Anna May Mangan’s Writing News

My neighbour is abusing me. She thinks I am common as muck but nevertheless useful for feeding her cat when she and her husband travel overnight for ‘horn recitals’. Yes, that’s where they go.  Or is it what they do ?  I am too polite to ask.

Their cat, like them, is so posh it’s in Burke’s peerage and it’s called  Pushkin. Now if I had another son I wouldn’t call him Pushkin because it’s a name with strong female qualities,in my ever so  humble ma’am opinion. But according to her Pushkin is a boy cat.

This cat looks like a girl, it’s got a girl’s name but the owner insists it’s a boy. I could check out the genitalia next time I put wild tuna into his/her silver mongrammed dish but I can’t be arsed. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a boy or a girl, because it’s a cat.  I often do that gender drift thing when discussing my unpaid cat care duties with the Pushkin’s mum, and this is what bugs me –  she  corrects me EVERY time. 

I’ve just had a silent argument with  cat woman because when she came to collect her keys after I’d spent 48 hours fostering her cat for free she told me that the video camera in her back garden showed ‘incontrovertible evidence’  that my cat had ‘played rough’ with Pushkin.

I realise that was my cue to be aghast and apologise and say ….. what ? I’d spank my cat ? Ground her ? Not allow her to watch TV for the weekend ? But instead I shook my head in  what I hope was an enigmatic way, handed her back the keys and said I hoped she was OK.  “He !” she answered.