It Could Be Worse

30th October 2012 

A quietly drunk young woman in long dirty clothes walks into the cafe in Totnes  where I’m having lunch - undercooked, underseasoned vegetable curry - with a dear friend.The cafe is crowded - we have an empty seat at our table. She wanders up to us but doesn’t sit down.  All through our meal I’m aware of her at a table near the counter. She orders food, takes off her coat, she’s wearing two negligees, she eats a little and orders more food, she pays for it, she keeps getting up and looking at the cutlery, she staggers a bit, she comes to our table and looks at me, doesn’t say anything. I look away. I could smile at her but I don’t.

This afternoon I make gingerbread. I hole up in the kitchen with the pussy cat. I’m struggling to look after him now.  Because he will pee anywhere in the house we keep him restricted to the kitchen and utility room which have become his domain with his food and bed and litter tray all within staggering distance. He walks very slowly, wobbly, arthritic.  He can go out in the garden but he doesn’t seem to want to. 

What he does want to do is to drink out of the running bath tap. This involves a long slow climb for him up the stairs, I lift him into the bath where he sits, sometime licking at the dripping water but mostly just sitting in it - his fur getting wetter and wetter. You either have to stay with him or close the door so that he doesn’t go and pee on a carpet somewhere - which he did today in the pink room. If you lift him out too soon, sodden feet and bottom, he sits at the kitchen door and squeaks to go back up.

Then all his bedding gets damp so you have to put the heating on to dry it off on the radiators. If I don’t let him drink from the tap I’m afraid he’ll get dehydrated. And every so often you have to sweep up the grey re-cycled cat litter pellets which he trails across the floor, and scoop the poo out, and clean the tray because he always miss fires and it ends up half inside and half outside....and you have to spray away the smell or burn joss sticks to mask it....

And all I want to do is to read gingerbread recipes in peace.

Tonight I set up a convector heater by his bed and leave it on low  - I’m afraid he’ll get cold and his feet and legs never get completely dry.....

I know it could be a thousand times worse though - imagine if he was a sick and disabled child or parent or husband.....