The cat who came in from the cold

My Secret Cat's no secret anymore.

What a relief! We've moved to a house where, for only the second time in eight years, we're allowed to have a cat. Each of the other six years we have had to keep the cat on the sly.

It was really annoying because every time the real estate agent or landlord came around for an inspection we had to evacuate the cat for the day. She would usually go the vet or to the cattery. Once or twice we tried to finesse things a bit by only evacuating her half an hour before they were due to arrive and taking her to a nearby park and waiting there. We stopped doing this the day that the agent arrived early and we were still chasing the Secret Cat around the house trying to get her into the cage. Once that was achieved it was out the back door and into the car, only to discover that the agent had parked in our driveway and we were trapped. Noooooo!!!

Not only did we have to evacuate the cat, we also had to remove all the other cat paraphernalia such as food bowls, litter trays, pooper scoopers, fridge magnets from vets, scratching posts, adorable photos of the cat, and so on. But there was no getting rid of the feline fur that floated loose around the house and coated everything.

For this reason I am not stupid enough to really think that the agents didn't know that we had a cat. If it was ever commented on I planned to claim that it was alpaca hair from my mother's farm. Good story huh? I mean who the hell knows what alpaca hair actually looks like? But it never came up, mainly I think because they didn't really want to catch us out. After all, we were good tenants. We usually paid the rent on time, only parts of the garden died, we only had one Secret Cat and it only threw up on their carpets a couple of times a week, and the meth lab in the garage must have been the neighbour's - we lost the key, honest.

So inspection day was always a bit of a farce. We'd pretend not to have a cat. The agent would pretend not to know we had a cat. And we'd all be happy. But still, it was always stressful. I was always playing out scenarios in my head such as what to do if the agent trod in some vomit that hadn't heretofore been noticed. I suppose I would have had to claim responsibility, but I have no idea what I would pretend to have been eating. Something to make my nose shiny and my hair sleek I guess.

Now though, it's different. She's gone legit. She's gettin' square. The cat can prance around to her heart's content with no repercussions. She's already started vomiting again, just like the old days.

Good times.