The creeper on the patio seemed to come from nowhere. The first we knew of it was when a vine with small leaves on it wriggled out from the corner by the fence and, finding nothing to climb, started to stretch across the patio tiles towards the house, encouraged by the sun. I, foreseeing problems, was all for going after it with a pair of gardening shears, but Doris, not for the first time, said ‘No’ she wanted to see what it did with itself. So we left it. Our ginger cat, Oscar, took against it straight away. When it was barely two feet long he pounced on it and tried to pull it apart, leaving the last foot or so looking very battered and unlikely to survive.
The following night Oscar went on one of his walkabouts, like cats do, scrounging saucers of milk off strangers and then coming back after a few days. So far he hasn’t come back. Instead of expiring, the creeper perked up and continued on its journey across the patio. Henry, our lodger, has also been gone for a while, unsurprisingly since he’s a commercial traveller who travels in kitchen utensils and religious books. When the weather’s fine he likes to sit on the patio with his trousers rolled up, reading People’s Friend. Wherever he is now he’s missing all that, but I’ve at last been able to re-paper the walls of his bedroom. The creeper split into two branches when it was about six feet in length, and both were moving towards the house. I stood at the bedroom window and watched it in the moonlight, but it didn’t move.
The following morning Doris got fed up with it and strode purposefully out through the kitchen door with a pair of gardening shears. It’s been three days now and she still hasn’t come back.
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