Confessions of a Cat Sitter
Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham & You Can
Take the Cat Out of Slough, and a columnist for various UK &
international magazines. He’s also a cat sitter…
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His difficulties began the moment
we had one installed, and over
the months his attempts to
employ it as a legitimate door
progressed from an early 100%
failure rate through many varied
experimental (mainly doomed) approach angles,
to total disaster. At one time, he even star ted
climbing through backwards, which presented the
disturbing spectacle of a tabby rear-end suddenly
appearing from nowhere, wiggling at you for ten
minutes, then just as suddenly disappearing. He
eventually developed a technique that can only
have been born of frustration. In total contrast
to his normal ner vy one-paw-at-a-time bunchup, he suddenly began launching himself headfirst
at the flap. This only almost worked. Speaking
in an aerodynamic sense, something was always
horribly wrong with Brum. He somehow managed
to consistently execute magnificent back-flips on
the way through – he’d hit the catflap with all four
paws pointing downwards but by the time he was
through, they’d all by pointing to the sky. It was one
of the most incredible feats of high-speed twisting
gymnastics I’ve ever witnessed. But his ver y worst
moment came when there was no catflap at all.
We’d had new doors installed you see, and hadn’t
yet managed to re-install Brum’s catflap. This didn’t
deter our Brum at all – though how he failed to
notice there was no longer a hole in the door I’ll
never know. Still employing his ‘raging bull’ approach
to catflapping, he came charging across the patio
and launched himself headfirst into a solid wood
door – hitting it so hard that his rear legs shot way
up ove