These Animals

Pandora is unwell again. More bouts of projectile vomiting, another loss of weight, she goes off with Andy to work today to be prodded and poked, x-rayed and scanned, blood-let and whatever else these vets get up to when they are dealing with a patient who can't tell them how they are feeling.

I leave my phone on at work, so Andy can call me with the best of things or the worst of things as and when they happen. I spend a few hours fretting and trying to teach - my two Afghani students who are having extra language lessons, Darren with the latest update on his crazy sex 'n' drug 'n' rock 'n' roll lifestyle, Bob who is lovely but possesses academically challenged brain cells, Al who thinks he is hilarious but really shouldn't give up the day job for the life of a standup comic and Sally who regularly asks advice about her boyfriend to wit I reply that she should tell him to sling his hook because, at the ripe old age of 47 I can tell he is a waste of space, but then I can also see through her love-struck 15 year old eyes that a) she is too scared to be on her own and b) she thinks she can change him. You can't change 'em, sweetheart - you just have to learn to live with them.

And I teach a whole class of Year 10 who I thought would be resistant to having a temporary teacher this late in the school year but are in fact, catching on to what we need to do and have been nothing but hardworking and agreeable.

And I fret because Pandora is my little cat, my follower, my pal. She sings to me. She dances with me. We have conversations, speaking in different languages but understanding each other nonetheless. Is it right to get so emotional about an animal? They are only animals after all...I hate it when people say that....'only animals'...

The phone call comes. Pandora is waking from her anaesthetic. Her major organs are all fine. But there is something 'not quite right' with her bowels. She will need more tests, and an operation.

I get home from work to find her with patchy shaved fur here and there and demanding food very loudly. She sits outside the bathroom whilst I nip to the loo, and shouts, 'Give me food! Now!' She is perky. Tail aloft. Schmoozing.

In the garden, Primrose and Daisy are dustbathing and sunbathing and doing their best to denude the willow arch and dig their way under next-door's fence. Tybalt is curled up on a cushion, the very picture of a contented cat, lapping up the afternoon sun. Phoebe, too, is sun-catching, as she does her yoga routine. Seventeen years old and still able to cock a leg behind her ear.

These animals...they do make me smile.