On Thursdays, I only have classes in the morning and then in the evening. Usually I stay behind in school and get some corrections done during my free afternoon, but today I decided to come home for lunch to surprise Jack.
As I walked in the door of our home, I couldn’t help but feel something was amiss. The atmosphere in the house was strange, tense even. I called his name but he didn’t respond. Then I heard him talking to someone. He sounded frustrated.
“No, it’s easy! You do this…How have you not got the hand of this yet?” I followed his terse tone to the kitchen….
…where I found him with our cat, Billie. He had attached the dog’s leash to her collar and she looked none too pleased; her eyes seemed to say “mam, help me.”
“Jack, what are you doing?” I asked him, keeping a safe distance.
“I’m teaching the cat how to walk on a leash.”
There was a silence.
“Um, shouldn’t you be working on your PhD?”
As I was talking to him, he was still negotiating with the cat. “Come on Billie, you can do it. There’s a sachet of whiskas in this for you.”
He looked at me. “Sometimes, I just need to take a break from my thesis, or I go kind of mad.”
Erm, ya don’t say Jack.
My very photogenic cat
