Bonus

Anyone who has owned a convertible for a while will know that they are not like normal cars. There are issues you have to deal with which don’t affect other drivers. You become, for example, very attuned to the weather. The habitual convertible owner is a man who can get out of his car, glance quickly at a cloudy sky, and immediately tell whether or not it’s going to rain – bitter experience will have taught him many valuable lessons in meteorology.


There are other, less obvious aspects too. I went out to get into my car last week, and discovered the neighbour’s cat curled up in the driver’s seat. It glared at me, as if to say, “What? You want to drive this car? Can’t you see I’m sleeping?”


I don’t particularly mind the cat being in my car, but it obviously resented my temerity and hasn’t been back. It’s decided that it prefers The Flatmate’s Saab convertible.


Every few days, when I arrive home from work and raise the garage door, I’ll catch a glimpse of the cat leaping from the Saab’s roof and vanishing off into the garden. It seems to have determined that the Saab is some kind of expensive mobile designer cat hammock. It would certainly sit with a standard feline worldview that humans should buy large turbo-charged objects stuffed with electronics solely in order to give cats somewhere to sleep. Perhaps it sees the little Swedish emblem on the car and imagines that The Flatmate got it from IKEA.


The only real problem with the cat taking its daily nap on the roof of the Saab is the unfortunate combination of three factors – the Saab’s roof is made of black fabric, the cat is made of white fluff, and we’re heading into moulting season. Put all these together and its not surprising that the Saab is starting to look like Andy Warhol.


I’m looking forward to next weekend, when The Flatmate gets back from his current three weeks of site work. By that time, his car will have more customised white shagpile than a 70s bachelor pad. Hee hee hee.