THE QUACK

Can’t be bothered to read? Let me read for you. (Skip intro 2:00)

If you’re a woman over a certain age and own a cat, there are going to be certain assumptions about you.

You’re most definitely single. You wear trousers from Toast. And you will rant to anybody who listens, about how you have ‘given up men’ as if they’re white bread.

Still, there is no harm in simply looking after a cat for a week. That can’t make a woman crazy…can it?

After travelling over the hills and far away to Wandsworth, I stepped into my brother’s house with my suitcase. Enzo appeared a moment later from behind the sofa.  He is blessed with good looks – with wide pumpkin eyes and fur the the colour of a storm cloud that is about to piss it down.

I greeted him enthusiastically, but he glared at me. If he could talk, his voice would be deep and have an old BBC accent, and he would say something cutting like,

“Must you greet me like a Teletubby?”

 Enzo is the cat of my brother’s girlfriend, Sophie. I had looked after him once before, and he was alive when they got back, so I was tasked with the job again.

This time, things didn’t start off as smoothly. On the first day, he went missing.

My mind ran wild with all the things that could have happened. Did he scoot out the door somehow and was now dashing towards Big Ben? Could he have fallen out of a window? Into the toilet? I called his name around the house like a killer in a horror film.

“Enzo?…..Enzo?”

After a long search, I face-planted the pillow on the guest bed, and thought of how I was going to tell my brother that I had lost his girlfriend’s cat. 

 Then, a very faint scratching noise came from beneath my belly.

Quickly, I tumbled onto the floor and saw the drawer in the bed was slightly open. I yanked it out further and saw the tiniest gap between the drawer and the bed frame. In that tiny gap – two glassy circles appeared in the dark.

“Enzo,” I hissed. He watched as I struggled to take the drawer out and then stayed far enough away so I couldn’t reach him. “Enzo, get out,” I said like an impatient parent.

He licked his lip and didn’t move.

I tried enticing him with my phone charger. Nope. I bounced a pair of socks around as if they were alive. Nope. I then collapsed onto the floor and begged. He stayed under the frame, enjoying the power.

“This is why I’m a dog person,” I said. Not that this dig fazed him, cats have mastered the subtle art of not giving a f***.

 I realised I was being an idiot.

It’s visibly clear that Enzo enjoys a treat or two. (NOT FAT, just thick-furred). I made a trail out of Dreamies, and sure enough he waddled out from under the bed, breaking his protest.

On the third day, I left Enzo to his own devices and walked to Clapham Junction. On the way, I passed a number of couples who, thanks to the wellness trend that swept SW, are ageing remarkably well. There was also a life-sized plastic pig sitting with a smile outside of a butcher’s. I wasn’t convinced that having a pig, whole and happy, was an effective marketing tactic for a place trying to sell sausages, but there you go.

I bought a book from Waterstones. And I made a white fluffy dog yelp in Gail’s by standing on its paw. Despite my apology, the blonde owner gave me botoxed-scowl, as if it was my fault she owned something so fussy and fragile.

When I got home, Enzo was sitting on the top of the sofa, staring into the abyss. 

“What’s on your mind, big guy?” I asked.

“Are we a minuscule part of intelligent life in the universe?” I imagined him replying.

That evening, I was brushing my teeth, and Enzo was sitting close by and drinking from the tap. He has his own fountain, but he’s obsessed with the human tap.

When I turned it off, he meowed.

“You fool! Switch it back on!”

I lay awake that night, worried as to why he wasn’t drinking from his fountain. I had a vision of him spread out by the bathroom door, dead of dehydration.

I asked Google ‘WHY IS CAT NOT DRINKING FROM OWN WATER FOUNTAIN?”

It turns out – cats are particular. If the water fountain is grubby, they do not like it. If the water fountain is on the floor, they do not like it. …And here we humans are, happily sniffing stuff off public toilets. 

The next morning, I was paying for white wine vinegar at the Sainsbury’s self-checkout. (Recommended cleaning product by some cat forum user). Next to me, a man in tight shorts was speaking loudly on the phone as he scanned his ‘Grenade’ protein bar.

“Yah, I’m going to play frisbee in The Common first, then to Soho House for lunch. Yah. That one in Shoreditch. Yah. George has a membership. Yah.”  

He paid and walked off, still telling the person on the phone, (and everyone in Wandsworth), his Sunday plans.

I spent the morning cleaning Enzo’s fountain with white wine vinegar as he sat nearby, keeping watch as if he was the prison guard and I was doing community service.

“Some guy in tight shorts is sitting in Soho House right now,” I told him as I scrubbed the dried gunk off the fountain bowl. Enzo yawned to let me know that he couldn’t care less about my lame social life.

I refreshed the water, plugged the fountain back in, and waited for the judgment.

Enzo tip-toed over, hesitated for a second, and then began drinking from his fountain.

I let out an overly passionate cheer

…and then stopped abruptly.

What has become of me? I thought. I had, after all, given the animal a BBC voice and imagined him as a philosopher, and now this? Cheering him on as he drinks water from his own fountain, that I spent the morning scrubbing out.

Hmm…right.

I’m off to Toast to buy some trousers.

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