We pay a lot for our home security. We have a designated list of key holders and a control room that phones them when the alarm goes off. They even send the police round, in certain circumstances.
I’m not entirely sure how the call to the police gets triggered because the control room seem to give up once they’ve tried to contact the people on the list.
I know this because we have cats.
We have three black cats. Amelia, Rhubarb and Custard. It was a kind of buy-two-get-one-free from the cat shelter. They cleverly left Amelia alone in a room saying she was the last of the litter and very (sob) lonely. The two brothers that I favoured had to go together, and as I’d stupidly brought my daughter, who of course wanted a girl cat, we ended up with all of them. The cat shelter people couldn’t believe their luck.
I renamed the brothers once we got home. My children (at that point aged seven and five) had a shocking lack of imagination when it came to naming things. It’s a child thing, I think. I was the same. I had several non-ironic Hammy the hamsters; a cat called Badger because it was black and white; a budgie called Joey and a goldfish called (wait for it) Goldie. I did have a cat called Twinkle, which had a little star on it’s forehead but that was named after my favourite weekly magazine. So much for creative spark.
Technically we were getting cats for the children. That was the cover story. Theoretically it was their job to pick names. But I had Views. One of the brothers is a timid creature. I wanted to call him Custard after the dragon in the Ogden Nash story ( if you don’t know it then read it immediately: https://www.monologues.co.uk/Childrens_Favourites/Custard_The_Dragon.htm)
For a connoisseur of 1970’s sweets, Rhubarb was the obvious and only name for his sibling. I used a bag of them to bribe my son into accepting the new names. I am still smug every time people give a little snort of laughter when they find out. The non-bribable girl child kept the name the shelter gave the girl kitten, whilst still managing to wangle some of the sweets. It rankles even now. How are people going to know about my excellent wit and wordplay when I have a cat called Amelia? Children spoil everything.
With unerring ability one cat goes missing every time we want to go away. We search the rooms thoroughly. We locate two of them. We weigh the odds. Custard hardly ever comes into the main house now except for the cat room. The cat room is a small utility room, non-alarmed, with a cat flap, so we can leave food when we go away and know they are not reduced to sheltering in hedges or (worse) finding better homes with kind neighbours. Custard has gone outside to snooze in a bush, we invariably conclude, as we set the alarm and lock up. Bless his heart.
The call usually comes just after I’ve dozed off. The neighbours, up late this time thank god, not trying to sleep, wonder if we know our alarm’s going off. They can’t see any sign of nefarious activity but … I contact the key holder who arrives, a little bleary given the hour, to check thoroughly. We’ve all missed the calls from the security people.
No sign of burglars. Or of the bloody cat, though movement has been detected in three of five possible zones in the house. No sign of the police, either, even though the call centre has failed to speak to us or the key holder. Given they charge a fee after three false alarms this is probably a blessing: I’m not sure ‘sorry officer, it was our cat’ will cut it at 11.30pm, not even if I offer up a Mrs Slocum style aside about my naughty pussy.
In the end, on the very first night away, our expensive home security is left deactivated and the door to the cat room left open. This way we won’t come home to find the desiccated remains of a cat pawing pathetically at the door to be let out. Of course we may well also not have a TV either.
It does exponentially increase the likelihood of coming home to the desiccated remains of some small mammals though. They seem particularly fond of leaving whole shrews on the carpet. Or the stomachs of blue tits, which for some reason are spurned as indigestible.
General internet theory suggests these are love gifts, but I’m not so sure. We’ve had eight years together, my views on these things are fairly clear, I’d say.
I don’t think it’s love. I’d call it dumb insolence.
Just waving 