Muffy and me - a cat's tale

Whenever I am asked whether I miss office life, I always say that I don’t miss the office, I miss the people.

 I’ve spent two years and two months running my own business out of the spare bedroom at Warrillow Towers. I’ve looked at renting an office, or at least a desk in one, but it’s not easy to find and what space is available is expensive for what you get.

 There’s almost nothing in Tamworth so when someone for whom I have done some PR work offered me a desk in an office just over 20 miles away in Solihull, I decided to take a look.

 The office was good, the desk five times bigger than the one on which my computer rests as I craft this post; but weekly travel and parking costs would almost double the amount I was spending on the desk. So, it was back to the drawing board and this tiny desk.

 At least I know I’m not alone; the topic of working from home cropped up at a networking event this week and one of my fellow delegates, a solicitor, revealed that his daily companion was the family dog.

 Mine is the family cat, Muffin. A giant half-Maine Coon, who is 2ft 6ins long from nose to tail when sprawled across the bed behind my desk, he came to Warrillow Towers on the rebound, as it were.

 In the autumn of 2007, Mrs W and I lost our much-loved cat, Kylie; You can tell how old she was (roughly 18) because she was named after the Aussie pop moppet when she was still starring in Neighbours in about 1989. I was living the bachelor life in a dismal one-bedroom flat when she (the cat, not the Aussie..) came into my life.

 It was around this time of year - I recall I was watching a Five Nations rugby match on television. I had the front door open, as I often did in the hope that someone, anyone, would visit and break the dreariness of my weekend existence.

 I was in the kitchen making a cup of coffee when I heard a plaintive ‘miaow’ behind me. My visitor was a tiny little brown-and-white tabby. She belonged to my neighbour who was, to be frank, a bit of a reprobate. She hopped on to my bed, made herself comfortable - and was still in my life almost two decades later.

 Not long after, the reprobate was evicted for not paying his rent and left her behind.

Muffy ponders his next move on
 the chessboard - clearly an intelligent cat! 

 Mrs W (then Miss G) and I had been seeing each other for about 18 months at the time and, as committed animal lovers, were determined that the cat would not be left alone. I took her in to my bedsit, we took her to the vet, had her checked over and she soon became part of the family, moving in with us when we married in July 1990.

 She had quite a life, getting stuck in the roof of the half-built apartment block next to our flat, regularly vanishing into the yard of the Co-Op dairy down the road, losing the sight in one eye after a disagreement with a car, yet still being lively and active well into her second decade.

 When she went to the vets in autumn 2007 for a routine procedure and never came home, we were devastated. We thought we would cope but the winter of 2007-8 was just too quiet at Warrillow Towers so, in the following spring, we decided to look for another cat.

 A workmate of Mrs W’s worked voluntarily for a cat-rehoming charity and quickly came up with Muffin. His owner lived 12 miles away and was having to give him up due to an allergy to cats. We visited one night and fell in love with him.

 We like to think he fell in love with us; we call him the noisiest cat on the planet for his boisterous ‘miaow’ and a yelp which often sounds more like a dog’s bark than a cat expressing his feelings. 

 He’s not supposed to lie on the bed behind me as I work; Mrs W gets irritated by all the cat hair on the duvet cover. So I keep the ‘office’ door open and cast regular glances to my right as he snores on his bed on the landing. But I’m always alive to the sound of him stirring himself awake, stretching those giant limbs as he yawns himself into life, comes and rubs against my leg and then leaps onto the bed.  

 When my mobile rings, it’s not unusual for the caller to inquire ‘What’s that noise in the background?’ as Muffy (as we now know him) shouts to make himself heard in the conversation.

 It’s not quite the same as having what the Americans call ‘water cooler conversations’ with your colleagues but when I do get up to make a cuppa, Muffy chases me excitedly down the stairs.

 Would I go back to work in a big office environment? Emphatically not, for all sorts of reasons - not the least of which is that I don’t think I would find a company who would let my cat sit behind my desk all day. 

Are you listening, Prime Minister?

Rarely, if ever, does this blog enter the political arena. Almost eight months after I began these musings, I defy anyone who doesn’t know me as a close personal friend to say which way I voted at the 2010 General Election - and then you might still be wrong.

 Although I have a degree in politics, I generally keep my views to myself. Sure, I watch BBC Parliament far more than is healthy, I choose The World At One and PM as my radio listening of choice, but I would no more start a political argument in a pub than order a pint of Carling.

 But the current furore over the Government’s planned reform of the National Health Service has prompted me into putting finger to keyboard.

 I like the NHS; in fact, I owe my life to it. Having been born in 1964 with spina bifida and hydrocephalus and being the only one of three siblings who survived more than a few days with it, I am eternally grateful to the GPs and consultants who pulled me through my early childhood. The shock when it came back to bite me in the rear in the form of epileptic fits which I had not suffered for more than 40 years was crippling, in both a mental and physical sense.

 Over the past few years since the return of my epilepsy, I have spent rather too long in surgery waiting rooms, in consultants’ offices, having blood tests, brain scans and the like. Mrs W has endured similar experiences for different reasons; and we and many like us will tell the politicians arguing over the fate of the NHS that it does not need more competition. It does not need opening up to the free market; all the vast majority of people who use the NHS on an occasional basis want it to do is to work in a joined-up fashion.

 Let me tell you a story. Here is a patient who needs to have three tests done at an eye clinic. The patient is not yet suffering from any condition but has a family history so the NHS, quite rightly, is monitoring the situation every three months. 

 Yet the patient receives three separate appointments for three separate tests on three separate dates and it requires the patience of a saint and numerous telephone calls to persuade the authorities that it would be a good idea to do them all on the same day.

 The patient subsequently books the morning off work and attends a local hospital, only to discover that the clinic is only able to complete two of the three tests and wants the patient to return at a later date for the third - meaning more time off work.

 Cue a full and frank discussion as the patient produces a letter from their GP, confirming that all three tests will be done on the same day. Cue a harrassed receptionist, seeking a way out of the problem.

 A solution is eventually found and the first two tests take place just a few minutes after the appointed time. The patient is then told to go and have a cup of coffee in the restaurant as they have 20 minutes to wait before their appointment with the consultant.

 Duly refreshed, they return to the waiting room at the required time to find precisely three people ahead of them in the queue - and wait a further 90 minutes before being called in to the inner sanctum.

 Harrassed, tired, hungry and needing to get to work 20 miles away lest they let down colleagues, they undergo the test......which takes less than five minutes.

 Completely oblivious to their feelings, the consultant announces that nothing has changed since their last visit, “so I’ll see you in nine months. Goodbye.”

 And the authorities wonder why patients often have a dim view of doctors.

 I wonder how many MPs, the people in whose hands the fate of the NHS lies, have undergone that experience? How many have turned up at A&E at 9pm on a Saturday night, frightened for the health of their 80-year-old mother and still been there at 4.30am on Sunday?

 Politicians can talk until they are blue/red in the face about turning patients into stakeholders, into giving GPs control of their budgets, but all of it is meaningless until they can answer some basic questions. How can a patient arrive at their local hospital and produce a letter of which the consultant seems completely unaware? How can four consultations take 90 minutes? How can some doctors be so astoundingly rude to worried, anxious, patients?

 Until our politicians see the argument from the other side of the desk, all talk of NHS reform is nonsense.