The Mohair Footstool

In less than two weeks my male staff's dad, his mad sister and her long suffering husband will be arriving from England and I will have three different laps to pee on and Badger will have three different laps to leap from and three different people to take him to the vet when he does. With this visit in mind , my staff have undertaken a programme of modernisation, as far as the house goes anyway. For example, they have filled in the moat, turned the drawbridge into nice retaining wall and made a lovely trellis of the portcullis, upon which my green beans are now growing. They've made a start on shovelling out some of the accumulated dust, but are at a bit of a loss as to where to put it. They've decided that they can't just throw it all outside because that amount of dust may form a cloud in the upper atmosphere and disrupt air traffic for weeks. So for the time being it's been piled under their bed along with the dessicated lizards, almost dead, but still wriggling cockroaches and the occasional pellet of bush chocolate.

A few days ago we all went shopping for furniture and a new telly . Well, not all. Just Badger, myself and my staff. Paolo the budgie had to stay at home because unlike the late Biggles the budgie he can only fly in a straight line. This means that if he got loose in a shop he'd eventually fly into something and he's not a well budgie as it is. The last thing he needs is a fractured skull. So off we went. The first stop was the furniture shop and my staff had decided that they needed a new bed for my male staff's dad to sleep on. It was a bit like a scene from "The Three Bears". Each bed was either too hard or too soft. My staff devised a very effective way of testing the beds. My female staff stood on the bed and held Badger out at arms length at shoulder height, then she dropped him onto the bed. If he bounced back higher than waist level then the bed was too soft. If he didn't bounce at all, but simply went splat, then the bed was obviously too hard. But, if he bounced back somewhere between her knees and her waist then we knew the bed was just right.

Throughout the whole operation Badger had an expression on his face that could have been bemusement or alarm. It can be hard to tell with Badger. The shop sales staff had a similar look on their faces, as did the other customers. It was as if they'd never seen a fully grown woman standing on a bed bouncing a small, fat black and white guinea pig before.  After each bounce she called out the result to my male staff. "Too hard." or "Too soft." He dutifully noted it down on a piece of paper, and thus they went from bed to bed until finally Badger bounced perfectly. "Just right." called my female staff and my male staff whipped out his wallet, blew the dust from it and withdrew a thin piece of plastic, which he handed with a flourish to the salesman, who looked more than a little relieved. While all this had been happening I'd been running around the floor, chewing some of the furniture. The Italian leather sofas tasted best. Tell you what though, you have to keep moving in those furniture shops. I had just sat still for two minutes to deposit a pile of bush chocolate on a nice white fluffy rug, when an elderly lady pointed at me, turned to a salesman and said. "Excuse me young man. How much is that little mohair footstool?" Well, naturally I scampered off, so that by the time the salesman had looked around all he could see was a small mound of stools of a different kind. He glared at the old lady as if she was mad. 

Next it was off to a posh department store to buy a new television. My staff had decided to get one of those new fangled colour ones. They've only been out for about forty five years but my staff figured that enough time had probably elapsed for the price to have come down a bit. Since it was a posh department store Badger and I were not allowed to roam. Badger was placed in my female staff's handbag. He quite likes it in there. He says it's a bit like the Tardis - a lot roomier than it looks from the outside, and there are always lots of interesting thing to chew.. On this occassion however, he mistook my female staff's lipstick for a carrot, so by the time he was able to poke his head out of the handbag he looked like a guinea pig version of Dame Edna Everage and was complaining that he had a stomache ache. He'd also been stomping around in her powder compact. To this day it's easy to keep track of him. You just have to follow his little powdery footprints.

Before we entered the shop I was stuffed down the front of my male staff's trousers, just as I used to be when we visited his mum in hospital. Only this time I wasn't allowed to stick my head out of his fly and eat grapes. I was under strict instructions to keep still and to mind where I was putting my claws. My staff don't usually frequent such posh establishments, but they had obtained a forty dollar discount voucher from somewhere. Using this would mean that their purchase would only cost forty five percent more than buying from K-Mart rather than the usual fifty percent. My staff are astute shoppers.

Anyway, due to my position down the front of my male staff's trousers I couldn't see what was going on, but I could tell my staff were talking to a saleswoman from the questions they were asking. "Does it stay on colour the whole time?"  "Is the sport in colour?"  "Can you change the colour someone is wearing if you don't like it?" That kind of thing. It seemed to go on forever. Finally we all stopped for a while and the saleswoman explained the features of a certain TV set. By this time I'd been stuck in my male staff's trousers for about half an hour and was starting to get cramp in my back legs. It was no good. I had to change position. This I did, with a fair bit of squirming, much to my male staff's discomfort. I was hoping nobody had noticed my movements, but after a moment or two's silence I heard the saleswoman say. "Well Sir, I can see you REALLY like this particular model."

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
Does anyone know how to remove face powder from one's feet?