They seem to think that I am not listening and taking in everything they say on the phone… not using the V-word eh? Seems like my resident nazi sympathiser has a trip planned for me; but little do they know I saw the postcard (addressed to me!) about my annual health check and booster vaccination being due. “It will be an adventure” they say, while slyly referring on the phone to some “trip to Hull and back” or a similar phrase. Well, I have my own plans regarding this forthcoming adventure I can tell you. Firstly, I try the hiding thing,

 

 

 

… but I guess the whiskers against the plain door kind of gives the game away. Never mind, there is always Plan B…

 

 

 

 

 

Looking busy, counting the number of sheets of photocopying paper in the box beneath the printer. Being helpful should do the trick… Damn, this wasn’t supposed to happen, where did this cage come from?

 

All that work in the office and I must have taken my eye off the ball, and the devious servant’s only gone and rubbed a couple of brain cells together and come up with their own plan. So, if this is going to be an adventure at least I can expect a luxury limo to match my regal status as I glide around town…

 

 

… Ok, so I own a parking space, but who nicked the motor?

It looks like it is going to be the bus again. All that rickety, bumpy stuff, with both ends of the human age range asking their inane questions like “what have you got in the basket? Can I see the cat?” I might be mild-mannered in appearance but why can’t the disobedient one just invite them to put their fingers in through the grill?

 

So here we are at last, in the devil’s waiting room. They try to fool you with nice young ladies smiling and calling me by name, when I know all too well that this is where I get groped and prodded, a sharp spike in the back of the neck, and the ultimate indignity of providing an indelicate home for someone’s thermometer! Why can’t they just ask me what my temperature is?

 

 

 

After an interminable few hours (ok, minutes… but quite a few of them), with me desperate to get back into that cage that I originally never wanted anything to do with, we are heading for the door. Escape at last… never did a bus look so good.

Thankfully, ‘to Hull and back’ is only an annual ordeal, but while I suffer the indignity of missing out on the chance to recline in a stretch limo, licking my bits and waving a paw to my subjects on the streets, I can at least move to Plan R… revenge on my resident trickster who tried to con me into thinking this was going to be an adventure. I could show them what post-adventure trauma looks like… perhaps coughing up fur balls on that light coloured carpet; or even feigning post veterinary dementia by thinking the litter tray was behind the TV in the corner of the room.

I guess hell is a place we all have to go to once in a while so that home can look a little brighter as the evenings draw in and the darkness of winter looms ever closer. The things a cat has to do around here to get a few morsels of the poached salmon!

I am Juno, I have experienced the road to hull, but I am back. If this is adventure I will stick with my complex lifestyle of sleeping, eating and, well you know the rest… I will speak with you again soon.