It was Christmas Evening....

12/21/2011 01:45:00 pm BenefitScroungingScum 8 Comments

Inspired by this I thought I'd share my favourite Christmas story. Fortunately I finally confessed this sorry tale to my father recently, which did not further endear him to BendyCat or her mum Kitty#1. Both cats were always generous with their gifts, and still in the stage of hauling dead rats as big as themselves home to be proudly presented and on one memorable occasion, a still live blackbird which one of them triumphantly dumped on my parents bed at 5am.

It was some time in the 90's - sometime in the particularly blurry, drunken student shagging days when BendyCat was still young and able to jump onto things without falling over. Ah how things have changed for us both since then! It may have been the first Christmas after my grandmother died as I don't remember her reaction to this story and she would have howled with laughter. Christmas was never the same without Gran's uniquely stylish look of tracksuits and stilletos or her tradition of sliding drunkenly under the table into a haze of Gold Label and whiskey fumes at some point during the festivities.

So, it was Christmas evening in the Franklin family nuthouse, Oldest Friend and I were sitting in the kitchen chatting. The ham my mother had spent hours preparing was cooling on the side and all was as calm as Christmas ever was.

Then we noticed an odd noise....

Unnoticed BendyCat had jumped onto the kitchen counters and made her way to the ham. In a 'once in a lifetime' moment of strategic planning she had her eyes firmly on the ham and how to make it hers....

You'd think perhaps a cat would try and pull the ham off the counter top and spirit it away to be shared, but she must've been foiled by it's size and weight and had to come up with a better plan...

The odd noise which alerted us to the cat's plans was the tinkling noise as she squatted over the ham on it's cooling board......

and pissed all over it!

It was the noise of me and Oldest Friend howling with laughter and shouting at the cat which alerted my mother who came sprinting in from the lounge just in time to see BendyCat still pissing all over the ham she'd spent hours preparing and Oldest Friend and I too convulsed with hysteria to do anything about it.

Being the type who grew up the era in post war rationing my mother has always had, um, let's say an interesting relationship with the concept of food fit for human consumption. My ability to eat luminous green bacon is amatuer stuff compared with her ability to hoard food still labelled in shillings and pence whilst simultaneously swearing it's fit to eat.

So, upon witnessing this act of blatant cat terrorism, screaming at 'that fucking cat' my mother swiped BendyCat away from her prize and onto the floor. Grabbed the ham and ran it under the tap swearing both Oldest Friend and I to secrecy as she did so.

Funnily enough neither Oldest Friend or I were willing to eat the ham which was served up soon after...but the rest of the family were unknowing and got stuck in.

Eventually though, even my mother was forced to concede the ham had had it's day, she'd been outwitted by BendyCat and the only one's to truly enjoy the slightly odd tasting meat were furry and possessed of four paws!