Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss Read Free Book Online Page A

he doesn’t have long.”
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    (by Wiggy)
    Sergeant Duggan brought the phone back with pretty extraordinary news. It had been urinated on, by a cat, while it was charging ! Whoa. The effect was basically to electrocute the insides of the phone. Duggan said he’d never heard of anything like it. I said, truthfully, I bloody well hadn’t either.
    “Imagine!” he said. “Why would a cat want to wee on a phone?”
    I was just asking myself the same question when Roger happened to saunter into the kitchen, as if by coincidence, and the policeman (knowing not who he was dealing with) reached down and picked him up. It was, I have to say, a brilliant moment.
    “Who’s been a naughty cat, then? Who’s been a naughty ickle cat?”
    Roger looked at me over the policeman’s shoulder. I waggled my eyebrows at him. He glowered. It was hilarious.
    “Can’t have animals at home. Daughter’s allergic,” Duggan said, bending to put Roger down. I fleetingly wondered whether any of the great poets ever wrote anything that covered the ignominy of that particular situation. I’d be very surprised if they had.
    “Er, did they retrieve anything from the Sim thing?” I asked, trying to show a polite interest. I think the policeman realised quite a while back that I had no idea what a ‘Sim thing’ was.
    “Ah, now,” he said. And he gave Roger a last pat on the head as he straightened up. “Now, because it’s an iPhone, there’s nothing stored on the Sim card apart from account data.”
    Roger curled up on a nearby chair, as if unconcerned.
    “All the interesting and useful stuff – things like messages, photos, voice memos, map references – they would have been stored on the phone itself, which, as we know, was destroyed, burned out –”
    “By the peeing?”
    “Yes, the inside of the phone was sort-of electrocuted when it was unfortunate enough to come into contact with electricity and cat urine at the same time.”
    I looked at Roger. He was doing a bit of grooming, but with his ears pricked up for every word. What a cool customer. However, he wasn’t prepared for what the bloke revealed next.
    “But fortunately, all is not lost!” he announced. And God, it was funny to see Roger’s reaction. He fell off the chair.
    “What? Oh fuck !” he said, aloud.
    I suppose it slipped out. I gasped. Duggan looked at me, and said, “What did you say?”
    So I had to impersonate Roger, with his Vincent Price voice and everything. I laughed. “Sorry, officer. I just said, ‘What? Oh fuck !’ It’s a funny family catch-phrase, that’s all.”
    I could see he was confused, but he let it pass.
    “You were saying all is not lost,” I prompted.
    He frowned at me. “Yes, well. Most people ‘sync’ their phones with their computers. In many cases nowadays, it happens automatically when the phone is in range of the computer in the house. And if your sister did that, we can ‘sync’ this replacement phone.” He held one up. “And then we can find out at least what was on her other phone the last time she plugged it in. Do you see?”
    “Blimey,” I said. “So whoever peed on the phone – they didn’t think of that?” I couldn’t help rubbing it in a bit. I was enjoying seeing how this news was affecting Roger. His tail was thrashing about like nobody’s business.
    The policeman was surprised. “I don’t suppose he did it on purpose, did you, ickle puss, ickle puss, ickle puss?” He reached for Roger again, but Roger backed off.
    “Can we do it now?” I asked. “The syncing thing?”
    “Of course,” he said. “Shall I – ?”
    I said absolutely, and he was just going upstairs when his own phone beeped with a text message. He stopped to read it. And I’ll remember the moment for ever, I think. Up to that point, I was still enjoying Roger’s discomfort. It was great being in on it , if you know what I mean. He had hopped up on the table, and I was stroking his head like a normal cat-owner, saying