The Waiting Room- I

The man was looking down at a cat. The cat was gray, with dirty white spots. It gave the man a look only a cat can give a human, but Mr Percy H. Overcoat- for that is our man- didn't mind. He picked up the cat, holding it around its bony gray stomach. He crossed the low hedge between his house and the neighbours' and deposited the animal on the shaved lawn. The cat twitched its whiskers and walked away around to the back of the house. Mr Overcoat stepped back over the hedge and went inside his house. The time was 8 pm and Oprah was on.

Later that night, halfway through Oprah, Mr Overcoat fell asleep and dreamt a dream he would never remember. He itched in his sleep. Even later, with the TV still on and the quiet streets outside falling dark, Mr Percy H. Overcoat drifted over a thin line of consciousness like a wisp of eiderdown and when he awoke he knew that he was dead. For you see he was the first human to have contracted a new virus that was till that day unknown to man. Much later a bunch of smart grownup scientists discovered the impossibly long scientific name of the virus and found out that it causes instant death within 3 hours.

They also found out that it is transmitted through cats.

This eventually led to the whole world hunting stray cats and throwing them into bonfires and lakes and wet cement for quite some time. Animal rights groups had a field day.

While this is all well and good and should properly concern us all, it is not what this story is about.

This story is about Mr Percy H. Overcoat and all the interesting things he saw and heard and did next. Because we haven't seen the last of him yet.


TO BE CONTINUED AS SOON AS THE AUTHOR FINISHES A PILE OF MUNDANE TASKS. WATCH THIS SPOT.