Pussy Problems Part II: Pussy Parental Predicament

aka How I Stole a Cat and Made a Little Girl Cry

Hello, obviously you've all read my outstanding literary piece; PussyProblems, for those of you that haven't, it's worth checking out, one review stated; “better than your usual shit, but still not good”. So that's… almost... good, I suppose.

To be fair, you don't have to read it as I'm going to catch you up here anyway;

[Read in Ominous Voice] Previously on Pussy Problems; our protagonist finds himself embroiled in an action packed cat-sitting favour for a friend.

So now you're all caught up, let's scan read the rest of this shit, like the link of Facebook and get back to our miserable lives. 

"Ben, if I do this cute face will you stay home from work and play laser pen with me all day?"

 

So, you know the deal, I've been looking after a friend's cat for a while now and over that time I've got slightly fond of the greedy bag of fur, in fact I'm so fond of the thing it's perhaps that only thing I've ever loved more than myself [and yes, my girlfriend does read this blog, and she's come to terms with this]. So when my friend finally sorted out her living arrangements and got her life back on track she obviously wanted her cat back. [Re-reading that makes it sound like my friend had some major drug problem, that wasn't the case... at least, I don't think it was.]

Now, I knew this day would come, although I'd try to convince myself that it wouldn't. Although I expel a negative attitude towards 99.8% of everything inhabiting this doomed rock rotating around a dying star, deep down in what constitutes as my 'soul', I'm actually an optimist, an extremely lazy optimist. I thought things would work out for the best.

So upon my friend requesting a day and time to come and fetch Fiona, I simply ignored her messages. I wasn't trying to freeze her out, I was just biding my time, trying to muster up the correct turn-of-phrase for; “I love your cat, she loves me, she's my cat now, let us be happy and get out of our lives forever. No hard feelings.” But trying to find the right words proved difficult [luckily, it's not like finding the right words for a subject is something I'm basing all my aspirations on... oh wait, shit!]. Once I finally opened up a dialogue with my friend and tried my best to explain my case, she wouldn't yield on her determination of retrieving [what she considered to be] her cat.

This obviously left me in a slight predicament; a pussy parental predicament, you may say [Get it? That's the titled of the blog, wow, I'm clever]. My friend was unquestionably the mother of this cat [not biological], but Fiona had become the Lilly to mine and my flatmate's roles of Mitch and Cam, and we'd become a little Modern Family as we'd began to feel like her fathers [me and my house-mate are not gay, by the way, despite the rumours]. Although we were arguing over Fiona, I completely understood my friend's side, we both had legitimate claims to the cat and we both weren't going to back down.

Now, I don't like confrontation seeing as I'm a man in his late[-mid-] 20s trapped in the body of a nine year old girl [in a none paedophile way]. So with this weighing on my shoulders along with the agonising decision on whether to give up what had become a significant part of my life, I was starting to get a little overly stressed and emotional... over a cat. It seems stupid, but if you tried to get between me and Fiona I'd happily kick your face off, even with my tiny little girl legs!

I will probably not [willingly] add the overpopulation of this dying society by providing offspring, so Fiona is the closet thing to a child I've had before and will probably ever have. I don't want children, I don't have the time to take pictures of it and upload them to Facebook [I'm pretty sure that's all parenting a baby is nowadays*]. I need to project my life lessons and ideologies onto someone and seeing as I'm yet to find a human worthy of such a mammoth task, it'll have to be Fiona. I couldn't let her go now, she has so much more to learn.

I like to think of myself as quite a decent bloke, despite what's written about me in numerous female public toilets across Derby, so my actions in with-holding Fiona tested my morality. I knew I was what I was doing was wrong, but because of my bond with Fiona, it also felt right. It was difficult and frustrating.

And after a continuous back and forth with my friend, both of us pleading our cases, the day finally arrived and she came over to my flat to claim her cat.

We sat. We spoke. Calmly.

She was surprised at how big Fiona had gotten, or in her [and my girlfriend's] words; “fat”. Which is totally not the case, it's all muscle. Relaxed muscle. 

"Ben, are you really taking an unflattering photo of me now? You prick!"

 

We discussed all of Fiona's character traits, the ones that's she's long over; bringing mouthfuls of food from her bowl in the kitchen to eat in the living room, her fondness for tipping over bins, along with her new ones; sleeping in open drawers and her excellent moth eliminating skills.

After a while, we had a private chat, in which my friend relinquished ownership of Fiona onto me. I'm not sure what did it and I didn't want to ask. Whether it's the fact that my friend saw Fiona was really at home with us, or more simply she just realised it'd be difficult to leave my flat with the cat while I was clasped to her ankles a sobbing mess. Either way it was an upsetting scene, I felt ecstatic that my alarm clock/greeter/lap warmer would continue her major role in my pathetic existence, but I was also upset that my friend had to make a such a sacrifice for my happiness.

But I'm glad she did.

Because Fiona is awesome. She's my little right-hand man... but female and a feline. They say cats choose their owners, and I honestly think Fi made the decision that I'm her owner after I returned from my holiday to Majorca. She was so excited to see me, or at least I think she was. She didn't leave my side for the week after that, following me everywhere I went, solidifying the bond we'd created.

So now she's mine. My little furry bundle of joy. And although her shits could have saved Hitler millions on his gas bills and she wakes me every morning to be fed by either sitting on my back/head or poking me with her paw in the face, she's my family now and until the day I die and she eats my corpse. 

"Ben, my fur is purrr-fect, you could have run a fucking comb over your head before taking this! You're embarrassing to be seen with! You prick!"

*Sounding old and grumpy there.

The Exceptionally Weird World of Ben Broughton

Look, we're all a bit weird in our special ways. What seems the daily average to you may seem bizarre to the next person. Me, myself; I get extremely attached to inanimate objects, I have a tendency for hoarding certain things of no value plus I have certain quirks ingrained into me.

So here I'm going to offer you some insight into the life I live and all the 'norms' to me, that you may or may not know.

Hoarding #1; Haribo

An Un-'Bo-leavable Collection

Amongst those in the know, this is my most infamous hoarding 'project'. This is such a notorious part of my character that other people are willingly involved in this deluded action! Close friends and family members will constantly return from holidays aboard with bags of 'Bo for me. And I love them for it.

As for how this particular hoarding came about I'm not entirely sure. I've always been a fan of Harry Bo [that's how I pronounce it, like he's an actual fucking person], it's the perfect post-extra-long-cigarette-eating-snack. But the catalyst for me starting this collection is completely lost on everyone including myself. Kids, don't do drugs!

I'm not really fully aware as too how long this particular 'obsession' has been doing on either, what I'd guess anywhere between three to five years. People often ask me what I'm actually going to do with empty packaging of Haribo bags, and I'm not sure about that either.

But while my memory is fogging over the inception of this 'obsession', I have an extremely good grasp of the bags I've collected. I have loads, the picture featured is about 70% of what I have. There are some doubles, due to me changing the way I open the bags; I went from opening them like a normal person to cutting them open from the back with scissors to make sure the front stays intact [dedication]. But I can usually tell within an instant if I have a particular bag or not. In the world of collecting bags of 'Bo, that's like the best skill to have.

So to summarise; I don't know why I started this, I don't know when I started this and I don't know how it'll end. Upon discovering this revelation, I'm slightly unnerved by my actions and I'd rather not talk about it anymore because if I delve deeper I don't know what underlying causality is actually taking place here and I'd rather not find out.

Object of Affection #1; Cup & Spoon

"Mmm... brown stained Simpsons mug"

If I've lived with you in the past or you've ever come to my house for a cuppa, you'll know about this; but I rarely wash my cup and spoon. This pairing is my exclusive tea drinking equipment. Nobody else uses it [no surprise there].

I know from numerous reactions that most people find this “disgusting”. In my old job, I had the exact same set up; big Simpsons mug that I never washed, so if I had a holiday/time-off, staff members would bleach my cup in my absence [the bastards!].

Once again, I'm not sure how this started. I'm never writing an autobiography, as I seem to have little memory of my own fucking life, apparently. This 'quirk' has been going on for as long as I can remember though.

Eventually the pairing does get washed, if I was to hazard a guess; I'd say three or four times a year, or whenever the mood takes me. What's weird is I'm generally quite a neat freak, I won't use cutlery or crockery that isn't perfectly immaculate, but when it comes to my cup and spoon, I don't have any hang-ups what so ever.

In my opinion, tea tastes really good from this filthy mug and on this rare occasions it's clean, tea lacks something. Maybe it's all in my head, or maybe I'm the only person in England drinking tea properly.

Quirk #1; The Ring-pull Turn

This reminds me to buy more beer.

I don't have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but this trait is as close to OCD as I get. I'm quite found of my canned beverages, I drink from four to twelve a night depending on my mood. But as soon as I crack open that sweet amber nectar and the head squirts out of the hole like a successful “pull-out”, I'll always turn the ring-pull.

I know exactly where and why this quirk was birthed [surprised myself knowing this, to be honest]. In my younger adolescent days when I used to have bottle tops tied to the laces in my trainers; I spent the majority of my free time with my friends in a caravan getting high and drinking beers like gypsies. In that situation it soon became important to lay claim to what was yours; lighter, tobacco, beer. This is where I came up with the ring-pull turn. It followed into later life in university dorms and student houses, but now it's still with me, even as I drink alone, every night, crying at what my life as become. Woe is drunken me.

So there we have it, three things that I thought were normal, but after thinking about them for this blog post, I'm really starting to think I need to seriously re-evaluate my life.