The deal is: my friend doesn’t have to have her estranged husband (the out of work musician) living in her garden shed, because he’s living in my house.  I don’t have to keep looking at the for sale sign on my garden gate because I am living in my mother’s house.  And my mother doesn’t have to take Eloise to Alaska.

Eloise is a large, black, eight-year-old cat.  There used to be two cats here, and when new people came over my mother always introduced Eloise first, then paused.  Guests who said, “Oh, is the other one called Abelard?” got on her A list for dinner parties.

Unfortunately, Fluffy is not a cat lover.  My next door neighbours in England have a current cat population of around 40 (they aren’t quite sure, exactly). A high wall divides my garden (yard) from theirs and the cats walk along the top teasing Fluffy and driving him into a frenzy of barking and leaping.  (My neighbour writes that the cats are not having half so much fun now that he is gone.) 

“Scaredly-cat” could have been coined for Eloise; when she sees Fluffy she runs, and when she runs, Fluffy chases her.  My mother consults a dog psychologist.  The psychologist tells her that the dog must learn that the cat is boss.  The way to do this is to lock them in a room together, making the dog lie down while you stroke and praise the cat.

I tried this two evenings.  Since the cat is significantly larger than the dog (and weighs about twice as much), and since she spat and hissed, swatted her paws and swished her tail, Fluffy certainly learned she was the boss.  Fluffy is now terrified of the cat – and looks at me as if to ask how I could have so betrayed him.

Meanwhile the cat is still scared of Fluffy, and now of me too, because I am the madwoman who locks her up with a dog.  She runs when she sees me, and I spend half the bloody night prowling outside in the dark crooning “Here kitty, kitty, good kitty, kitty.”