Searching for Stan

I feel like Job. Everything of significance is being stripped from me. In August my flat in west London was badly flooded; on 25 September I lost my job; on Monday lunch-time, 25 October, my beloved cat Stan, apparently terrified at the sight and sound of me knocking in a fence post, took off and hasn’t been seen since.

In the six years since he came in as a stray, Stan has never spent a whole night out of my bed. He is rather cowardly and weighs a stone and a half, so he is not given to gadding about. On the morning after Stan took off I looked out of the kitchen window to see a massive magpie in the tree outside, sounding off with a voice like a cheap child’s rattle. An emblem of utter doom. Since then I’ve spent hours staring at the back wall of the garden, hoping Stan might suddenly appear.