This morning the ambassador handed Rudi a final note stating that unless we heard from him by eleven a.m. that he was prepared at once to stop his micturations and defecations a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that consequently we are at war with Rudi.
 
Our cat, Rudi, has been a bit grumpy and out of sorts recently. A heart-stoppingly expensive trip to the vet’s has revealed the cause to be a rectal abcess (sorry if I have just ruined your meal). We asked the vet please to cure him. The vet indicated that it would be much more fun for all concerned (i.e. for him) if we were to try our hands at animal doctoring instead. So, he clipped a magnificent plastic collar round Rudi’s neck and gave us instructions to hold the cat down twice a day and flush disinfectant through the abcess with a syringe.
Rudi, the ungrateful little bastard, saw only pain and indignity in all this. He failed to acknowledge the bank haemorraghe that his treatment had caused and the good intentions which motivated our twice daily wrestling sessions. He took careful note that when he got his new plastic ruff stuck in the catflap or in the door to his litter box we laughed at him insensitively. He sat glaring at us and plotting his revenge. Each session with the syringe stiffened his feline resolve.
He waited until we had made up the guest bedroom for the visit of my brother-in-law and nephew. Once the freshly aired duvet and clean sheets were on the bed he trotted purposively into the room, jumped onto the bed and urinated copiously. We were alerted by his little catty snicker and the sound of our guests’ despair. It took a while to put things right and, in the end, we had to tie the door shut to prevent a repeat performance.
Surely, Rudi apparently thought, we had learned our lesson. Yet, at 6 pm, there he was being pinned to the floor by the fat one with the loud voice whilst the small one who serves him food was spraying water up his rear. As soon as we had finished, he bolted up to our room and showered our marriage bed with ammonia.
This was war. We raged and howled and boots were swung close to his pustular rear. He realised that he could not win a symmetrical conflict and his best bet lay in insurgency. He retreated into the shadows and developed a strategy. As we retired to bed and our said our goodnights, I heard the sound of my beloved sniffing the air.
P: “Can you smell cat shit?”
M: “Er … yes”
P: “Oh God … where is it?”
I turned on the light expecting to find a horse’s head of cat dung beneath the duvet. But I could find nothing. It appeared to be coming from the cupboard but we emptied it and found nothing. Rudi has stumped us. He has filled our room with a persistent odour of shit but we cannot find any. Has he sown it into the curtain lining? Has he shoved it into the mattress? Has he filled a shoe? He is saying nothing but he is abundantly smug.
He has won this round and the world shall hear from him again.