At My Mother's Knee Read Online Free PDF

evidence.
    My mother was wild with fury. She set up defence headquarters
in her bedroom and maintained a permanent vigil.
Standing close to the open window, her face half hidden by the
net curtains, she waited patiently, surveying the garden with
gimlet eyes for any sign of the Hun, armed with an artillery of
rocks and coal.
    Each morning daily bulletins of how the war was progressing
were shouted up the stairs to me.
    'That bloody cat's had all me sweet peas down and it's done
its business right behind the gate again, the filthy swine. I'll
have to throw this slipper out now.'
    Blithely the seemingly unassailable cat carried on using her
garden as if it were its own personal property, acknowledging
her presence only by spitting viciously when a lump of coal,
fired with great force from the bedroom window, miraculously
scored a bullseye.
    The final straw came on that dreadful day when, looking out
of the window, she saw the behemoth sprawled out on the
grass before her, its tail lashing back and forth, proudly taunting
her with its recent kill. Hanging limply from its mouth by
the tip of its wing was the lifeless body of Her Robin. She let
out a strangled scream and was out of the house and into the
garden like a woman possessed. By the time she got there the
enemy had fled, leaving behind the sad little casualty of war.
    She was genuinely distressed by what she considered an
unprovoked act of cruelty on the part of the cat and was
unable to stem the tears of frustration that flowed as she
buried the broken corpse of her old friend, lovingly wrapped
in a sheet of blue toilet paper.
    'I know it's a natural instinct for a cat to kill a bird,' she
moaned, 'but why didn't its owners put a bell on the cat's
collar? Robbie would've heard it coming then and flown off.'
    As she mourned the loss of the bird, she blamed herself for
encouraging it to come into the garden. My poor mother had
tried every repellent known to man to keep the cat out; the
place was a minefield. If you bent to sniff a rose you collapsed
in a violent sneezing fit thanks to the amount of pepper that
she'd sprinkled about the flower beds to deter it from 'doing
its business'. All to no avail: the moggy was impervious to
her attempts. Defeated by this last sickening blow, she took to
her bed.
    She lay under the counterpane for a few hours, her mind
seized by dark thoughts. A solution slowly dawned on her and
she began, I believe, to hatch an evil plan that would rid her of
her adversary once and for all. Over the next few days she observed the hated creature from the frontroom window as it
stalked the occupied territory of the garden, destroying what
was left of her beautiful flowers and plants.
    I would catch snatches of the curses she was muttering to
herself as she watched it prowl among her flowers. 'That's
right, me lad, you help yourself,' she'd say grimly, tapping her
foot. 'Just you wait.'
    One morning I returned home from my paper round earlier
than usual. As I turned the corner to go up the path my mother
suddenly appeared from behind the garden hedge, dressed in
her nightie, holding a dead cat by the tail.
    'Ooh! You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack,' she complained,
clutching her chest. 'What d'ya think you're doin',
creeping around at this hour of the bloody morning?'
    'I've been doing me paper round,' I answered, 'and what are
you doing creeping around the garden in your nightie swinging
a dead cat in your hand?'
    'What cat?' she asked innocently, playing for time. 'Oh,
this . . .' her voice trailing off as she surveyed her nemesis with
more than a glint of satisfaction in her eyes. 'I've just found it
. . . dead, poor thing. I was opening the bedroom window and
I saw it lying there motionless, in a funny position like . . . so
I came down to investigate, and that's why I'm in my nightie.
Now, if you don't mind, keep your bloody voice down and
your big trap shut in case they hear you,' she hissed, glancing
nervously up to Dot next door's bedroom