I like to drink tea with her and watch her iron

Over the last year or so I thought that Muffin’s advancing senility might have plateaued on occasions - but it marches on inexorably. We can harness it’s advancing forces by – for example – keeping the heated floor in the guest bathroom on all the time so that she stays in there on the woolly bathmat in a comatose state for long periods of time - sleeping soundly.

I sneak in there and watch her sleeping peacefully – praying (see I do pray but not to the same Gods as everyone else who prays – I pray to the Fuckup Fairy) that she will pass away silently with one last little cat sigh and vanish to the same place as all dead cats. I think it is the same place as dead people but cannot be sure. I do not pretend to know everything like some people. There could well be a Cat God.

But for the last few days we had my Niece Rebecca and her partner Rachel stay with us and Muffin had to be evicted. My Niece’s partner is a woman and this devastated Mrs. Moneypenny who is our occasional and rather reluctant cleaner.

Mrs. Moneypenny comes from Latvia and works for an American woman as a child minder. She only does the one cleaning job – for me – I am not sure how this happened – but she does not really have time to do this as her life is dreadfully complicated and we have endless and complicated discussions about her life, her large family in Latvia and her husband as I help her sort through the very many issues she faces on a daily basis.

Her time here is chaotic as we drink tea and discuss her life. She fields important phone calls from her friends, checks her emails, posts to her Facebook account - and occasionally tosses a damp mop around the lounge room to rearrange the dust.

But she is a devout Christian and her Facebook page is splattered with Christianity. So when I mentioned that the guest room needed cleaning for my Niece and her girl partner she was most unimpressed. When I threw in that my Niece was of the Jewish faith she practically needed resuscitation.

So we had to sit down with a cup of Stockholm Blend Tea - which we import from Australia and work through the issues.

She agreed with me that God made everyone but she would not agree that God made gay people. She said that they chose to be gay. I argued that this could not be so because if God made them how could they choose for themselves. He was responsible for absolutely everything including the birds and the bees and the woods and the streams – he MUST have made gay people.

I lost that argument very badly and need to revisit the points that I made. I could never have imagined being outpointed by a Latvian child minder and occasional cleaner but there you are. She agreed that God wants us to love and accept gay people but that she could not agree with their lifestyle.

You will note that I made no effort to dissuade her from her Christian viewpoint – nor would I ever attempt to do so. Indeed – when she has low points – as when she gives me the weekly bulletin about her husband not loving her – I reassure her that God loves her.

She has been taught about God from birth. Her life revolves around her faith and her Church. All her friends are Christian. What would be the point of a curmudgeon like me trying to confuse her about anything at all.

Besides. She is very young. She is blonde. She is thin. She is tall. She is in fact a gold-plated Hottie.

There may be an occasion when Cate totally loses her senses and leaves me for another man – say her boss Huggy Bear – and I need to take someone home to Australia with me. My ribs are still giving me a lot of trouble and I will need a strong young woman to carry things – fetch water – make tea - stuff like that. Those Latvian women are sturdy!

Sure she can’t clean for nuts but what the hell. I like to drink tea with her and watch her iron.

But my blog readers are made of sterner stuff. You need to be tough and trudge through the occasional rant about religion. I am really quite harmless.

Where was I? Oh yes – Muffin.

When she is not sleeping Muffin prowls the house either meowing or yowling. Meowing is better. The yowling is banshee like. Not that I have heard a banshee but I have a vivid imagination.

It is worse when she finds a stray sock. It sounds like an air raid siren as she drags this fecking sock around the house wailing pitifully. It can go for some time and sounds like Dominique Strauss-Kahn having his room made up.

She is no longer allowed in the bedroom at night because she does not sleep at night. At night she walks. Endlessly. Up and down and around and across the bed. Imagine a single Morris Dancer on speed.

She is perfectly well. She had a full and very expensive medical examination a few weeks ago. It is just that she is nearly 19 years old and is – well – ancient in cat terms - and a bit gaga.

There is nothing that can be done. Life must take its course – for every living creature.

This is what I will be like in a few years time and then Cate will lock me out of the bedroom and I will have to sleep on the bathmat in the guest bathroom. I rather suspect I will be sharing it with Muffin.