Mioaw Mieux

It started with what I thought was a dead cat and then the evening got progressively worse from then on. To be fair, it wasn’t actually dead but ever since someone had thrown a black Labrador at us on our honeymoon from a fourth floor window in Havana, I’ve been sensitive to these things.
The poor thing, the cat this is, was hanging by the neck from one of those pull-down shop security grills and was motionless. There was a group of ‘lads’ looking up at it and Natalie, for the only time I can ever remember, had a lower opinion of humanity than I and was convinced it was a complicated cat-based ruse to mug us of our worldly goods at this unfashionable end of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. It wasn’t. The ‘lads’ while clearly a bit drunk seemed genuinely concerned and relieved when we turned up to briefly share their burden but shuffled off pretty sharpish, relieved to pass on the responsibility.
I sighed as I looked at Natalie and the three boys, all looking back at me and obviously expecting me to do something about the situation. “What on earth am I supposed to do?” I pleaded, “It’s 12 foot up and I’m wearing brand new linen trousers and expensive Italian knitwear.” I added the clothing detail to let them know what an enormous sacrifice they were expecting me to make, but it made no difference.
“Rescue it Daddy.” Samuel said simply, adopting the role of spokesman for the group.
It’s at times like these, increasingly often I’m afraid, when my shoulders just drop as the crushing inevitability of my family’s needs and animal-orientated whims once again tramples all over my good humour. I turned and looked up at the rear end of the cat. It was no stray moggy that was clear, I could see a bejewelled collar shimmering in the sea front lights and this being Nice they could quite possibly be real jewels. The cat had long, silver-white hair, it reminded me of Blofeld’s cat in Diamonds Are Forever, and rather than struggle with the grill and try to remove its stuck head it remained largely motionless. Typical cat, I thought, left like this it would be dead by morning but no it was giving me the ‘I’m a cat and I meant to do this entirely’ attitude.
Again I looked back at Natalie and the boys, hoping for a reprieve, not to leave it to die I must add but to maybe call in some experts, the local pompiers for instance who would have ladders, a history of successful cat rescue and some protective clothing over their expensively collated new favourite summer outfit. At times like this it’s easy to romanticise the scene, Gary Cooper in High Noon, the sacrifice of Depardieu in Cyrano de Bergerac but all that went through my head was the desperate plea of Steve Martin’s ‘”My whole life is ‘Have To’” speech in Parenthood. The cat made a noise behind me which may have been the feline equivalent of ‘For fuck’s sake, get on with it you tart’ and I started to climb the security grill stroppily.
Natalie would say that the grill started to buckle under my weight but, more accurately, as I climbed it the extra weight pulled down the grill, no more than an inch but enough to allow the cat to successfully extract its head. We were now an even more incongruous sight as this obviously pampered moggy, rather than run away and get clear of the grill, continued to cling on with its claws and look down at me, about a metre below, looking like a mod-Spiderman and not entirely sure what I should do next. Was it too frightened to jump down? Did it want me to climb further and then try to carry the thing back to the ground? There was a brief interlude, a few seconds maybe, where I looked up at the cat’s green eyes and it looked down at me.
He decided to end the stalemate and take the initiative, in short he decided that a ‘Merci, Bonne nuit’ would be insufficient in the circumstances and that urinating all over me was the more appropriate response. From my (un)vantage point below I could see the large drops of yellow liquid before they actually hit me, and they seemed to fall in slow motion giving me a chance at least to hide my face but each drop that hit my clothes was like a stab in the back from the entire animal kingdom. All the effort I’ve –admittedly forced – put in and this is how they repay me? I was so angry I couldn’t move, but as the waterfall ended I looked back up at the cat and slowly began to scale the fence again with the intention of shoving its bloody head back in the grill. That cat, realising that very real danger was now imminent, leapt over my head and ran off down the road.
Again my shoulders slumped but I couldn’t move, I was crippled by defeat made worse, it has to be said, by the uncontrollable laughter coming from my loving family down below, practically rolling on the floor in unruly mirth. Another family approached along the pavement, saw the scene and crossed the road, the mother looked up at me and actually ‘tutted’, there no longer being any cat in evidence I just looked like another English drunk stinking of cat piss climbing up a shop.
“I think you’d better wash your clothes and have a shower.” Natalie struggled to say through giggles when we eventually got in the apartment. I found it hard to share their humour frankly and stripped off in the kitchen, chuntering to myself and went to have a shower. I turned the shower on full and the jet was so strong the head shot up and the water powered out horizontally through the door and into my face, I ducked which meant the jet of water was now drenching the entire bathroom. Quickly I shut the door, at least keeping the water in the shower cubicle but swearing loudly.
“What’s going on in there?” Natalie shouted through the door.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” I replied, now staring at an angry jet of water trying to break through the weak cubicle door and wondering how I could turn the shower off without drowning the room again. For five minutes I sat naked in the corner of the bathroom staring at the thing and in the end realised that it was futile and so opened the door, forgot to duck and just stepped in.
Ah, the healing properties of a warm shower. A good quarter of an hour later I emerged and could begin to see the funny side of the evening, my clothes were in the washing machine, I no longer smelt of cat wee and I’d wiped down the bathroom. All seemed good.
I strode into the lounge, a towel around my waist and drying my hair with another towel, in truth I felt a little heroic.
“Well I think I’ve earned a beer, don’t you?” I asked rhetorically.
Natalie and Samuel, rather than agreeing anyway, actually looked at me in horror. “What towel are you using?” Natalie asked nervously.
“The one that was hanging up outside the shower.” Again my shoulders slumped, “Why?” I added defeatedly.
Natalie and Samuel again looked at each other, clearly weighing up whether to let this pass or actually let me know what the problem was. “That’s Samuel’s ‘hair lice’ towel. I thought I’d separated it from the rest.”
Episodes of Peppa Pig always end with the family rolling about on their backs laughing uncontrollably, my face at times clearly has the ability to do this my own family but I really didn’t feel like joining in.
“Don’t worry about the beer.” I said as I left them to it and trudged up the stairs, “I’m going to bed.”
“Oh Daddy,” Samuel said, tears of laughter streaming down his face, “sometimes it’s like we live with Mr Bean.”

I’m never going on holiday again.

For new readers and old, a fuller, more detailed (horrific) account of our efforts with rescuing animals is available as a book/kindle from Amazon or an ebook on itunes click HERE