The Life and Times of Miss Diggy

Miss Diggy couldn't begin to contemplate the inconvenience the concrete truck parked in her driveway was causing her, especially since the rubbish collection was due any moment and she wanted to get something done before the short, round, deliciously slow garbage man wandered past her garden path.

She stretched and walked leisurely to the corner of her house, glancing down the road as she did so. No, he wasn't here yet. Rounding the corner the sun glanced off her face and she rested against the sidings briefly, letting the morning rays warm her body. She paused, suddenly attentive. The clanking sound of a garbage truck and air brakes echoed in the still air. She slunk slowly to the ground and crept back to the front garden, ears tuned to the promising noises. The garbage truck was outside Mr Oppenheimer's house next door and she murmured happily to herself before slipping under the flowering magnolia bush next to the letterbox. Just in time.

Mickey, the garbage man, slightly out of breath and wearing too-short shorts for winter, arrived at the letterbox just after Miss Diggy. He huffed and puffed his way past the path mumbling morning curses at the frost, the birds, the rising sun, and anything else that took his fancy. He bent down to pick up the last rubbish bag in the street, relieved that no one had seen him tear a hole in Number 23's bag - and because he wasn't paid enough to pick up actual contents of other people's rubbish - he'd pushed the bag and its smelly intestines into a bush with his foot. This last bag and he'd be done for the morning. He bent down, lifted, turned, stepped out and -

Miss Diggy saw her chance. She leapt from behind the magnolia and streaked for Mickey, easily catching him off balance. With a fancy sideways movement she'd practiced in her lounge for the past week she planted four sets of sharpened claws into the fleshy, slightly sweaty behind of Mickey's khaki shorts and waited.

Mickey took two seconds to blink, two seconds to grimace, and then one second to open his mouth and let out a bellowing roar of pain. Miss Diggy detracted her claws as quickly as she'd inserted them and raced gleefully for her favourite sunny spot back inside the house. "For #### sake!! Mrs Higgins, control that #@#@#@# CAT!!!!!" screamed poor Mickey clutching Mrs Higgins bag of soft, stinking rubbish in one hand and his baggy backside in the other.

Mrs Higgins didn't hear. Miss Diggy had just arrived home with her tail in the air and a smile of content on her furry face. Miss Diggy jumped contentedly onto Mrs Higgins' cosy lap, purred for the joy of it, and settled down for a morning of cuddles and milk. Ahhh, the pleasures of Being. A. Cat.