One night, at around 3am, I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. I often do this in complete darkness but, for reasons that I cannot fathom, on this occasion I switched on the light. And what a good thing I did, too, because I saw a spider cascading down on its string from the light switch.
Naturellement I had nothing in which to trap the spider, and I didn’t dare leave the room to find a suitable receptacle in case the spider vanished. So I had to tip my herbal sleeping pills out of their jar, then cup the empty jar over him (not an easy task as he was unusually bouncy). Once done, I shuffled the jar millimetre by millimetre downwards, with the last bit done VERY nervously indeed in case the spider came springing out in that brief moment at the bottom between the jar leaving the wall and hitting the floor.
Louis Catorze was nowhere to be seen, presumed out bothering the foxes. What’s the point of living with an adept bug-hunter if the little sod disappears when he’s needed? Merde.
I didn’t want to keep the upended spidery jar in the bedroom all night because the idea gave me the creeps, so I shuffled it along the floor and into the guest room, taking care to avoid the cracks between the floorboards in case it dropped between them. Once there, I knew it would be safe until Cat Daddy disposed of it later.
After fetching my water and going back to bed, any idea of getting to sleep again was well and truly shot. I drifted in and out of a weird, wakeful doze, dreaming of spiders who were running amok beneath the floorboards, then awoke to discover that the scrabbling sound I could hear was real, and that it was Catorze, in a box of Cat Daddy’s cycling gear under the bed.
The little sod had not, as I had imagined, been out in the Zone Libre. He, who is able to spot spiders across a dark room and run to eat them straight off a far wall, had been here the entire time, listening to me rummaging and stressing yet doing nothing to help me.
I then had to get out of bed AGAIN to check that I’d shut the guest room door properly because, now that I knew Catorze was at large, I didn’t trust him not to kick over the spidery jar. Catorze, not caring one hoot that he had failed in his duty, settled across my stomach like a living, furry belt, and went to sleep for the whole of the four minutes before my alarm went off and I had to get up for work.
I don’t know how we live with these hideous little critters. And spiders aren’t much fun, either.
louiscatorze.com 
Leave a reply to alicephilippa Cancel reply