My Family Without The Animal (please)

I have an awful lot of projects on the go at the moment – so many in fact, that I wouldn't have time to work, even if I had a job. The little squares on my two-week timetable are almost filled up. This lends my life a somewhat regulated slant – I'm not entirely happy about this in some ways because it means that everything is prescribed, and there isn't much room for surprises. In other ways though, it's a great boon to my plans because without it, I might become so unstructured that I wouldn't achieve anything at all and everything would fall apart.

However, there are some surprises that aren't really welcome anyway. Take last night for instance – the square on my timetable showed 'Ironing', so I heaved the ironing board into place, and the iron, and was just about to fetch a load of clothes from the airing cupboard when there was a tap on my apartment door. I live in a fortress with (supposedly) no unauthorized access from the street, so a knock on the door is always a surprise. Thinking that it must be someone from one of the other apartments – someone calling to borrow a cup of sugar perhaps – I opened the door. It wasn't a neighbour at all - no, it was that damned stray cat which had somehow slipped through someone's legs and gained a surreptitious entry to the street door.

The wretched creature was demanding a saucer of milk (several in fact) and of course, some attention. So, I had to put away the ironing board and spend several hours throwing balls of wool for it to chase. A fruitless pastime, if ever there was one. I thought I had rid myself of this pest some time ago, but just when I am relaxing in the assumption that I am finally cat-free, it turns up again. I read Gerald Durrell's 'My Family And Other Animals' many many years ago, but one of the memorable scenes in that book is when Gerry's mother receives a letter from some disliked relative announcing an impending visit. At this point, the family was living in the sprawling Daffodil-Yellow Villa and so the poor beleaguered mother's only solution was to move to the smaller Snow-White Villa, thereby fending off the unwelcome visit by declaring that there was simply no room for additional guests. A cunning plan, if somewhat inconvenient.

I feel a bit like doing something similar. I don't want to move from this apartment, but if that is the only way that I am going to be able to shake off this wretched stray cat, then I may have no choice. Or maybe I should just leave the country, with no forwarding address? Hmm, that's an idea....