For about a year I have known exactly how I am most likely to die: tripping over the cat on the narrow stairs leading from our attic bedroom. The realisation brings more clarity than comfort. I can think of better ways to go, but the cat is determined.
Every morning the cat waits patiently by the bedroom door until I am dressed. Then, just as I start down the stairs, the cat darts ahead to make sure it’s crouched sidelong on the tread where I am about to put my foot, forcing me to aim for the tread below that one.
As soon as it’s clear I’m not going to trip, the cat moves down a few steps, anticipating my foot placement and trying to second-guess any evasive measures I might take. It does this all the way to the bottom, but I’m pretty sure when I finally end my days I will be launching myself from the turn at the top, where the treads are wedge-shaped and I have the furthest to fall.
“Why are you doing this?” I shout, every morning. “How does it help you if I die?” The cat, I think, is pleased by this.
On the best mornings I am fully alert, clinging tightly to the handrail and inching my way down, the way one might negotiate a staircase on the Titanic just as the ship was nosing into the Atlantic. But on many mornings I’m groggy and preoccupied. Sometimes I’m carrying stuff, and sometimes I have the dog barrelling down behind me, eager to pass on the left. It is a matter of time.
The cat’s plot against me is not the reason that my wife – facing the imminent departure of the last of our grown children – is eager to move to a lower bedroom. But it is the main reason I agreed.
My wife has obtained a quote from a man to build new cupboards in the middle one’s soon-to-be old bedroom. She’s asked for another quote to rip out the cupboard in the youngest one’s old room, and replace it with bookshelves. To make up for the missing cupboard, she has vowed to restore an old chest of drawers. I only find this out when she asks me to carry it down to the garden.
The chest has done hard service in various children’s rooms for over 30 years, and it was in my wife’s mother’s house before that. It’s missing three of its six handles, one of its four feet, and has the word “WANKER” carved deeply into its top.
“Will you show me how to work the sander?” my wife says. I go off in search of the electric sander, which I have not seen since before the pandemic. Eventually I find it, along with some fresh sandpaper and a builder’s mask.
“It’s supposed to suck up its own dust, but it doesn’t really.” I say, handing her the mask.
“How do I change the paper?” she says.
“That’s easy. It’s just Velcro,” I say, ripping away one corner.
“Ahh!” she says.
“What?” I say, pulling off the rest.
“Ahh!” she says. “Stop!”
“Are you afraid of Velcro?” I say. “How did I not know that about you?”
“Not afraid,” she says, looking away. “Just put on a new one for me.”
“Fine,” I say, pulling.
“Ahh!” she says.
Leaving her to her sanding, I walk down the road to buy bread. While I’m queueing I notice someone I vaguely recognise staring at me through the shop window.
“Hey,” says the youngest one.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“You know,” he says, holding up a bag. “Buying some bacon.”
“Bread,” I say, holding up my bag.
“Nice,” he says. I think about telling him that his mother is frightened of Velcro, but he probably already knows.
“OK, well, see ya,” I say. We walk off in opposite directions, back to our new lives.
When I get home I find my wife standing over the chest, coated in a fine layer of sawdust.
“How’s it going?” I say.
“I think I got the ‘WANKER’ out,” she says.
“Here comes the future,” I say.
The middle one moves out in just a few weeks. The new cupboards are arriving in a month, after which I will be sleeping in a room that is just a short, survivable tumble from the kitchen.
The cat, meanwhile, has changed its strategy: now when I try to step over its crouching form on the stairs, it sits up suddenly to push its head against the arch of my lifted foot. In medieval times it was not uncommon for courts to prosecute animals for murder. I used to think that was stupid.
