Cat flap

We got word that our house in London was infested with fleas as we drove north on holiday in glorious weather through the borders into Scotland. Sid, who very kindly and conscientiously looks after our cats while we are away, sent a series of increasingly alarmed text messages, in which he informed us that he was suffering flea attacks of unbridled savagery on his ankles every time he went into the kitchen or sitting-room. He is not the kind of man to take that sort of thing lying down, and he requested an immediate transfer of funds so that he could buy a full suit of protective clothing and launch all-out chemical warfare.

One imagines that a protective suit of the kind Sid required can be bought quite cheaply off one of our heroes returning from Iraq, but I am so mean that I decided, in-between admiring the sublime landscapes of the borders, that I would rather deal with the fleas myself when I got back home. It also seemed to me and my wife that the fleas could not long survive in large numbers with only the blood of our two cats to feed off, and that even if they also gorged themselves on Sid’s ankles the chances were that most of them would have perished by the time we got back, especially as the very hot weather was drawing to a close.

Within minutes of our return, I thought I felt the first bites round my ankles. This proved, however, to be nothing but my imagination. My wife did find a flea in the neck of Kitty, the older and bigger of our two cats, and immediately treated her. The other cat, Mausie, who is Kitty’s daughter, was nowhere to be seen, but she is inclined to go off by herself, probably in order to get away from her mother.