Waffles likes to hunt. Francis and Marble do too, but the most successful hunter of the Simmons' clowder is Waffles. The problem is - when the cats bring the results of their garden safaris home, they don't always tell me where they deposit the prey. This has its problems. Such a problem is often resolved by my nose. Perfume houses should pay me a fortune to analyze scent. I can identify dead rodent at fifty paces. Only, I can't always tell the direction in which I should be walking those fifty paces to get to the offending decaying mess.

One such example happened last week. We've had an Indian Summer here in Norfolk - the weather has been that of summer. One day I smelt *something* the distinct smell of a small rodent somewhere in the house, somewhere warm and with an odour of definite decay about it. This is not a pleasant smell, it does not compare favourably with the top and bottom notes of Chanel No.5 It may do to a cat, indeed I am certain it is the feline equivalent to Chanel No.5, but to the human nose, Chanel No.5 it most definitely is not.

I searched the house high and low, for the source of the offending nasty niff. I could not find it anywhere. I looked under the beds, all around the skirting boards, under chairs, behind cupboards… it was nowhere to be found. Then the smell went away. Perhaps I had just imagined it. After all, I'd done a thorough search and came up a blank. That was it, I must have imagined it.

The next day was one of glorious sunshine. I had the sliding doors in the dining room open wide, so the gentle late summer/early autumn breeze gently wafted into the house. That side of the house gets the sun, and the carpet there was bathed in pools of sunlight. On the way to the kitchen from the office, I passed the open dining room door and there was Her Majesty stretched out in a pool of light, soaking up the sun. She was the very picture of feline bliss and contentment, eye closed, all four legs outstretched, black fur soaking up the heat. "Hello Waffs, are you enjoying yourself over there?" I enquired. Her reply was a large yawn, exposing white fangs glinting in the sunlight, followed by a little stretch of her back, and a friendly "Purrrr, mmm-rrrrroww!" So I went over to see her and there next to her was a shrew. "Oh, you've been hunting then, Madam!" I said. "MMMOOOOWWWZ" came the reply.

I leant over to pick the shrew up by the tail to dispose of it in the bin. Then it happened. I had just discovered the source of the previous day's offending odour. I picked the rodent corpse up by the tail and the entire animal disintegrated before my eyes into a writhing mass of maggots - on my dining room carpet… YYYYYEEEEUUUCCCHHH! Waffles looked so pleased with herself that I had suddenly started squealing with joy at her efforts and doing a dance of joy around the room. Or at least that's what she thought I was doing. I managed to hold the contents of my stomach down long enough to spray vast quantities of disinfectant over the wriggling mess - so it wriggled no longer. I managed, somehow, to clean it all up with kitchen roll and flush it down the loo.

Waffles then followed me up to the bathroom. She hasn't worked out why I felt the need to talk to someone called "Hughie Barf!" on the great white telephone in there, and had to keep repeating the name several times, getting ever louder as I did so. Indeed, she thought my telephone manners were appalling as I kept repeating myself over and over and over…

Copyright © Helen Simmons
October 26, 2001