Keogh the cat : licking a toad

"We have been worried to death," ranted Mike in the kitchen.

"You're out all night. We haven't
got a clue where you are, what you've been up to. We called and got no response.

"And look at you - absolutely knackered. I think it's about time you started thinking about other
people. The world doesn't revolve around you.

"Well, things are going to change," he seethed. "If you think you can just come here, have
your meals, then disappear to heaven-knows-where you've got another thing coming."

I stretched, looked up briefly from the settee and gave a fleeting 'Am I bovvered?' look.

"You are grounded!" bellowed Mike.

"Don't do that, Dad," implored Number One Son. "She'll only mess on the carpet again."

I will, too.

Friday's all-night cat rave-up took it out of me, to be honest. I lurched home, took one look at
my food and was sick. Kitty puke, the lad calls it.

The family were so worried that they called the dreaded vet.

The man in the white coat thinks I licked a toad.

If being warty and slimy wasn't enough, God also gave the creatures poisonous skin, apparently.

No wonder they don't make the Top Ten Pets list. Little girls are going to pick kittens every time.

"I'm paying you 30 quid," Mike told the animal doctor, who was trying his best to pin me to the table. "For that kind of money, I need to know for sure Keogh licked a toad."

I may have done. I definitely tackled something without fur: at the time, I thought it was a mouse with alopecia. A slimy one, at that.

"She licked a toad," blurted the vet, pushing the cash into the top pocket of his white gown.

"The poor thing," cooed Julie. "It must've been terrible for her."

Can't have been a picnic for the toad, in all honesty.

"Perhaps she thought it would turn into a handsome prince," chuckled Julie, briefly leaving her ironing to visit Enid Blyton land.

No, I was trying to disembowel it.

"It's wonderful, really," mused Julie, "how Mother Nature has her own way of teaching creatures what is right and wrong. Now Keogh knows not to lick toads."

Mother Nature ain't that wonderful, lady.

She hasn't found a way to stop me peeing in the laundry basket yet.