Fur Real?

I have bad news: The world sucks, and it’s your fault. I don’t know why you’re surprised. You saw the Facebook post. All you had to do was click 'like' to fight breast cancer. Or maybe it was to heighten awareness of diabetes or to show opposition to domestic violence. Whatever it was, you didn't do it, and that makes you a monster. Somewhere, a semi-illiterate drunk is saying to himself, “I wasn't going to beat my wife, but nobody shared that picture of a coloured ribbon, so now I have to”.

The reason I'm attempting to make you feel bad is because I feel bad myself. The other day I did something awful, something a lot worse than not sharing an explicit image on social media, I destroyed a mother-son relationship.

Cue the Titanic theme song.

I've been home the last few days for study week, obviously everything except study has manifested. On Tuesday my mother and I were in the living room. We were chatting about her work field, she's a home carer. She has this one patient with a cat called Kitty, I told my brother months ago that the woman was called Kitty and never mentioned the cat. This private joke is exclusively on him, no one else knows about it. Mid-conversation he walks in, I started to manipulate things to my own advantage.

Me: "How was Kitty today?"

Mother: "Yeah grand, she seemed slightly quieter than normal."

Me: "She's used to you coming in now?"

Mother: "She is, sure when I first come in she likes me to rub her."

Brother: "Rub her?" There was a shred of discomfort in his tone of voice.

Mother: "Yeah it calms her down, let's her know I'm not a threat to her home."

Me: "Do you have to feed her?"

Mother: "No, obviously that's not in my job description. Funnily enough she seems to like the rain."

Brother: "Who the hell loves the rain?" He's beginning to realise this isn't your standard pensioner.

Mother: "Kitty does, she is a weird one though never seen one like her before."

Brother: "How?" He seemed very apprehensive to what answer would follow.

Mother: "Well usually they're not too friendly I don't have much time for them but this one in particular would almost go for you depending on her mood. She makes me anxious." Yes James, my mother the home-carer hates the elderly.

Me: "They're supposed to be very clean though."

Mother: "Yeah you should see her lovely black fur coat, it's immaculate."

Brother: "Coat?" At this point most likely picturing this extravagant, swanky senior that sleeps with a pin-knife under her diamond coated ostrich pillow.

Mother: "Yeah beautiful soft thing."

Me: "You've never been asked to wash her?"

Mother: "No, no, she cleans herself out in the garden, very cute."

Brother: "What the fuck? Does she not be cold?"

Mother: "No, I leave her out there, she dries herself then and comes back in."

Brother: "The poor thing."

Mother: "Sure the other day I saw her rolling around in the grass, not my fault she can't keep herself tidy."

Brother: "She seems weird."

Mother: "At least she's stopped catching mice herself out in the shed, it used to disgust me seeing that first thing in the morning."

Brother: "Bullshit."

Mother: "No, I spotted her catching them with her bare hands." A retired martial artist?

I had to leave the room at this point, I couldn't hold in any more laughter. He now firmly believes my mother has lost all her core nurturing capabilities and that an eighty-nine year old woman could be featured on the next season of Shipwrecked.

It's been five days since and he still looks at my mother differently, lately he's showering a lot more and isn't as boisterous around the house. He has asked me various times if I have noticed her new 'no nonsense' style of parenting. Of course, absolutely nothing has changed. He's even expressed a large interest in the back stories of my mother's other patients, hoping that there could be a chapter two somewhere and that more of them could be defying the odds.

I have a feeling this misleading and meddling may well come back to bite me later, if not Kitty will.