I  wish I could have a packet of crisps Mary whined imperceptibly to her other self

Isn’t this ironic that when we were children we could have eaten crisps but my mother wouldn’t buy them because she was very stingy and now I can afford them and I find they’re bad for you.

Are they bad for me asked Emile her cat.

Oh you wouldn’t like them Emile they are very salty and have no food value really.

Why do you want to eat them, the cat enquired wisely.

I think it must be that when you eat some cold beef you need something salty and crispy to counteract a flavour. Or what is more likely anything you were forbidden to eat or that was hard to get when you were a child retains an allure for many years afterwards

Like Walls ice cream

I like Walls sausages, the cat declared loudly.

But Emile we never eat while sausages here

I didn’t eat them here I found some in a dustbin in Knittingham road.

A dustbin Mary declared loudly something like Lady Bracknell in The importance of being Ernest when she discovers that he was born or found in a handbag on Paddington station.

You know, Emile, I am very angry with you because you are not behaving like a cat you are behaving like a rat or a fox.

Well, mother, we we men have to have some excitement and adventures in our lives and we have to break the rules sometimes and look I’m still alive I’m still well I’m strong and I can talk even better than I could before

Are you telling me that eating mouldy sausages out of a dustbin creates an improvemen4 your intelligence and then enlargea your vocabulary?

It’s possible, it’s possible the cat reply totally honestly and painfully.

After all penicillin was discovered in a mould  in a saucer in a laboratory that someone had forgotten to wash the night before.

Well it’s possible that there are some wonderful things lurking in the kitchen when I forget to wash up said Mary nastily but I would not be able to recognize them, would I, that is the key poinr there maybe all sorts of things around us with wonderful properties but we just don’t know that they are there. Many people have sat under apple trees for hours and hours in the summer but only one person discovered the law of gravity

Yes that’s a very interesting  idea, the cat replied and now mother I will show you a poem I have written about this exact topic

Don’t tell me you’ve been copying my poetry. I don’t want a cat that is a plagiarist especially when he plagiarises my own writing

If you are going to do it find someone unknown to copy otherwise a journalist will find you and make your shame public and there’s nothing I can do to protect you.

I don’t care what a journalist thinks because I’m not a human being.

At last, the truth Emile is not a human being. No he is something far superior that is Emile is a cat..