We have this cat called Balthazar. He looks sweet in the photo but he is the feline version of Idi Amin

I am plagued by this cat, I sometimes think it’s J’s final joke to me. He’s also a misogynist and will only now deal with Flynn now that James is gone. He is trouble and strife like the most nagging wife. The neighbours now know me as crazy widow lady who runs like the wind after him, across the street in an effort to save his sorry ass. I owe him nothing but must keep him alive for at least a while longer so that Flynn doesn’t think that everything just goes and dies. The cat knows this, I know he bloody knows this.

He waits until I have children in bed and I’m getting cozy on the sofa and he then jumps on one of the kids heads and bites them. There are screams and when I get into their darken room usually Celeste (because Balthazar will always choose to punish a female) tells me “Balthazar bit me”. In this time he will have positioned himself as far away from the crime as possible and be sitting purring and looking at me with “Yea? Do one!” eyes.

A few weeks ago I took the kids to our place in West Wittering. I left Balthazar in London, with lots of food and a neighbour to feed him. My mother in law loves him and feels he is being neglected so she came to check on him.We were only away for a couple of nights but he wasn’t happy.

He woke that morning as Balthazar but by noon had morphed entirely into Bobby Sands. He made his own political dirty protest and my poor mother in Law was left with this almighty mess on our very light grey carpets. There has been a lot of clearing of shit up over the years in this house. A year or two ago, a naked Celeste came into my bedroom, stood in front of me, squatted and just did a shit on the carpet there and then. Then she just left. I was sitting on my bed with the laptop and was in such shock that I dropped the Mac. Well it more slid off my knee, straight onto the turd and it fell on its side, you know, the side with all those tiny holes for cables and firewires. The shit had squeezed into these. So I’m clearing shit of my computer, literally, I had a collection of tiny long lego poles covered with baby wipes , bespoke tools if you will. And there I sat, one baby wipe at a time. That laptop’s never been the same. There really is an inordinate level of shit clearing. My friend has the phrase ‘Boys do bins’, I agree whole heartedly and I feel the same way about shit clearing.

Shit, I can handle but this week we reached new lows.

Balthazar has fleas. Our house is infested apparently, so I have had to fumigate the place. I never thought that when I decided to chart my new skills development in this blog, that flea catcher and fumigator would be another I could tuck under my belt. Fumigating is hard work, and makes you very hot so while doing the living room I stripped off into my underwear and put on the attractive white mask supplied, (think Jason’s girlfriend from Friday the 13th) except I forgot to close the shutters and it was dark outside, and the lights were on inside and I look up and ‘winging neighbour guy’ is just standing there, looking in, with his son. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t know what to do, so I waved. Shit happens.

For Vicky and Margo Brinton,