2006

SHORT STORY COMPETITION

Parker Hamilton Gets Fit by Sheila Corbishley (2nd overall winner)

Parker Hamilton-Davies was getting fat.
Cassie, home on one of her flying visits, eyed his plump thighs with distaste. She stroked her own toned, tanned legs and poured herself a black coffee.
“That cat needs more exercise. He’s beginning to look like a sumo wrestler.”
Parker sat in the sunny bay window, as immobile as a pot fair cat, staring disdainfully through the spotted muslin curtains at the monkey puzzle tree in the front garden.
“What?” Marisa cried. “He is not! You’re not fat are you my lamb?”
She tried to sweep him into her arms to give him a consoling cuddle but Parker resisted her coldly, not even bothering to turn his head.
“See?” Cassie said. “You can’t even lift him.”
“He’s big boned” her mother said defensively, “and anyway, all Toms get like that when they’ve been …you know.” She cast an anxious glance at Parker to see if he’d heard, but it was all right; he was licking his paw. “Although, come to think of it, your father didn’t.”
Cassie choked on her rye cracker. “Dad had a vasectomy, Mother. He wasn’t neutered!”
“Shh!” Marisa clapped her hands over Parker’s ears. He flicked her off as if she’d been a fly. “There!” she wailed. “Now you’ve upset him.”
“Let the vet have a look at him,” Cassie said. “ And don’t say you can’t afford it. I’ll pay. He’ll tell you. That animal is obese.”
“Don’t call him an animal!”
Marisa trundled the tea trolley out into the kitchen, seething with indignation. It wasn’t fair. Other women had daughters who went shopping with them; gave them grandchildren. All she had was Cassie who ran a pub in Spain with a bronzed Swede half her age who wore his hair extensions in a pony tail and had rings in his nipples.
Every so often she came home, criticised everything she set eyes on, then went back to Sven and a tall, shaved poodle called Molly, leaving Marisa to recover her shattered self esteem.
And now she had it in for poor Parker. Fat indeed!
All the same, Marisa couldn’t help a niggle of worry. She watched as Parker descended ponderously to the floor via an armchair and a footstool. His black satiny flanks definitely quivered, and he paused, panting, to rest on the pink brocade cushion before dropping a heavy paw down to the stool. Perhaps a visit to the vet wouldn’t come amiss.
“He is a bit chunky,” the vet said. “Want me to give him a quick once over?”
Marisa paused. How much was that going to cost? Then she remembered that Cassie had said she would pay. “Give him the works,” she said.
Parker lay like a huge fur cushion as the vet kneaded and prodded, hauled and rolled and eventually said, “well – surprisingly – seems as fit as a flea.”
Marisa’s glow of complacency faded as he added: “ but how long that will last, I wouldn’t like to say. Liver disease, heart, arthritis: they’re just waiting in the wings for a fellow of his size and lifestyle. I’ll write you out a diet sheet. Get out much?”
Marisa gasped. It was ages since anyone had asked her out. It was her own fault, Cassie said. She’d really let herself go since Victor died.
“Oh, well, I …”
Then her stomach knotted and she blushed all over as she realised he meant the cat.
“He … um … he loves the garden,” she burbled feebly. “He’s out all day during the summer.” She didn’t mention the hours Parker spent on the flowered sun-lounger lolling like an eastern potentate while she sagged in a mildewy deck chair she’d dragged from the back of the garage.
“Hmm.” The vet looked puzzled. “What does he play with?”
“Play?” Marisa tried to imagine Parker playing. It would have been easier to picture the Queen going down the bowling alley. “Er …”
“Get him a mouse,” the vet said, scribbling busily. “One of those windy-up ones, and a plastic spider on a string. Anything to get him moving. Come back in a couple of months.”
Cassie shrieked with triumphant laughter when Marisa puffed tearfully in, pulling a green tartan shopping trolley bearing a scowling Parker.
“He said he was too fat didn’t he? I knew it!”
Her mother carefully lowered the trolley to the floor and Parker squeezed out. He stalked regally to his dish, his upright tail stiff with indignation, but Cassie was there before him, sliding the dish away with her toe. “Oh no you don’t. No more for you today.”
“Oh Cassie – I was going to start tomorrow,” Marisa pleaded.
“Just like you do with your own diets? No, Mother. Today.”
Hooking her finger under Parker’s scarlet leather collar Cassie hauled him away from the dish. She slapped his glossy rump with a rolled up copy of Hello and pushed him out into the garden.
“Because you’re a very spoilt fatty catty,” she told him as she nudged him off the step and shut the door,.
It took a little time before Marisa and Parker came to grips with the new regime. Cassie even stayed on an extra few days, just to make sure Marisa really understood what exercise was. It was Cassie’s idea to put Parker’s dish containing his one meal a day, up on a branch on the sycamore tree, and it certainly worked, although Marisa seemed to get the idea far sooner than Parker.
“Climb, darling, climb!” she begged as Parker circled the trunk, mewing complainingly. “Look – it’s easy.”
After Cassie had helped Marisa down, she went through the exercises with her. It was amazing what could be apparently be done with a toy mouse and a co-operative cat, and nothing less than depressing to see Parker give the dear little pink and grey mouse a contemptuous bat with a weary paw, then turn away with a yawn.
All afternoon, until Cassie left for her evening flight, Marisa tore up and down the long lawn, dangling a fearsome plastic spider on a piece of hairy string while Parker gave himself a long and comprehensive wash interposed with little snoozes.
By the time Marisa had collapsed into the kitchen, crimson-faced and sweating, he was having a really good long sleep.
Still, as the cold spring days grew warmer, both Parker and Marisa spent more time in the garden. Parker nibbled the tops off all the crocuses and had an argument with a robin, and once or twice actually chased the spider.
Cassie, back for the weekend, was reluctantly impressed. “He’s definitely slimmer. And he moves faster. I think the vet will be quite pleased.”
He was. “Well done!” he said. “He’s positively sleek.”
He caressed the cat’s neck, his fingers absent-mindedly exploring the furry softness. “Getting out much?” he asked, over the roar of Parker’s purr.
“All the time,” Marisa said proudly, burning inside when she remembered the fool she’d nearly made of herself at the last visit. Then she tingled fromthe top to toe as she realised. He wasn’t talking about the cat.