THE CAT WHO DIDN'T BARK IN THE NIGHT

Tommy my cat and I sat at each side of the fire on elephant stools. We were crouched over, drooling, dribbling, gurning and wetting ourselves. We were pretending to be an old couple who had celebrated their 100th wedding anniversary last Saturday. Tommy looked at me, through red, watery eyes and croaked, "Wasn't it nice dear to see our 452 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren on Saturday?" I broke wind-weakly and croaked, "452 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren. That's a lot of-children. I bet if you laid all the umbilical cords end to end, they would stretch from here to somewhere else." "Where did all those children come from?" croaked Tommy. "I don't know," I croaked. "Long, long and even longer ago, I remember someone shouting-PUSH, but I don't know if I was giving birth or pushing a fat wombat up a narrow chimney." "My money would be on the wombat," croaked Tommy. "Everyone was pushing wombats up chimneys in the good old days." "I remember," I croaked. "What do you remember dear?" croaked Tommy. "I remember that I can't remember anything," I croaked. "I remember the first time I saw you," leered Tommy. "You were coming out of the outhouse at the bottom of the garden. I remember the sun glinting off your bonny, bonny big fat blazer of a face. You smiled at me like an angel, yes, like an angel and guldered, "If you're going in there, don't light your pipe or you'll be gathering up your arse in a bucket." "I was known for my charm," I croaked. "I was known for my charm and the tapeworm that lived in my large intestine.""We have seen some changes," croaked Tommy. "We have," I croaked, "the first motorcar, the second motorcar and if I'm not mistaken, the third-motorcar."
"Cha-Cha-changes," croaked Tommy, "the like of what I never thought I would see. Aeroplanes, lollies on sticks, open heart surgery and ointment for the pesky piles." "Yes," I croaked, "but not all changes were for the better. Take toilet roll. When toilet roll came in, people stopped reading and became illiterate." "True," croaked Tommy, "But who thought we would ever live to see, Kerry Katona making commercials for Iceland?" "It beats Bannager" I croaked. "It beats Bannager up down and sideways," croaked Tommy. "What's left for us to do?" I croaked, "We have lived through some rare auld times, but what's left for us to-do?" Tommy broke wind, but very-weakly and croaked, "The only thing left for us to do now, is-die." "Well, if that doesn't beat Bannager again!" I croaked ."Only yesterday, or was it five years ago, I scrawled in my diary, "Things to do tomorrow. Get up--with a lot of help, sit on armchair, drool, grunt, sleep, wet myself, drool some more and then-die." "It's a good thing you wrote it down," croaked Tommy, "otherwise we could have been sitting here for all eternity, like two right eejits."
Next morning, after Tommy and I had spent two hours hanging from a tramp's nose, pretending to be snotters, I skipped down Belfast dressed as, a zebra crossing. Its a mistake I won't make again. People walked all over me! I hailed a taxi to take me to a corner. As I walked round the corner, who did I meet but dapper little Mark Carruthers, he of the red socks, don't you know and all that malarkey. "Greetings little Marcus," I yelled, "Whence are you off to, perchance to visit your loyal garrisons in Gaul or Galway?""Neither," sniffed the little man who says, "Lets Talk." "If you must know, I am just out for a spot of lunch." "A spot of-lunch?" I yelled, "A big boy like you? Come, come Markus, you need more that a-spot of lunch. You must keep your strength up, to ward off Donna Trainor. "A spot of lunch is no good for a big man like you. You need to get your snout into a good trough of Irish Stew. Get your snout right in there and root about for mince, carrots, spuds and turnips. But you need to get right into it, put your hands in your pockets and sink your visage into a hot, steaming pile of Irish Stew." "The very thought!" sniffed Marcus. "You must be mistaking me for the tubby person, Steven Nolan." "Nolan gets his grub," I yelled,"but you, Marcus, need building up.What you should do, is hang a bucket of Mrs Baxter's Scottish broth around your neck and get right into it. You have to get right into it," I yelled. "Excuse me," said Marcus, "One is in rather a hurry. May I get past? I have a salad waiting for me and I don't want it getting cold. "Oh, so hoity-toity," I sneered. "A salad waiting-no less. You were not so hoity-toity on Monday night, when you were dancing the hokey cokey-ALONE in the corner of Big Bertha's bar and slash house." "That was NOT me!" yelled Marcus. "It was my half brother-Yasmin. We never talk about-him. Mummy said he is a bad boy.. I spread my legs, folded my arms, knitted my brows, clenched my buttocks and roared, "And I suppose it was half brother-Yasmin who cut me dead at the-Vatican?" "It was certainty not me," cried Marcus."I have never laid an expensive shoe at the Vatican. Noel Thompson gets all the good jobs." I ruminated, shook my leg and said-grudgingly, "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. It may have been the Pope. All I saw were the-red socks.

Rosie Ryan's letters to Gerry Anderson are available for Christmas, Passover and Pancake Tuesday at all Eason shops or from below.
jpmcmenamin@gmail.com
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www.rosie-ryan.blogspot.com
OH, Mark never got his salad, Pat Rabbit from the Free State government got there first!
I don't know about you, but I would call that an-incursion!!!