I Could Not Make This S**t Up

I am currently dealing with a fascinating array of challenges in my personal life. Every day something new comes up and I bat it away with the keen eye and practiced wrist of a tennis player (if, that is, the tennis player was playing with small nuclear firearms and not balls).

But today. Today was different.

Because today, people, I hit the trifecta.

It started with coffee this morning. Or lack of coffee this morning. Yes, I crawled out of bed (after battling flu all weekend) bleary eyed and incoherent, reached for the Nespresso machine, flicked the switch, and...

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I flicked it again. And a third time. Nothing. It was dead. I tried to cry, but without coffee, my body was unable to produce enough fluid for a tear. I just hovered in the kitchen, a wretched, broken shadow of my usual self, parched and confused and desperately alone.

For without coffee, I have no friend.

Somehow I managed to get the kids to school, and stopped at my local café for a fix. Miraculously cognisant again, I trudged home again, ready to put my five deadlines aside to take my machine to be fixed.

But first, I opened the balcony door to bring in the laundry. And within thirty seconds, the cat had sprinted out onto the balcony, across the neighbour's balcony, and into the neighbour's neighbour's backyard. I could hear her there, meowing pitifully, desperate but unable to make her way home.

I sprang into action. I ran to the neighbour's neighbour's, pounded on their door, and disturbed a lovely old lady in her nightie.

"Let me in!" I yelled. "I must get my cat!"

She looked confused, and slightly fearful, but I was frantic to retrieve my kitty.

"I need to get into your backyard! You have my cat!"

The poor dear acquiesced as she could see I was quite clearly mad with despair. She let me in through her house, past about a dozen yapping dogs, and into the garden. There I found Penny, cowering in a corner, covered in leaves.

She leaped into my arms and I carried her through the (dog infused) house, where she proceed to go UTTERLY INSANE. Yes, she bit me and tore my top and dug her nails deep into my flesh and howled like a banshee and inflicted at least 16 puncture wounds (I checked) upon my person.

And I yelled in agony but held my grip firm and got her out the front door and to my apartment building... where she bit deep into my neck and I screamed and let her go.

And she escaped again. And for the rest of the story, you'll have to tune in tomorrow.