The past week has been a bit of a learning experience.
I’ve endured the perfect storm of my best friend and housemate, Lynne, going away on vacation; having a visitor come to stay; and suddenly being solely responsible for 10 cats, four ducks, and a cavalcade of chickens.
We’ve always split the duties of looking after the animals (although, if I were being honest, it’s usually more 30/70 in my favour), but now, it was all on me.
Two of our cats are allowed outdoors in our quiet neighbourhood – Butterscotch and Tango. We make sure they come inside every night before bedtime, then they can go out the next morning. While organising that daily operation, you have to keep eyes on Houdini at all times, who can slither through the smallest crack in the door and make a break for it.
On the first night that Lynne was away, I was outside at 11pm with a bag of treats, trying to cajole the boys in, which then awoke the hen and her chicks who sleep by our front door. The cats are not fans of the hen, and she’s even less keen on them, so now I had to get some bread to throw for her – away from the porch – which also brought down the roosters that nest in the big bush nearby. I must have gone through half a loaf to keep them occupied for long enough that the cats felt it was safe to make a move.
Once all moggies were accounted for, they had to be properly sorted for the night. Butterscotch has to be put in a certain room, otherwise he stands outside your bedroom door around 5am and screams relentlessly until you come out to pay him some attention. Leeloo can’t be in a room with food because she’s diabetic. All the water bowls need to be filled and the litter pans emptied. I think I got to bed around midnight.
Lynne naturally rises around 6:30am, which is perfect because she can let cats out of rooms, feed them all, test Leeloo’s blood sugar and administer insulin.
I naturally rise much later, so that first morning she was away was an eye-opener, literally and otherwise.
The alarm went off at 7am; I wept; I opened the bedroom door to a host of pets sitting outside, waiting to see how I would compare to Lynne. Meow, meow, meow, meow, meooooooowwwwwwww.
Out came the dry food. Some liked it, some didn’t. Okay, okay … wet food. Don’t like the pate. Opened the Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers. Finally, everyone had something they wanted. Then I had to test Leeloo. Blood sugar was a bit high. Get the insulin. Give her an injection, give her food … Every interior door I opened had some cats running out and some in. It was like Grand Central Station. Butterscotch and Tango cried to go outdoors. I opened the patio door, which alerted the chickens and ducks to someone being awake in the house; they all ran over. Bread, seed, corn … I grabbed it all and walked into unfamiliar sunlight, as a rooster flew up onto my hand and knocked seed all over the ground, which started a pecking frenzy around my unprotected toes.
“Hey! HEY!” I yelled, not frightening them off in the slightest. I minced my way through the horde, threw the rest of the food onto the grass, and went back into the house.
I could now go back to bed, but not before Chiqui (cat in my room) got her breakfast. What a bonus! Mummy was up really early today!
Two days into this routine, an old friend from my younger Cayman years, Randall, arrived to stay for a couple of weeks. Mercifully, because he had lived here before, he had other friends on the island and was pretty self-sufficient, but I still felt I had to make an effort and take him to some hotspots. In a way, it was actually really good for me. I hadn’t realised what a hermit I had become – barely going out, becoming one with the couch. We hit Peppers (I didn’t know they had an air-conditioned section these days) and thoroughly enjoyed a reminder of the casual bars we frequented when we were in our 20s. Great food, great drinks, terrific social scene, live music …
We also stopped by Door No. 4 (award-winning cocktails and the BEST cheeseburger sliders!); happy hour at Seven in The Ritz-Carlton (the thick-cut fries are to die for, and the cocktails are divine); and V2O in Regency Court, where I indulged in perfectly created cosmopolitan martinis, sushi, shrimp and fresh oysters. I had truly forgotten how great the menu is there.
We even went out to the comedy show at the Harquail on Saturday, 26 April, and saw a lot of people I haven’t connected with in ages. A really fun evening out.
The cherry on top was a catch-up with hairstylist and sunshine dervish Pasquale Caselle, with whom Randall had worked in a salon many moons ago in Cayman. Either you know Pasquale or you don’t. No one is ever not sure if they know him because he leaves a permanent, happy impression on everyone he meets.
Yes, all of these nights were wonderful … but boy, did that early morning rise start to take its toll. As the days marched merrily on, I would emerge, bleary-eyed to my Groundhog Day of crying cats, operating almost on auto-pilot as I opened five cans of different food at once, no longer caring if I wasted some. I just didn’t have the energy to audition Salmon Feast, Chicken in Gravy, Tuna Florentine … until I found something they liked. The odds of success were much higher if I just put everything we had on the plates and let them have at it. I tested Leeloo, gave her insulin, fed the chickens …
Just for a bit of variety, there were a couple of nights when Houdini managed to escape the house. Chanting expletives under my breath as I went, I got the treats and bread (for the sentinel hen) and tried to get him to come to me. He bounded and leapt across the front grass. He lay down as though surrendering, but as I cooed and reached out, he was up like lightning and diving under the car, or jumping into the Jeep. I brought out cat toys and bits of string, and after about 30 minutes he would inevitably fall for some trick or the other so I could pounce and take him back to jail. This is all exactly what I wanted to do after a few martinis.
I really don’t regret revisiting venues I hadn’t frequented in a while, and I do need to get out more. But the main takeaway from this past week is that I need to appreciate Lynne more. She got back on Sunday, and I’ve never been happier to see her.
The morning alarm got switched off that night. Hallelujah.
