I hope I'm not alone in finding myself sometimes leaving home without house keys. This so frequently happens, that, for emergency use, I keep a spare front door key in our car's glove compartment. This is fine so long as no-one has locked up the car.

Normally, when I leave my keys behind, I have gone away on foot and left my tetraplegic husband at home. When I get home and discover what I have done, I have to stand at the front door and raise him by calling through the cat flap. The poor chap then has to drive in his wheelchair to his office to get his long reach arm from the desk (not an easy thing for him to do as he has very limited mobility in his arms); drive back to the living room; position himself as close to the sideboard as his wheelchair will allow and try to fish out the front door key from the pot in which we keep all our keys. Then he has to drive very, very carefully, to avoid dropping his long reach arm and the keys, down the hallway to the front door, get as close to the cat flap as possible and hold the keys down and out in front of his feet so that I can reach through the flap and grab them.

The last time I locked myself out and had to call upon my husband for help, Dee Dee, my black and white semi-longhaired cat was inside the house. She accompanied him to the front door and when my arm appeared through the cat flap, she lunged forward, grabbed it and started furiously biting and kicking it.

I suppose she thought I was a burglar who needed repelling...

Copyright © Sheenah Large
July 18, 2002