cat vengence

Cats can be vindictive little animals. My father once learned this when he teased our old cat to the point of frustration where she “confused” his pillow for her litter box. My mother told him it was his entire fault, he deserved it, and that he was responsible for cleaning it up. Another time my old flat mate’s father came for a one-week visit from Rostov and stayed for 3 months (at which point the cat and I moved out). This man also failed to respect the cat and was duly informed of this by having his full soup bowl overturned on the floor and his dried fish stolen off his plate. Now given their proclivities, I would think that anyone would think long and hard before annoying a cat, but it seems men in particular learn these things slowly.
So in recent weeks, Paul has been annoying the cat by deliberately mispronouncing her name and rubbing her fur in the wrong direction. So, today I guess she decided to take her feline revenge. I was sitting in my room, trying to get some work done when the said beast emerged from the kitchen bearing a fat juicy used condom in her mouth. Paul had buried the, um, item in the rubbish bin a few days before, supposedly well wrapped up and meant never to be seen again. But the cat obviously had other ideas and rummaged in the bin until she found what she was looking for, and then preceded to display her catch to the entire world that she surveys. Paul was naturally mortified, but like my father all those years ago, he too deserves it. You just don’t mess with cats, that is just the way it is.

Then, in our ongoing efforts to keep paul entertained and out of depression, Iain and I took him for a round of pubbing last night. But, as has happened so many times before, everything started out well, but ended in disaster. The first pub went ok, everyone was laughing and joking. Well, paul and I briefly disagreed over Iran (he thinks it should be blasted back into the stone age….i have difficulty accepting this, but I wasn’t up for making an issue about it…I mean how can you have an intellectual debate with someone who is mentally unstable?) but in general things seemed ok….then we headed over to Jesus bar. I really like Jesus College, it is really spacious and beautiful, and it looks a bit like Hogwarts. Plus, the people aren’t as unbearable as the Trinity ones, and the bar is nice (ok not as nice as at clare’s, but good enough). At the bar was this absolutely gorgeous blonde girl, and Iain invited her over for drinks on Paul’s behalf, as he was too shy to do so. So the blonde came over and it turned out that in addition to be pretty, she was also funny and intelligent. So we had a funny conversation, then this flaming gay friend of hers came over and joined us for a while, and he was entertaining as well. After about an hour, she went off to join her friends, and Iain and I looked at each other with satisfaction, both of us feeling that the encounter had gone well…but paul exploded at us. He claimed that the two of us had hogged the conversation and not let him do the talking, which we should have done since she had been brought over at HIS request. But Iain and I had only been trying to be friendly and make the girl feel more comfortable, while Paul sat and sulked as usual. But once again, we failed in our efforts to cheer him up. He stomped off and refused to speak to us the rest of the evening, except when he briefly exploded at me in the hallway of our flat, telling me I had no idea of the harm I had done.I know the guy has mental problems and cant control himself. But sometimes I wonder why Iain and I bother trying to keep him afloat. Sometimes I fear we might as well let him drown.