MOVING AND MEOWING
	What a year 1999 was! Two removals, a house sale which fell 
through followed by 'a quick sale' which took three agonising 
months - and a brush with breast cancer to add the final touch. A 
major lottery win would hardly compensate for  these horrors, but 
strangely it has not been forthcoming.
	As far as stress generation is concerned, a removal is supposed to 
be equivalent to the death of a family member. Comparisons in such 
matters are odious, because, after all, moving is merely a case of 
decision-making and sheer hard work, whereas losing your nearest 
and dearest is a blow to the solar plexus. Both experiences do, of 
course, have serious repercussions.
	That aspect of mowing whereby men grab your stuff and plonk it 
in another house is fairly straightforward. What is bad is the endless 
decision-making. Is this small item to be taken, given away, left for 
the hapless newcomers or dumped? Then there is the struggle to 
pack up all those fiddly bits we have crazily accumulated over the 
years.
	After going through dozens of cupboards and drawers, you get 
terminal brain-fag and just scoop up whole wodges of stuff and 
transfer it to the new abode. This opens up a terrifying perspective. 
Say one day we are ill-advised enough to move again. The same 
thing might happen again, and the stuff never get sorted out, only 
one day to be consigned to the garbage-tip by our children. Even if it 
were sorted, the same thing might happen. . .
 	Leaving a home of many years has a poignancy about it. Odd 
things pluck at the heartstrings. In the scarred bureau with its tiny 
dropleaf desk lie a few discarded scraps - a photo album with most 
photos ripped out, doubtless transferred to the major photo album 
collection; hankies which were never used; hairbands, hairgrips and, 
in a drawer, a faded swimsuit which has shed a few grains of sand in 
the drawer. As a sea-smell rises from it, a memory opens like a 
flower - laughter, young daughters frisking in the surf, sunshine, 
sea, all long-gone. 
	Moving overseas is a solemn matter, an exercise lasting several 
days. Uniformed packers move from room to room, shrouding 
furniture in white wrappings which stand around mutely like 
misshapen mummies. Each item = whether glass, china or furniture 
- has to be encased in its appropriate packaging, after which all the 
items are stowed in the container.
	Like dental surgery and childbirth, removals have to get worse 
before they get better. As bad as those endless decisions are other 
aspects of moving such as the general sleaziness of the house we are 
quitting once the furniture is gone. It resembles a littered beach, 
which has to be tidied up in consideration for the newcomers. 
Awaiting us in the new above are unknown horrors; nasty little 
problems never tackled by the vendors, never mentioned by the real 
estate agents. Then there is the headache of disposing our furniture 
around the awkward and unfamiliar spaces in the new house.
	While we endure the hard work, our souls shrink from the 
tribulation of moving as from the notion of death. How I long to be 
in another place, another time! Nightmares and daytime reveries 
haunt me. Moments in childhood hover around; minnows in a clear 
stream, bluebell woods and ponds; dusty sunlight in an old church. 
In exhausted moments such idylls nudge my mind. At night I visit as 
usual the dreamscapes I have frequented since childhood, but 
dreamscapes now the backdrop to adventures frantic and sinister. 
How I long to be away - anywhere - in the world of forty or fifty 
years ago, and knowing what I know now! I toy with tempting ideas 
of confounding my enemies, dazzling my friends - but reasons tells 
me I would be bored stiff with always knowing what was going to 
happen next. Would I really like to endure again all those dental 
operations, those childbirths?
	Into this maelstrom of unhappy activity and troubled minds 
stepped my neighbour, the one fanatical about felines. With a jolt we 
remembered that we had asked her to pop around and collect a plant. 
She seated herself contentedly as for a long stay and in a weak 
moment I offered a cup of tea. We realised that a long narration was 
inevitable.
	Sure enough, we were immediately crucified by the barbs of a 
relentless saga. My cowardly husband hastily disembarrassed 
himself from the torture to come, leaving me in need of a strong 
anaesthetic.
	For many years my neighbour has been feeding stray cats, which 
declined from seven to three owing to natural attrition and disease. 
Even though they are adequately fed by scraps from the numerous 
cafés in this seaside town, my neighbour still feeds them at the same 
time each evening on a strip of grass behind the bus station.
	I believe that these creatures should long ago have been taken to 
the cat sanctuary, to be restored to health and found a home. I don't 
think it is kind to abandon domestic cats to the streets even if they 
are fed regularly. These animals have been bred to share our lives.
	After reigning as queen of the homeless cat tribe and sole 
provider of their dinners for some years, my neighbour was more or 
less recognised by the RSPCA as the official stray cat liaison person. 
She also became the recipient of gifts of cat food from felinophiles 
with whom she had networked over the years.
	Recently a series of strange and disturbing events shattered my 
neighbour's calm. Quite suddenly, seven people, all of retirement 
age, all with nothing better to do, all quarrelsome, all busybodies 
and of both sexes, became, inexplicably, simultaneously, 
passionately interested in everything to do with this misbegotten mob 
of mangy moggies. They seemed determined to give as much grief, 
and as little assistance to my neighbour, as possible. Each operates 
on his or her own and none of them, to begin with at least, knew any 
of the others - but they all knew my neighbour.
	Members of this cat-crazy coven work in different ways. One 
takes it upon herself to feed the cats a little earlier than my 
neighbour, causing the cats to have a diminished appetite for the 
food that she provides. This distresses her particularly because she 
feels it is a slight upon the food so generously contributed by her 
acolytes. Another lady has started to feed them in the morning, not 
long after their café repast, thus causing an even greater diminution 
in the moggies' interest in later meals. They might pick 
uninterestedly at the first lady's food but turn their furry noses up at 
my neighbour's offerings.
	Another person reported the poor condition of one of the cats to 
the RSPCA - a matter already being dealt with by my neighbour. 
This rendered her speechless with indignation - but not for long. The 
next hopeful stray moggie monitor - or aspiring cat coordinator - a 
gentleman this time, approached my neighbour and the RSPCA on 
several occasions because he believed that one of the cats, which 
visited his garden regularly, was pregnant. This person, my 
neighbour and the RSPCA lady all arranged to meet in his garden in 
an attempt to trap the animal with a special humane - or maybe 
catmane - device. The two ladies rolled up and were unable to find 
the cat or the man, who according to the neighbour had bunked off 
to Bacton for a holiday.
	Another of the cats was toothless, so pussy aficionado No. 5 
made a number of insulting and aggressive phone calls to my 
neighbour and the RSPCA, demanding the provision of special food 
and dentures for the cat. Number 6 participated in discussions about 
the entrapment of one of the cats who was suspected of suffering 
from cancer but had some excuse for not helping in the eventual 
catching and despatching of this unfortunate animal. However, she 
complained long and loud about the low standard of stewardship of 
the cats, offering herself as a far better moggie monitor. Another 
elderly gentleman and would-be king of cats specialised in spitefully-
worded letters about the cats' miserable condition and the 
inefficiency and inhumanity of a certain person who took upon 
herself responsibilities for which she was unqualified.
	My neighbour found these barbs particularly hurtful and spoke to 
the RSPCA lady who, exhausted by the warring cat fanatics and 
their scintillating display of small-mindedness, confirmed her as the 
official stray cat supremo in perpetuity. Each stout party collapsed 
into a state of rumbling sullenness, doubtless as a prelude to a future 
volcanic outbreak of hostilities.
	The exposition of only a small part of this sage took over an hour 
of my limited packing time. I was psychotic with aggravated 
boredom and ready to run amok, but in spite of my pleas my 
neighbour was still hard to shift.
	When I eventually rejoined my husband in our marathon task a 
strange and wonderful joy crept over me. This packing lark wasn't 
so bad after all - even an ecstatic experience compared to being 
skewered by the cat saga like a butterfly in a display case.
	I later suggested to my neighbour that she chronicle the feline 
epic as an important contribution to the town's history. I toyed with 
the idea of turning it into rhymed couplets or blank verse with an 
appropriate title such as 'Homer for the Homeless', 'The Moggiad', 
'Saga for Strays', or 'Cats' Tales'. Seeing how it has strong 
soporific properties, perhaps 'Feline Anodyne' would be more 
appropriate?