TALES OF THE PUSSYCAT

I got called a ‘pussycat’ yesterday. It wasn’t endearing; in fact, it didn’t help me at all. I had become frustrated on the phone to the estate agent (not with her) about how long everything is taking, and then apologised.

“Oh don’t worry,” she said, “Compared to some I have to deal with, you are a pussycat.”

So this is how it works then: I get furious, with cheeks ablaze and the fire of a thousand suns in my eyes. And then I erupt at someone: livid, incandescent, volcanic with rage even. But then it comes out like a miaow in the wind?

Two things stood out. One, I’m a cat. And two, this horrible game is always won by lions. I mean it. Unless you roar down the phone and show your teeth, it seems you get nowhere. And in these meaner times, I’m worried that everything feels a bit like that.

Now, you could argue that a pussycat is a lion, only smaller. You could say it’s all about attitude and confidence, or even a bit of sass every now and then. You could even say that it doesn’t matter how you’re viewed by anyone, but it does matter how you see yourself. These are fair points. Except it does sort of matter when you try to be assertive with an estate agent, and she laughs it off as though she’s just seen Peter Dinklage try out for the basketball team.

You could also probably make a case for just being yourself and letting the authenticity do the work. That’s a bit like saying it will all work out in the end because love, kindness, gentleness and patience always win out over their opposites - or that the tortoise’s determination is greater than the hare’s complacency.

But even the tortoise knows he only has a chance because the hare has all the power. If the hare hadn’t stopped and rested, who would have won? And a pussycat might be a lion, but only one of them can actually catch a zebra.

So anyway, I was a bit down in the dumps yesterday. There’s no sign of anything moving, and our chances of getting in before Christmas are fading. The solicitors are waiting for other solicitors, we’re waiting for them to do something useful, the families in the chain are getting more and more agitated. It’s a waiting game - but it’s worse than that, it’s a wait for something that might not ever happen. If this goes on another month or so, we just won’t be able to afford to move at all. And honestly, that really terrifies me.

Perhaps the scariest thing is that the estate agent might just have been right about me after all.