jasmine

Let me just start by saying I've never been good with animals (despite any nasty rumours you might have heard to the contrary). So it was with great reluctance that I recently gave in to my fiancees request that we adopt a neighbourhood stray - a rather cute little ball of fluff called Jasmine.

I'll start with the name. I'd like to get the hippy morons who named her and then abandoned her, and strangle them with their own tie-died sarongs. It's certainly not butch, and one I don't really enjoy using in that loud sing-song whispering voice that humans adopt when speaking to felines every night when it's time to find the damn thing and give it its worming tablet.

Now I don't blame the cat. If a creature approximately 30 times my size was lumping through the yard with the intend of shoving a capsule up me, I'd be up the nearest tree too.

But that brings me to another thing: why is it the moment you adopt a cat it suddenly seems to get every damn disease knw to vetinary science? Its relationship to the vet is a bit like that between and Italian sports car and a dodgy mechanic. It was one thing shoving pills in both ends; now, apparently it's allergic to flea bites, so it gets steroids to build up its immunity.

That's right, the damn thing's on steroids which, if it were an Olympic athlete, would make it very easy to test. No need for and fiddly 'could you please fill this jar'. No, instead we could just bring in my most expensive shoes for a quick analysis - but that's another story.

Not that the cat could ever be an athlete, not since it discovered our bed. Now the only time it moves is when it hears a can being opened or it sees me with that previously mentioned suppository, and them it moves damn fast.

And speaking of hearing a can open, it's been at least 20 years since I've had a pet, so could someone tell me when the furry little garbage can raiders suddenly became gourmets? As I write I have half a dozen tiny cans sitting on the desk for reference. Let's see . . . Flaked Tuna And Red Snapper, Pilchards With Sardines And Crab, Prawns In A Seafood Jelly and, here's my favouritek, Seafood Supreme With A Lobster Jelly - and that's just the seafood selection. The cat is eating better than we do. I swear if it asks for a wine list it's going back out on the streets.

But of course it's not going back out onto the cold mean streets. It's our responsibility now and doesn't the cat know it. After the first few weeks when it bounced gleefully from lap to lap, purring so loud we had to turn up the television, it has now figured things out and has adopted an attitude somewhere between Garfield with a hangover and a fur covered Michael Corleone from The Godfather . I swear if it had an opposable thumb and forefinger and could open its own cans, it would get its own apartment. I mean it would still hit us for rent and bring its laundry home. Yeah, now I've got it, that's what we've got: a surly adolescent that coughs up fur balls. #

-Mikey Robins