A whole week? Magic words! A whole week of sunning myself in the flower beds without Ellie’s mother shrieking, ‘Tuffy! Get out of there! You’re flattening whole patches!’

A whole week of lolling about on top of the telly without Ellie’s father’s endless nagging: ‘Tuffy! Shift your tail! It’s dangling over the goalmouth!’

And, best of all, a whole week of not being scooped up and shoved in next-door’s old straw baby basket and stroked and petted by Ellie and her soppy friend Melanie.

‘Ooh, you are lucky, Ellie! I wish I had a a pet like Tuffy. He’s so soft and furry.’

Of course I’m soft and furry. I’m a cat.

And I am clever, too. Clever enough to realize it wasn’t Mrs Tanner coming to house-and-cat-sit as usual…

‘… no, she suddenly had to rush off to her daughter in Dorset … so if you hear of anyone who could do it … only six days… well, if you’re sure, Vicar. Yes, well. So long as you’re comfortable with cats…’

Who cares if the vicar’s comfortable? I’m the cat.