Cat Out of Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

ears. He holds a lit cigarette. Beside his leg sits a cat – the same cat as in the first picture, the one I assume is Roger. Roger is pressing his head against the man’s calf in what looks like an affectionate way. I wonder if the man is Michael, the one who died in Lincolnshire and bequeathed Roger to Wiggy’s sister Jo? No, it can’t be. It’s from much longer ago. The trousers of the man are post-war; he looks a bit familiar. The quality of the picture is fuzzy, as if it had been printed on soft paper.
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    Again, black and white. Again, the picture quality suggests a fairly ancient date. 1960s? Two cats together: one is the supposed Roger cat, the other a massive black tom with a handsome head. The black cat is lying down, stretched out on a patch of long grass in sunshine; the Roger cat lies on his back, his legs in the air, his head resting on the black cat’s abdomen. They are both relaxed. If they were young men instead of cats, you would assume they had been for a drink and a swim after their final examinations, and that there was an ancient teddy bear called Aloysius lying half-hidden in the grass. Behind them, little is in focus – a tree is casting shade across the bottom left-hand corner of the picture. Still, you can make out bushes, trees, and an Elizabethan chimney.
    I looked at this picture several times before noticing, right in the foreground at the top of the picture, a hazy horizontal shape. It makes no sense – being presumably some distance off the ground, and too close to make out properly. I narrow my eyes, searching for detail. It looks like a pair of brogue shoes, heels together, toes pointed out.
    ROGER NOTES
    (by Wiggy)
    Roger has been tearing stories out of the papers! I left the Telegraph on the kitchen table last Thursday, and then went out in the garden. When I came back in, there were holes in it, not to mention really deep scratch-marks in the table-top. I suppose it’s my own fault for cutting out the crossword for him every day. It started a precedent. But I thought it was pretty reasonable when he first made the suggestion. After all, it’s true whathe said: I don’t do cryptics. I don’t have the right kind of brain.
    Of course, he’s giving me the silent treatment still. Not a single coherent word for a week. The bastard. All miaowing. Miaow, miaow, miaow. God, it sounds so sarcastic when it comes from him. It’s like it’s in inverted commas. What sort of cat is he, anyway? He never dealt with that scratching noise, did he? In the end, it just stopped. Anyway, back with the cuttings, the big Silent Act meant it was pointless asking him what these stories were that he was so bloody interested in. He’s done it again every day since, as well, as if he’s looking for something in particular. So today I had one of my Wiggy Brainwaves. I secretly bought two copies of the paper from the village shop – and hid the second in the fridge. Which might sound a bit odd, so I should explain it’s not me ; it’s Roger. The thing is, Roger, for all his mental brilliance, hasn’t been able to work out a way to open the fridge! I’ve started keeping my wallet in there, just to be on the safe side. I put Jo’s phone in there too (still in the bag), after I realised Roger had been playing with it in the garden, and had nearly lost it under a bush. I really must take that phone to a phone shop soon and see what can be done.
    Anyway, back with my cunning plan, I left the first Telegraph on the table as usual, and went out for half an hour for a pensive smoke beside the sea. Then I came back in, to find the paper on the table in the usual tatters, and quickly took both papers into the downstairs loo. It took a while to work out exactly what had gone, but in the end, it turned out he had torn out three stories. Which were:
1) A light-hearted news item about the statistics concerning various bizarre fatal domestic accidents last year in the UK (caused by tea-pots,