MOUSERS

A dead mouse was something to crow about and Maureen wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to crow.

I crept up on the little fucker and before he could even think about getting away I had him. Under my paws, in my claws, between my jaws.

Rhyming was Maureen’s favourite ploy to add entertainment and drama to her frequent stories about hunting and killing.

The local cats were not immune to her charms and would always form a receptive and appreciative audience.

The mouse was not making its merry way into my house. No, Sir, no fucking way.

Tell us about the blackbird, Maur.

Okay, Gordon, as you’re asking. I had had the little fucker in my sights for a while. I was waiting for it to be distracted. Soon its beak was pulling a worm from the topsoil in the rhododendron bed, and I had my chance. Never saw me coming. Stealth, you see. Before you could say ‘blackbird mind out, mate,’ I had him under my paws, in my claws, between my –

Bores?

Maureen had been interrupted by a newcomer to the neighbourhood. A shadowy Clint-Eastwood-cowboy-cat with no name. The cat audience was unnerved.

What did you say? hissed Maureen.

Bores said the cat with no name. Your story, it bores me.

Maureen was Killer Queen of the street and was not used to being interrupted.

I’ll do to you what I did to the mouse and the blackbird.

And the frog, tell him about the frog Maur, encouraged Gordon.

I had the frog cornered. In my paws –

Yeah, yeah, we get the picture, you’re a killing machine, said the cat with no name.

I am, yes, and I could kill you if I wanted.

As Maureen said this, she arched her back ready to pounce but the cat with no name was nowhere to be seen, and she found herself jumping into emptiness and tumbling into a rose bush. To the other cats it looked comical and they, even Gordon, began to snigger. At once, Maureen’s golden allure was broken. A confidence sapping, jangling bell collar around her neck, to put a stop to her relentless killing and bragging.

No cat can say if the cat with no name actually visited that night, but his job was done and Maureen’s murders in the garden stopped.

Maureen became lethargic, sleeping through the day, dreaming of the cat with no name, hoping he’d return so she could tell him she’d seen the errors of her ways and was sorry.

A mouse flittered by her outstretched paw, and she let it pass to where Gordon was waiting.

Not so fast, rodent friend, said Gordon. Not so fast.

SEAN THE SWAN WRANGLER

‘Sean, you fuck’ was how he was known, and how he thought of himself.

He’d lost his way. He needed a new direction. One that was his own; not anyone else’s, especially anyone else who referred to him as ‘Sean, you fuck.’  The days of name-calling were over. It was time for a new start.

He felt this desire for change standing in front of Leyton’s Londis noticeboard. One advert stood up and spoke to him: ‘Sean wanted for new post as Swan Wrangler on the River Lea’.

‘That’s fucking me,’ he shouted, but then felt better of the ‘f’ word. ‘I’ve done with that fu**ing word. That’s me: I’m Sean, the Swan Wrangler.’

The next day he was on the towpath being instructed on how to lasso a swan out of the river without damaging its neck or beak.

‘It’s not as easy as it looks, Sean,’ cautioned the instructor.

‘It doesn’t look fuc… flipping easy.’

‘You need to talk to a swan softly to set it at ease, then come at it as if you were wearing carpet slippers and velvet gloves.’

‘Like a cat?’

‘Not exactly, but I can tell you’ve got the right idea.’

The first weeks in the job were not easy for Sean or the swans. But once he started to think less ‘cat’ and more of himself as ‘Sean, the slipper-wearing swan wrangler,’ he injured less swans and began to see himself in a whole new light.

Others saw it too, and when hooligans now called to him from the bank as he wrestled with swans in the river below, they no longer shouted, ‘Sean, you fuck,’ but shouted ‘Sean, you flipping swan wrangler!’

‘Flipping’ is what he heard or chose to hear, and it always made him smile.

*Drawings by Jonny Voss