The Innocence of the Guilty

Her Royal Highness Sayyida al Hurra, Queen of the Mediterranean was suffering, so acting on advice from the very pleasant young vet at Nexxo I turned the house upside down to pander to her whims.

My house has four rooms – kitchen, living room, the spare bedroom and my bedroom; I’m not counting the shower room and the bathroom. The rules are few and simple: No cats on the work surfaces. No cats in the bedrooms. However, due to her distressed mental state the rules had been redefined: No cats on the work surfaces. No Tommy Fluffipants in the bedrooms.

He did ask me why his mother was now allowed in the bedrooms when he wasn’t, and I explained that it was because his mother wasn’t well. He thought about that for a while, then decided that it Wasn’t Fair. He suggested that maybe he wasn’t well either, but I explained that if he wanted to be Not Well he’d have to go to the vet and get official permission to be ill.

He quickly changed tack and informed me that he was a cat, and it was unreasonable of me to expect him to understand. Upon which he left, taking his fluffy pants with him. ‘Anyway,’ he stated as he departed, ‘Cats don’t do rules.’

Later I was in the kitchen when he passed me with an extremely innocent expression and continued towards the bedroom. I’m a cat, his receding backside informed me. I don’t understand that I’m not allowed in the bedroom – my mother is in there! 

I let him get as far as the doorway and then I shouted ‘Tommy!’ He left the ground vertically to a height of around six inches, turned, and with as much dignity as such a comical looking cat can muster went into the living room and sat on the sofa as if nothing had happened. ‘I wasn’t going in the bedroom, honest!’ He assured me with a steady yellow-eyed stare. ‘I was just taking the scenic route.’

I’ve caught him in there a couple of times now. Each time he flees from the scene as if the hounds of Hell were after him until he gets into neutral territory, when he will stop and fix me with an expression so innocent that any jury in the land would pronounce a verdict of Not Guilty, no matter what the evidence suggested.

‘It wasn’t me,’ He’ll insist. ‘It was another cat that looks exactly the same as me.’

Those cats! I can’t call my life my own!