963. House sitting

35 Replies

963house

“Thanks so much for looking after our house for six weeks while we toured Europe. Were there any expenses?”

It was our pleasure. We enjoyed it very much. The only expense incurred was the cat. We didn’t mind the cost of the daily food. It was a pleasure to have the cat about. But it scratched the legs of your chairs I’m afraid. We would’ve got them fixed, but we presumed some of the scratches were old.

Of course we didn’t know its name, but we called it Summer Shandy – because it was all sunshine and bubbled like a mixture of beer and lemonade! We fell in love with it!!

The expense was when it took ill and we had to take it to the vet. It cost over $300 I’m afraid. And then comes the wretched bit: sad to say we had to have it put down. So all in all, it will cost you nearly $400.

“But we didn’t have a cat.”

To listen to the story being read click HERE!

35 thoughts on “963. House sitting”

  3. arlingwoman

    When I was a child, a cat that belonged to a woman down the street, picked up and moved 8 or ten blocks away to live with another family for two years. Eventually it came back, but it set me wise to the loyalties of cats…This was pretty funny. I bet there was a trade off in the end; forgiving the damages for not paying the crazy vet bill…

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      1. Cynthia Jobin

        As revered as Eliot was for his “serious” poetry in the twentieth century, I think the one work which people will still read in future will be his “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”

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        1. Bruce Goodman Post author

          You’re probably right – I find him far too obtuse… I like the occasional line and the rest of it I don’t have a clue what he’s going on about. But that’s me! I much prefer a Yeats or a Jobin or ….

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    2. Cynthia Jobin

      We once had a stray cat come and give birth to her babies under our deck. We found homes for the kittens, but let the mother hang around. Eventually, we had her spayed and her name was “Mama Cat”. She was a kind of empress of all she surveyed.

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        1. Cynthia Jobin

          I can relate to that. My maternal grandmother was a true cat lady, but as a child I wasn’t interested in them,I always kind of ignored what they were about..and she did horrible things like drowning unwanted kittens. I thought of cats as the aloof mysterious friends of weird old ladies. I always was more of a “dog person.” Until my mother died and left two cats who had nowhere to go (my Dad had no use for cats) and so I adopted the cats. I learned to love them. When they died, the house felt like it needed a cat, so I adopted one…and then another.

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  8. derrickjknight

    We tried to leave a stray cat in Soho when we moved from there. It was first in the van and didn’t emerge until we arrived at Streatham. It took to sitting on our neighbour’s windowsill. She loved it. When we moved to Newark it stayed on the windowsill

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    1. Bruce Goodman Post author

      Our cat when we moved wouldn’t go into the cat carrier box. She went and sat on the inside dashboard of the car and looked through the front window for the 7 hour journey to our new place.

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