When Ian Whitwham's cat fell ill it set in motion a complex chain of events ...
Eighty billion aspirins are consumed each year. You can get them all over the world except in London on a Saturday night for your cat.
He has just conked out on the sofa. This has gone unremarked for several hours. He has always occupied the twilight zone between Coma and Death. But when my daughter picks him up a hind leg sticks out like a twiglet. When placed on the floor he just keels over like a crippled cushion. I must Do Something. I must search for the Hero Inside Myself.
All local vets have knocked off for the weekend, so we zoom off to the Emergency Vets behind Buckingham Palace - for the Posher and Fatter cat. The diagnosis is Thrombosis. A shot is administered. He might pull through. BUT HE MUST HAVE AN ASPIRIN! Or a bit of one - 75 mg - and it must be PURE. Essential. The vet has a lot of pills but none are aspirin. No problem. You can get them anywhere. We were handed a bill that could buy a striker for QPR and zoom off into the Big City for the small pill.
All chemist seem to have knocked off for the weekend. We try garages, cornershops, drugstores. They peddle pills which aren't quite Aspirin, Panadol, Nurofen, Anadin - lethal stuff.
An hour has passed. The cat is nearer its Maker. The Daughter observes that she has a father who is a buffoon and a murderer. Wife concurs. We crawl to Whiteleys shopping mall. Not one pure aspirin. I am beginning to feel like a terminal junkie as I return to the car park. wife, daughter and pet are all critical. There is much keening and cursing.
"I just hope he's not faking it!" I snap
"Come back with an aspirin or don't come back at all!" roars the wife.
I leave the howling vehicle on a double yellow and head off into the night. I'm informed there's a late night Boots in Queensway. And there is. And it's open. There's boxes of aspirin all over the shelves.
"Some Aspirins please," I point out that they must be pure. "They are for a Cat."
The girl looks in a big book.
"NO!"
Cats can't have them. Illegal. You need a licence. Or the cat does. Or she does. Vets don't know about these things.
"Look - I have a dying cat, a fading marriage, and I just want some aspirins. They're behind your head. One pure aspirin." I feel like an unhinged junkie.
"NO!"
"Look, I am a customer I have just come into your shop. I do not have a cat. But I do have a whacking headache. So can I please have an aspirin?"
"NO!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's for your cat."
This is a student chemist. She must do everything by the book. Her boss decides to save me. He slips me some of the pure stuff - I assure him I won't go to the Tabloids if the cat dies. Or the family.
After a few days the cat is back to normal. My headache is worse.
