Remembering to laugh at myself, aka ‘playing cats and ladders’

I used to blog a lot – not here, somewhere else – and it was fun. I had time to write, I had time to recount experiences … but today I realised that perhaps I’d forgotten to laugh at myself. My old blog posts used to make fun of myself and of ridiculous situations I found myself in. Of course my anonymity made it easier. But hey, something absolutely ridiculous happened to me yesterday … so why not share?

I’ve blogged before about a stray cat in my garage. Well she’s still in my garage and I still feed her and give her water and clean out her litter tray which is in our garden.

I call her Vader and whenever I park my car outside my villa, she normally rocks up, miao-ing and rubbing herself against my feet, or if she;s hungry, mewling rabidly until I give her something. Last night however, that didn’t happen. She was mewing all right, but nowhere to be seen. I felt weird about it but went in. Ten minutes later I went back out, calling out to her. More mewing but no Vader.

Now really worried, I Skype my friend. He urges me to go look for her but I said I couldn’t see her anywhere. Panicking now, I demanded he taxi over to help me look. He does. We use torch lights, we find her in the neighbour’s … on the other side of the six-foot high wall after we peer over with a ladder. And behold, the cat who can’t jump walls. *facepalm* as they say.

We dangle a long bedsheet on her end hoping she’d latch on to that. We try and reach for her. Nothing.

My friend suddenly says: “Did you ring the doorbell before you called me?”
I wailed: “BUT NOBODY’S HOME!”
Him: “There’s a light on in their kitchen.”

Oh.

I wander to their front door, ring. The owner opens the door. More *facepalm* at this point. WHY DIDN’T I RING THE DOORBELL BEFORE?!*

I mumble: “Well there’s a cat, she’s not my cat, she’s a stray but she’s sort of my stray cat and she’s stuck in your garden, there.”

The owner looks at me amusedly: “The door to the garden is open.” **

*MASSIVE FACEPALM*

So, to recap: I hear the cat mewing, I know she’s stuck, I know WHERE she’s stuck. I didn’t ring the doorbell, I didn’t try their garden door just in case. Instead, I call a friend over in a cab, climb ladders, dangle bedsheets, and wail.

Vader is safe. My friend is amused/annoyed at me for my stupidity. And I’m just laughing at myself for ignoring the obvious and being a silly billy (SEE WHAT I DID THERE, DESI PEEPS?).

Whatever. One day I’m going to have two cats – one called Kirito and the other Kogami.

*I should add that I moved to where I live in 2004, so nine years later and I’ve spoken to my neighbour like…three times. And waved to him if I’ve ever seen him or his family maybe 10 times. Which probably led to me hesitating in the first place. Massive fail, as the Twitterati would say.

** The idea that their garden door would be open was unthinkable to me mostly due to my family’s OCD-esque behaviour of making sure everything is locked and double locked, and nothing is open ANYWHERE. I mean, my Mom refuses to even leave the key out under the doormat on nights when I’ve forgotten my key. She insists I wake her up. So you can imagine how guilty this method makes me when I rock up at 1am having to call her to let me in just because she refuses to put the key under the doormat or hidden in a plant pot.