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The cat seems to be suffering from sudden-onset triskaidekaphobia. A sadistic stalker of magpies in her youth, she has recently begun cowering under the kitchen chairs when she spies those monochrome marauders bartering and barracking and shoving each other around on the roof of the garden shed in an attempt to snatch the lumps of stale sliced pan I sometimes throw up there.
“They’re just birds,” I tell her, “just noisy, pea-brained birds fighting over a couple of slices of last week’s Hovis.”
“Magpies! A murder of magpies,” she whispers.
“That’s crows,” I whisper back. “A murder of crows. I don’t know what the collective noun for magpies is.”
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“Harbingers,” she croaks. “Doom merchants.”
“Pull yourself together,” I tell her.
Jennifer Aniston won't get on an aircraft without knocking three times on the fuselage, the cat tells me
“Jennifer Aniston won’t get on an aircraft without knocking three times on the fuselage,” the cat tells me, her gummy eyes glittering with fear. (That’s the cat’s eyes I’m talking about here, not Aniston’s.)
“And Cameron Diaz spends all of Friday the 13th knocking on wood! That’s what she told the Hollywood Misreporter. She’s worn to a frazzle with all the knocking. The whole day – knock knock knock!”
“Do you even know who Cameron Diaz is?”
“Yes, of course I do. She’s a Hollywood retiree who had a long list of boyfriends, including Tristram Jumperlake, but never felt safe with any of them. She’s married now to someone called Benji, and has a totally different mindset. Her life with Benji is all about family and cooking and wellness and carrying big lumps of wood around with her on Friday the 13th... Are you using that breadboard for anything?”
“The fear of the number 13 is entirely irrational,” I say. “It’s hokum. It’s just a hangover from the belief that Judas Iscariot sat in the 13th place at the Last Supper.”
“Oh right. Did he order the mussels?”
“No, he did not order the mussels. He betrayed Jesus!”
“Just like Brad did to Jennifer.”
“No, not even remotely like Brad did to Jennifer. Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, the incarnation of God the son, the awaited messiah; not some girl-next-door TV star who appears in commercials for skincare and romcoms about puppy dogs.”
“Well, Lady Gaga is superstitious.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“She said so in an interview with Vanity Scare. The sop pensation.”
“I think you mean pop sensation.”
“Yes, that’s it – the pop sensation admitted to having weird superstitions about sex.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Apparently she told the reporter that if you’re not having sex with someone who really cares about you or who really loves you, they can screw up your energy.”
“I see.”
“She went on to say that she has this weird thing that if she sleeps with someone they’re going to take her creativity away from her through her vagina.”
“Goodness.”
“Goodness indeed.”
We sat in silence on the battered leather couch, looking out of the window at the storm-battered yard, at the upturned, wind-injured plastic bucket lolling on its side, at the pale yellow narcissi pushing up out of the cobalt-blue planter and shivering in the mean, ceaseless wind.
“What’s a vagina?” she asked quietly.
“It’s nothing you have to worry about,” I told her softly. “We had you neutered shortly after birth.”
“Oh.”
She seemed grateful to be back indoors, behind the safety of the glass, where she could comfortably glare at the jeering birds and then lick her bottom
As we looked beyond the grubby pane, the clouds began to part and a tentative sun briefly illuminated the garden, lighting up the big green leaves of the fatsia japonica that grows and grows and grows despite our neglect.
Yesterday the cat climbed up the shrub’s branches, which now reach almost to the height of the garden shed. From the kitchen, where I was writing at the table, I could hear her crying. I went out and managed to lift her inside. She’d probably started climbing in search of a mouthful of magpie, and then lost her footing and her nerve.
She seemed grateful to be back indoors, behind the safety of the glass, where she could comfortably glare at the jeering birds and then lick her bottom.
You’re getting old, I thought, watching her try to jump on to the back of the couch, inelegantly pulling up her hindquarters. I don’t know if she’ll be around for many more conversations.
As she drifted off into sleep, I looked up the collective noun for magpies: a conventicle of magpies, a gulp of magpies, a mischief of magpies, a tidings of magpies, a tittering of magpies.
I’m going to go with gulp.
She heard the gulp of magpies sneer at her frailty from beyond the glass...