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Thursday, February 02, 2012

As a tireless charity worker and hospice shop veteran, I'm no stranger to claiming the personal effects of the dead. And then wearing them to work. Some of my nicest shirts have come from the widows of deceased war veterans. I expect. To be honest, if it fits me and it's less than a fiver, I'm not really bothered where it came from. The bloke could have been wearing the thing when he died, for all I care. As long as the blood stains have come out, I'm happy.

But the good news is that as of yesterday, I've moved on from charity shops, and have branched out into a whole new world of recycling. I'm now robbing the graves of pet cats.

I was talking to a colleague on Tuesday about the state of Chloe's kidneys, and she (the colleague, not Chloe) told me that her cat died last year at a ripe old age, having suffered from the same condition. After comparing notes (and vet's bills), it transpired that my colleague's cat was on the same expensive food, and the same expensive tablets. And what's more, she still had some left. Apparently the vet refused to buy them back on the grounds that he'd already spent the money on a new sports car and a two-week Caribbean cruise. It's possible I've made that bit up, but I expect it's accurate.

Anyhoo, if it was me, I'd have buried the tablets with the cat in an Egyptian-style funeral, just in case he needed them in the afterlife, but my colleague's a lot more reckless than I am, so she opted to keep them on the kitchen shelf instead. And what's more, she said I could have them.

So I gave her a lift home after work last night (it was the least I could do) (no, really, it was) and having parked in a bus stop outside her house for five minutes, she kindly brought me out 70 Fortekor tablets, 14 pouches of renal food, and some premium branded cat litter. I get Chloe's from Lidl, so it's like having Andrex for the first time.

The vet gave me seven Fortekor tablets last week and charged me £8.95, plus £8.78 for 12 pouches of food, so it doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out the value of that haul. Although for Lisa's sake, it's about a hundred quid.

Obviously I'm very grateful, so I asked my colleague if I could give her anything in return. She said that if I really want to say thank you, I could do the rest of her City & Guilds in Retinal Screening. I told her she'd have to drag my family out of a burning building for that kind of reward. I'm grateful, but I'm not that grateful.

1 comments:

Jon Cheshire said...

This is how it all starts, some innocent banter about your cat next to the water cooler and then the offer of free stuff. The next thing you know, you are sitting at a bus stop awaiting drug dealers Fortekor and cat food probably made of dead things!
This my friend, is the slippery slope and I suggest you just say no before the price goes up!