The Sarcastic Cat
(An Excerpt from “The Coming of the Zartangs”)
IT BEGINS, when I arrive at work - late again. It’s not my fault. Very rarely does my waking up ever coincide with the opening of the store. The shop is called Buymors by the way.
The minute my foot passes the doorway, I get told off by the assistant manager Mr. Polenorth. I tell him to sod off. Mr. Polenorth is my brother-in-law so that is sort of OK. He tells me once again in his whining, tiresome voice that that is no excuse. Standards have to be maintained and he is my boss.
‘If it wasn’t for me,’ he reminds me yet again, as if I really wanted to know, ‘you wouldn’t have a job. You would not be stacking fresh fruit and vegetable produce at Buymors, but sitting on your sticky sofa eating out-of-date breakfast cereal from the box and watching all-day breakfast TV.’
‘Thank you for that,’ I say, but the sarcasm goes to waste, as he has already pulled a broom from his backside for me to sweep the stock room. He hands it to me with the kind of grin that just says punch me.
‘And when you’ve finished that,’ he says using his most official whiny tone, ‘get some more cucumbers from out back. We’re running low. If you’re late again, it’ll go to the top office and you’ll be gone.’ And he storms off, missing the barrage of the witty and rude names I send in his direction.
Not that I don’t like working in that terrible, mind-numbing, shitty little place - alright I hate it. Every day is the same. You pick things up and you put them somewhere else. Then you wait for the pile to go down. When it does, do the same again. People shouldn’t buy things. It’s bad for my sanity. The only thing worse than that is the tills. That annoying, incessant beeping that never, ever stops. Worse than that are the people in the queues complaining, because as you don’t like working on the tills, you take your own sweet time about it.
I finish sweeping the stockroom and drag another pallet out to restock the cucumbers. When will they ever see sense and give me the bloody sack, I’m thinking, and then there is a message over the intercom, for me to call into the manager’s office. Someone up there has heard me.
Our store manager is called Mr. Crimp. He is a small, chubby man with a six-inch wide parting.
‘He would have kept it quiet,’ he grumbles and his double chin vibrates as he speaks. ‘Your so-called brother-in-law would have let it slide. But nothing escapes me Lotterby. I see you, traipsing in at five past nine in the morning with your store jacket all done up wrong, because you’ve got dressed on the way to work.’
‘It’s only five minutes,’ I say pathetically, but bravely in my opinion.
‘You need to be here at 8.30 lad!’ his voice goes up and I jump. But only because such volume was not meant to come out of something so small, in my opinion.
‘You’ve been asking for this,’ Polenorth intervenes, ‘I keep telling him, keep this up and one day…’ This is just him trying to save face. He could have turned me in days ago. I’ve been employed at Buymors for almost a week now and he said not a word to Crimp before this.
‘Shut up Polenorth!’ says Crimp.
‘Just saying that’s all,’ mumbles Polenorth.
‘Anyway, it gives me no pleasure saying this,’ Crimp lies, ‘given the current social and economical climate, but you’re sacked!’
The Shockwave hits me like the 4.32 to Leeds. ‘Pardon me?’
‘Sacked!’
‘This is illegal! What about my fortnight’s trial?’
‘Forget it!’ cries Crimp. ‘I’ve changed my mind, bugger off, and do not darken Buymors doorstep again!’
‘You can’t do this,’ I plead. ‘How am I going to live? I can’t go on the dole. I hate cheap lager.’
‘You’re your own worst enemy.’ Freakishly, both Crimp and Polenorth say this at exactly the same time.
Any words uttered by anyone in the office after that aren’t worth reporting. However, as I am being escorted out of the store by Buymors would-be employee of the month and two security guards I make a very disturbing yet interesting discovery. I notice that the store fitters are in again rearranging things. Some more of the tills have been boarded off, leaving only three tills to accommodate the whole of the north of England.
‘What’s that all about?’ I exclaim and for a second we stop.
‘Never mind that,’ says Polenorth, ‘that is no concern of yours whatsoever.’
The penny drops. ‘This is nothing to do with me being late every day since I started, and being rude to customers, and breaking items before they get to the shelves. This is about getting rid of staff and going completely self-service. Shopping is all electronic now. We, the shop-workers of the world, are about to be taken over, rendered obsolete by the expansion of mechanization.. Everybody’s buying what they want online now. Open your eyes Oliver. This is the end of man and the beginning of the world of the machines.’
‘Rubbish!’ says Polenorth. He doesn’t believe that. I can hear it in his voice. ‘If you’d have shown a little more commitment to being on time and being a model employee, you’d still have a job. Now I’m going to have to tell your sister that you’ve lost the only job you’ve ever had since you left school, and after four days too.’
To be fair, that was only twenty years ago.
I take one last look inside as the automatic doors close behind me. Polenorth shakes his head as he waves me off and the security guards pat each other on the back, another good job done, another unwelcome particle of humanity ejected from their wonderful, perfect little store. Those two disappointed brain cells waiting list buffoons, just love following people around the store to see if they put their hands in their trousers. I had shoplifted there often before on many occasions, prior to submitting my application.
I don’t know what I am going to say to Steph. She is my big sister. All through my life has always kept me on the straight and narrow, by whacking me on the back of the head repeatedly at regular intervals. True, my balance has gone to shit as a result of this, and occasionally I wake up in the night screaming for no apparent reason, but she is my sister, I love her and don’t like letting her down.
As I approach my house, there is flickering light coming from within and the recognizable sound of screeching tires and sirens. The TV is on. I never leave the TV on when there is nobody around to look at it. This is very peculiar.
My feet approach the front door warily. My key goes into the lock, as if time has somehow slowed. Gingerly, I turn the handle, push the door gently and make my way to the right-hand door, where the commotion is coming from.
I stand in the doorway, waving my sad weapon this way and that, expecting to see someone vacate my home in a panic. But there is no one there at all. I put down Excalibur and begin undoing the buttons on my jacket, but as I reach the third one down, I stop dead, the TV mysteriously switches channels all by itself, and someone curses the quality of the movie they are watching . Magically, one of those antiques programs appears. The ones where you take your belongings to some old geezer who tells you it’s not worth pissing on. Someone says, ‘That’s more like it!’ There is an old woman with a very ancient looking clock. The antiques expert is already sucking air through his dentures and preparing her for the worst.
There is someone on my sofa, watching my TV, I am thinking, some sort of midget poltergeist. Slowly I circumnavigate my sofa keen to solve this perplexing mystery as soon as humanly possible. However, my eyes are not prepared for the sight they are met with - a cat holding my TV remote in its paws.
‘Having a nice time?’ I muse.
The cat, if that is what it is, does not answer me at first. Then why should it? Cats aren’t known experts of the English dialect. But if there is one thing I’ve learnt in my thirty-seven years of existence, it’s that just when you think something can’t happen, it turns up and bites you on the arse.
‘Hello?’ I say, ‘can I help you?’ The creature does not appreciate the irony of the fact that at this point still wearing my Buymors
Here to Help You badge.
‘Finally,’ it rants. ‘You’re back!’
‘Had the day become more successful,’ I inform him, ‘I would still be at work stacking artichokes.’
‘Listen!’ it demands, ‘I have something very important to say to you.’
‘Would you mind if I have a drink first?’ I chance, ‘I know it’s still early, but I’ve had some rather disappointing news.’
‘Drink what?’ it enquires. ‘What do the people of your planet drink?’
I pick up a half bottle of scotch from the bookcase and wave it in the air.
‘What is that?’
'12 year old single malt!’ I say. ‘Not the good stuff. I’m reliably informed that they put paraffin in at the factory to make it go further.’
The cat shakes its head. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first cat ever to turn down an alcoholic beverage. ‘So what is it you want to tell me?’
The cat is surprisingly nimble. His hands are somehow able to manipulate the buttons on my remote with notable skill. The volume goes up. I retrieve one of last night’s dirty glasses from the coffee table, unscrew the lid of the bottle and pour in some of the amber liquid and without another thought, take a gulp. It tastes disgusting yet that has never stopped me from purchasing the wretched stuff in the past. My head starts wobbling already. ‘Did you hear me?’ I say again. ‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘Finish your drink!’ the cat is demanding. ‘Let me finish watching this interesting documentation of your planet.’
‘You keep saying that, what do you mean?’
‘What do you mean, what do I mean?’
I take another gulp, my head is getting used to it, then another, and another. ‘You keep using the words, your planet. What do you mean by that, are you saying you are a cat from another planet, like the planet of the cats, where cats drive buses, deliver the mail, make pies and ’sell you car insurance over the phone?’
‘No!’ the cat is becoming quite irritated.
‘You just referred to The Antiques, Bargain Show, as documentation of my planet.’
‘As a species I can see that your ears aren’t very well developed.’ Its tone was changing. It really didn’t want me interrupting his program, despite the fact it was my TV it is watching it on. ‘I did not say that I was a cat from another planet.’
‘So you aren’t from another planet?’
At this point it turns its head around 180 degrees, something I never knew felines could do, owls, yes, cat’s no. ‘I apologise,’ it says humbly, ‘the information I received must be erroneous. We were led to believe that humans were the intellectually superior species of Earth.’
‘You lost me. You aren’t a cat?’
‘At present!’ It switches the TV off with its unnaturally opposable thumb. ‘I am a visitor to your world, not a cat. The cat is my present form, and thank you for pointing out the species type. I will add it to my records.’
‘Just tell me!’ I am getting frustrating now. Scotch has a peculiar effect on me. It makes me want to hit things which disagree with me. ‘I want my house back. I want to drink the rest of this and then collapse on my sofa, which is currently under feline occupation.’ Abandoning the glass I start gulping from the bottle. There is something more satisfying about getting all of the contents in my mouth at one time. I am already mourning the half of it that has now gone. I perch my bottom on the edge of the armchair, my buttocks struggle for comfort. This is intended to be a temporary situation. I stare at the cat, and the cat at me. ‘I don’t care if I’m looking at a cat, or a tiny midget in a cat costume. Tell me what you need to tell me.’
‘Very well!’ it says at last. ‘Your world is about to be invaded.’
‘By what?’ I chance, ‘more cats?’
‘Tell me,’ its voice becomes more laced with sarcasm by each second. ‘Are you an adult of your kind, or is there a parent I can to talk to?’
This is it, the straw which breaks the camel’s back. The sarcastic, hairy little bastard has crossed the line. I am no longer in control of what I do. I grab the cat and throw it across the room. There is a streak of orange across the floor. My drunken eyes are unable to follow it into the kitchen. The cat flap clatters as something shoots through it.
‘Why have I got a sodding cat flap?’ I ask myself as my body falls onto the sofa. ‘I haven’t got a cat!’ and then I fall into a coma.