As I left my Focolare friends, we promised each other we’d try extra hard that week to live for unity, knowing that the key would be how we were able to live and go beyond all the everyday difficulties that came our way.

I arrived back at our fairly new (to us) terraced home to find my husband in some state of distress in our postage stamp sized garden, with, unfortunately, just one dog when there should have been two. And while our one was calmly hanging around with an air of superiority, Jaspar, the friend’s dog (that we were looking after for the weekend), was nowhere to be seen.

A hurried explanation told me all: our neighbour’s cat had been taking its usual evening stroll along the top of our fence when she was spotted by Jaspar. I should mention here that Jaspar is a terrier. Those who know dogs will understand immediately that this meant trouble. And so it was.

Jaspar’s instant reaction had been to yo-yo up and down in the air as though attached by some invisible elastic, all four feet leaving the ground with each bound, barking hysterically.

The cat had taken one look and shot off – and so, unfortunately, did Jaspar, through the only hole in the hedge that, until that moment, we had no idea existed.

That was problem number one. Problem number two was that we were due to leave the house in fifteen minutes, duly smartened up, for a meal with people we’d only recently met.

No amount of calling or coaxing had any effect, either from us or from our next-door-but-one neighbour who had heard the commotion and had come out to investigate the cause. In fact all went ominously quiet and still.

I ran upstairs to see if I could spot anything from the bedroom window, threw open the sash just in time to see a familiar, slightly rotund black, brown and white four legged creature squeezing itself through our next door neighbour’s cat flap.

Problem number three was that we knew our neighbour was out.

The full article is here>>>[New City magazine January 2018, p.8-9.]

Illustration: ©Duncan Harper