Catflap and Mishaps

With a couple of DIY novices like us on the loose you would think at least one of us would end up at Hospital A&E sooner or later …

I plead with Sadie, my wife, to be careful with the Stanley knife as she cuts the plasterboard — and she reminds me to watch out with the new chop-saw, all the while we were both under the watchful eye of St Mark of The Chateau, who has seen enough building-site accidents to make a cowboy film.

What happens next reminds us both of the need to get proper health cover, ASAP, as we end up frantically driving around Culan on a Saturday afternoon looking for the brand-new medical centre that was touted as one of the town’s many new attractions by Dave the Friendly Estate Agent when we initially came to look at house.

With blood pouring from a nasty gash on Sadie’s hand and on advice from St Mark of the Chateau ,who said he had done a first aid course (before the introduction of power tools), we were desperate to find medical help.

Step up Culan’s finest pompiers, or fire-fighters. As we drive back from the closed medical centre we pass the Fire Station and see the crew outside hanging around an engine looking like they have nothing better to do.

I swing the car into the station, to Sadie’s initial horror, but figuring they would have first-aiders on the team, or at least tell us where the nearest hospital is.

I get Sadie out of the car and seeing a blonde Madame in distress, they take one look and beckon her into the station, where they treat the wound, bandage it and advise her to go back to the medical centre on Monday.

I make a mental note to make a small donation to the local firefighters’ benevolence fund, next time I’m passing.

It was a relief that she hadn’t cut a tendon and would still be able to play guitar. St Mark of the Chateau was also relived to see the wound properly dressed and later we enjoyed a delicious sausage casserole and a bottle of red he had brought from the Chateau, which we finished off around the fire.

I forgot to mention that Sadie sustained the injury not from DIY, but by chopping a leek for dinner with an ultra-sharp kitchen knife she bought from Carrefour earlier in the day.

While he was in our employ, St Mark of the Chateau also fitted a catflap to the rather ornate back door, which is opened with a key that is so big it would open his chateau and looks silly dangling from the set of car keys.

After a week in solitary the cats are let out, Mingus, an alley cat, makes a bolt for the catflap and is off into the night, before I can caution him on the busy junction and remind him they drive on the wrong side of the road over here.

Kitten is a scaredy cat and still hides under the sofa and refuses to leave the comfort and confines of the house.

We spend a fretful night hoping Mingus will find his way home and when he is not back for his breakfast, which is highly unusual for him, we begin to fear the worse and Sadie becomes distraught.

By mid-morning he is back, and has mastered the catflap. Kitten has to be retrained on using a litter tray, with a few accidents on the way, as we gently nudge her to the door, explaining there is a huge garden at the back where she can do her business.

We are still waiting for their first kill on French soil to be brought back and tortured on the kitchen floor before being casually discarded like an unwanted prize from the village tombola.

Either they are going soft and have decided to retire from the catch and kill business, or they have lost their homicidal instincts with all the upheaval … or maybe the French rats are not to be messed with and are far more superior and intelligent to their British cousins?

Either way, I feel a degree of national pride is at stake and England expects more from her feline citizens now that we are ‘world-beaters’.