A Peaceful Week End   Margie Hofman   © Copyright 1998 by Margie Hofman

We are rather fortunate in that we have just purchased a small house in Canterbury, Kent. It stands on top of the hill overlooking the ancient cathedral city, below us are the lights of houses and we can clearly see the cathedral illuminated below.

We had some work to do on the house which would mean being down there for four days. At that time our usual cat minders were busy or on holiday so we decided to take the cat with us - big mistake.

SuSu the cat thinks if she goes into her cat box, she is going to the vet and starts complaining. We got her into the cat box, put her safely among cushions on the back seat and set off on our hour and a half journey. She moaned and cried all the way down. We covered the cage up so she wouldn't see the other cars, half way down she got a sore throat and just opened her mouth and no sound came out.

Arriving at the new house, we carefully put the cat box down in the empty living room after making sure all doors were closed. Thank God we have arrived, lets go and make a cup of tea. We sat and drank our tea, returned to the living room - no cat. I was blamed for leaving a door open - I didn't. We called and called her then suddenly heard a sound - from up the chimney.

Now here we were with quiet elderly neighbours, we hadn't even moved in yet and I could see that we would have to call the fire brigade to take part of the lower chimney down. The cat was sitting half way up the chimney on a ledge. We called and tried to get her for half an hour. In the end, put a lot of food down and she came down to earth with a thump covered in old grey soot , landed on the pale blue carpet looking sorry for herself.

That night we took her upstairs to our room, she usually sleeps near our bed, but the strange house was too much, she roamed around all night crying. My husband ended up sleeping downstairs on a camping bed with the cat laying next to him.

The cat loves my husband and looks at me as if to say "I have won this round." Unable to stand another night of this roaming around we came home early. Who said cats don't rule your life!

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