Cats, the animal not the musical. Public urination and other stupidity.

Firstly it dawns on me how enjoyable it is to leave work and it still be light outside. A simple thing that lightens my mood straight away.

But I'm just going to jump straight into this:

I run past Goodge Street tube station and see a homeless man selling the big issue with a cat on a lead.

A cat on a lead though.

I've always worried about homeless people owning animals anyway, it's another mouth to feed, and if the persons not eating due to a lack of cash, or spending his/her money on cider, what's the animal having? not much.

And a cat? they are meant to have the freedom to go wherever they want, not be on a lead.

I turned onto Euston road and wondered about my fractious relationship with cats, and a painful memory hit me,

I was 12 years old and home sick from school. I'd spent the day lying on the sofa watching the young ones on video, and covering my school books with sticky back plastic. Like we all did.

Anyway our cat Spice jumped onto me and, facing me, settled down for a snooze. I stared at Spice for a while and marveled at her whiskers, I was drawn to how long they were, and the precise way they curved outwards. Now I'm not sure what came over me but I had the overwhelming urge to give spice's whiskers a trim. I still don't know why.

I reached for the scissors that were on the floor and sized them up, with a quick snip the right ones were off. Spice didn't really flinch and they looked lob sided but I'd lost the urge to continue, maybe because I knew that it might not have been a great idea.

We lay there for a bit and then Spice gave herself a shake and jumped off me and made for the door, but her elegant walk had turned into more of a drunken stagger, and I watched with increasing horror as she walked straight into the frame of the door.

As I lay there listening to Spice banging into stuff in the hallway I knew that I was dead, so I did the instinctive thing, I got rid of the evidence and decided to play very dumb.

It got close to when my sister and I would normally be getting home from school so I decided to go to bed, and get as far away from the cat as possible.

My sister came home and I would say it was about 1 and a half minutes until I heard her scream my name, which was quickly followed by the sound of her vaulting the stairs three at a time, and the inevitable sound of her running down the landing, and kicking my door in.

I protested my innocence, but my apoplectic sister was rightly having none of it. And it got worst when my parents came home.

Spice and I reconciled after I watched her give birth to kittens, and the whiskers grew back eventually.

As I got nearer home I saw 2 fellas having a piss in the street, not a back alley you understand, but on a main road. It's just not right but it's nowhere near as bad as when I watched a women squat down outside greggs the bakers opposite Cardiff central bus station. It was a Saturday evening at around 6pm.

She was wearing a tiny white miniskirt, and as we stepped over the little river of piss she'd created, she looked up and drawled,
"alright boys?" at us. It was horrific.

Anyway, the mixture of childhood guilt and piss imagery didn't do my running any favors and I felt that it had taken way too long. Turned out I ran 6 miles in 42 minutes.

7 minute miles. I felt like it was slow and I know I can go faster so it ended up being quite a positive run,

Musical support came from High Contrast's old Mixmag live comp. A quality rolling mix that peaks and troughs in exactly the right moments when you're running along.