Should mankind ever meet up with ET, then have no fear, interspecies understanding is virtually guaranteed. How do I know this? Well, Waffles will take care of it as Waffles can speak English. Let me explain.

This morning I was upstairs in the bedroom getting showered, teeth cleaned and dressed when I heard Vernon call me from downstairs.

"Your cat has caught a mouse." He said.

"Oh, oh." Thought I. " Vernon said, 'Your cat.'"
Not "Our cat."
Not "Waffles."
He said, "Your cat."

Waffles had done something she shouldn't have and was up the creek of brown and smelly bovine bowel movements, in a canoe without a paddle. What on earth had she done?

"And how do I know that your cat has caught a mouse?" Vernon shouted up the stairs in my general direction.

By this time I was hurrying to put the knickers on, hopping about on one foot, trying to insert the other into a knicker leg without falling over. Why is it that whenever you try to dress in a hurry, chaos always follows? Hopping about I tripped and fell over a sock left on the bedroom floor.

"I don't know, darling." I called back, "How did you know?"

"She told me so." Came the reply. "She came into the office with a mouse in her jaws and she quite clearly said 'Moww-z'. She is a very clever cat, your cat."

At this point I retrieved myself of the bedroom floor, rubbed my developing bruises and let out a sigh of relief that the "Your cat" was not as a result of Vernon being upset at Waffles, but that he was impressed at her use of fluent English. I managed to get the rest of my clothes on without incident and came downstairs into the office.

Sure enough, there on the floor next to Waffles was the tiniest shrew I have ever seen, which also happened to be very dead. I pointed to it and said, "What's that, Waffles?"

"Moww-z" replied Waffles, who then gave me a look of, "Is this human entirely stupid?" I swear she then looked at me and very slowly said, "M-oww-zzz" as if pronouncing a word very slowly for someone who is one sponge short of a trifle, to make sure this particularly thick human understood her.

"Clever girl," I told her, "bringing the mousie home to Mummy."

"Moww-z." said Waffles again, this time looking smug.

I picked the wee thing off the floor - it was a pygmy shrew. I logged its vital statistics into my science investigation logbook and wondered if it was scientific to note that Waffles could speak fluent English when describing her prey. The "Moww-z" weighed a magnificent 3.2 grams. I asked Waffles if she was now going in for big game hunting in a major way. She gave me another one of her, "Is this human entirely stupid?" looks once more. The shrew was then deposited in the altar of Bast - the kitchen bin. I then discovered that Waffles understands yet more English.

"Ham, Waffles?" I asked, as I headed towards the fridge door.

Waffles looked up at me and purred. No mistaking that then - she understood that quite clearly. I duly gave her a couple of slivers of her favourite ham and got a feline head-butt as my reward.

So the answer is, when mankind makes contact with ET, just send in Waffles. She can manage her native cat and that of another species, humans. No doubt if we make contact with little green men from Mars, she'll manage that too.

Copyright © Helen Simmons
September 4, 2001