Sherlock Episode 11- The Cat in the Iron Mask

 

Following discharge I am to be confined to a cage for 6-8 weeks. Yes, you heard right…a cage!!

 

To be fair the cage is big enough to house a Bernese Mountain Dog and vet says it’s for my own good. Well, vet would say that! Mum looks like I’ve just been handed down a jail sentence, bless her, and concludes,”This will never work!”

 

And of course it won’t. I set up such a din once placed in situ that everybody’s head is done in after half an hour.

 

“Those plates in his leg will never withstand this,” advises Red.

“I’m not paying for another operation. That cat’s costing us a fortune.” From you know who.

“Can’t we just let him out for a while,” says my BF, Longfellow.

“Seriously…he’ll be jumping all over the place. Can you just imagine!” says Mum.

 

I certainly can. From the arm of the chair to the top of the couch, a leap to the table and hey presto out the open window. I have already done my surveillance and my plan of escape is in final draft stage.

 

I do have one problem.  My back leg feels like a bag of kitty litter and seems to have acquired a life of its own, post op. Someone said something about a nerve block and an ensuing numbness that would wear off eventually but in the meantime there it is, my plated and screwed back right leg, always swinging and dangling in the wrong  direction delivering punches to everything in its path.Good as a battering ram, hopeless for flight...

 

But I can still head butt the top of the wire cage and bounce myself off its sides.

 

“I have an idea,” says Mum.

The idea turns out to be what they call the back hall. A high walled corridor outside the kitchen with a half door exit to the garden. Yes, one of those thatched cottage rustic half doors you see in Irish post cards… there’s usually a donkey’s head hanging over it. But it’s a giant leap from ground level to reach that window, what with the bag of kitty litter dragging me down, and someone will have to get careless and leave the window open for me for I'm not going to do a heroic crash through glass aka Indiana Jones.

 

Meanwhile the corridor is an improvement on the cage, more like a proper prisoner's cell, and I can at least see the sky and count the magpies and stroke off the days with my claws like they do in the movies and pretend I’m yer man in the Iron Mask waiting for The Three Musketeers to arrive and spring me out of this jail house…

 

To be continued…

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