Cat Tracker

I look across the lounge room floor and silently I brood. Looking back is something smug that’s caused a family feud. It licks its paws; it grins at me, and knows it is protected, and every wish it ever wants from me is now expected. The bloody thing now gets a vote when there’s a hot debate, and it even gets to eat its meat at the table on a plate. I can’t say one bloody thing; I have to take it on the chin, because this cat embarrassed me and now I just can’t win. Right from the start let’s get it straight; I hate the bloody thing, but my wife insists she wants a cat, so home one she did bring. It could sense my feelings pretty well and knows we didn’t click, from when the wife first turned her back - it received a nasty kick. All my wife’s attention now was centred on her lap at night. The cat slept on the bed as well and purred in sheer delight, so lying there quite restless, I made my mind up loud and clear, this bloody cat has got to go and so it will disappear. With just a sardine on a saucer, the cat was lured to a trap. I made out I’m working in me shed until I heard a snap. Quick as a flash into the boot and ten miles down a track ... You may not believe this but the darn cat beat me back! I got such a shock to see the cat but couldn’t tell me wife, for if she knew what’s going on there’d be a bit more strife. When me wife went out again I blended milk and sleeping pills, so the cat was sleeping soundly twenty miles out in the hills. Now it’s my turn for feeling smug and purring near me wife, for that damn rival of a cat will have to find another life. Its bed will have to be a hollow log, and it will have to hunt, but bugger me when I got home, it’s waiting out the front! I don’t know if the wife’s suspicious, but I don’t give a hoot, when she was on shopping spree her cat was howling in the boot. This time I’ll beat the moggy with a brick and hessian sack. They say the dam is bloody deep; this time it won’t come back. I suppose I did feel some remorse but that didn’t last for long. I know the cat has met its maker and it’s where it does belong ... ‘It’s malicious and it’s cruel, evil, wicked, brutally abused!’ Patting the wet bedraggled cat; they’re the terms my missus used. How in the bloody hell could that flamin’ cat get free? Well, there’s no other option; that bloody cats’ not beating me! This time I’ll take it fifty miles into the scrub that’s virgin still, and with this I know for certain that my wish I shall fulfill. Along the forest road I drove, then turned up an unused trail, crossed a creek, turned to the left, drove through a rutted dale, turned to the right, then right again, to left and then the right; right again, then right again, and left in the fading light. I tossed that cat into the scrub, put me car in gear and then, turned to the right, then to the left, and then the left again; the left again and then the right; the left and once again the right, but with the darkness falling quick became a victim of the night. Two hours I drove ‘round and ‘round; I’m lost and in despair, so I rang me wife and asked her if that flamin’ cat was there, “Why yes it is,” she answered. “But you just leave my cat alone” … “Just put it on the phone me Dear - I need directions to get home”.