Cat Retrieval.

Yesterday me, Mothermouse and Britney go for a walk to the end of the road. Taking a cat for a walk is novel but she waits by the front door just like a dog and almost walks to heel when she’s not investigating front gardens. Brit usually peels off for some deep investigating and Mothermouse collects her after shopping on her way home. But yesterday Brit was getting too near the main road so I decide to take her home while Mothermouse continues on. Brit doesn’t like this and reluctantly follows me but obviously isn’t satisfied with this quick up and back so I decide to detour down a jennel (an alleyway) to extend her walk. This is where the fun starts. It’s winter, cold with snow on the ground and birds are hungry, and behind a six-foot brick wall a bush is a centre of activity. Britney eyes up the wall and only just manages the top. Being human I’m slow to put this equation together and as my hand rises to grab her tail she disappears down the other side. Birds, bush and cat are now the other side of this formidable barrier. I ponder. Someone, Mothermouse, Britney and/or birds will be inconsolable if I don’t resolve this situation. I knock on the front door of the house and ask the lovely but perplexed lady if I can retrieve my cat that I’ve been taking for a walk from her back garden. I’m grateful at this point I’m not wearing my cow onesie I got for Christmas. She closes the door judiciously to check and does indeed find a ginger cat terrorising the birds from beneath her bush, as it were. She locks her lurcher in the front room and we proceed to the back door. I call Brit, she comes but decides the call of what must be the feline equivalent of Woolworth’s PicknMix is too stronger and returns to the bush. I call again, she comes again and this time I grab her. I thank the lady and leave, all the while wrestling a cat willing to leave its skin behind to get free. We get home, I lock the front door and feel pleasantly successful, but unbeknown to me Brit has unfinished business. When Mothermouse does finally come home some twenty minutes later Britney greets her from the front garden of next door but one. Job done.