so two nites ago we get a knock on our security complex apartment door at around 9.30pm and so being the nice friendly neighbourly guy i am i go and open it and it’s not nice to call someone a weirdo on first impression so i feel unable to describe to you the person who was outside the door [strange, cos usually an unexpected knock that late at nite at our complex means they’ve pulled another wheel clamping on us but i quickly went through an inventory of our cars and unless she broke into our garage to clamp my car…]
“um hi, i’m from lower die rand [name of our complex – we are upper die rand so kinda a whole different complex – we are kinda in the middle of a row of apartments in the middle of the complex so not your likeliest first apartment door knock you would have thort… but only if you were a sane person] and i’m looking for some help cos i can’t get my cat to go through the cat flap and do you know how to make a cat go through a cat flap?”
wo, really? could this be an encounter with the legendary catflap man?
CATFLAP MAN, CATFLAP MAN
HE CAN DO ANYTHING A CATFLAP-MAN CAN DO
WAIT A SEC, NO HE CAN’T
HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE BASICEST THING ONE WOULD ASSOCIATE WITH A GUY CALLED CAT FLAP MAN
LOOK OUT, HERE COMES NON CATFLAP MAN…
i kid you not. now being friendly neighborhood nice guy type of guy i just think this is a little weird and i look in at val who is sitting on the couch and she is mouthing “No!” and shaking her head vigorously… and so instantly i go from ‘weird guy with cat flap problem’ to ‘hardcore serial killer with a really flimsy back story come to beat us to death with a domestic animal’ and as i peer down (it’s amazing what a rush of paranoia can do) it now seems like he quite possibly could be trying to have stucken his foot a little bit in the doorway ready to jam it in as i try and close it.
a huge war wages (instantly altho it seemed like for minutes with hardcore slow mo jedi-like moves and counter moves and strikes and counter attempts at strikes) between friendly neighborhood guy and wife-injected-paranoia freak…
i managed to kinda strike a balance between the two and so a hurried “i’m not the catflap engineering genius i may have appeared to you to have been upon initial glance” kind of apology and door close finished off the ordeal.
had i been a more neighborly guy you possibly could have found me at 10.30pm on friday nite down in lower die rand trying to help a new friend jam cats through a cat flap using enticement, threatening, subterfuge or sarcasm (who knows with cats? sarcatsm perhaps…)
but it seemed like more of a job for CATFLAP MAN…
so if there’s something strange, and your cat’s no good
who you gonna call? CATFLAP MAN
cos you installed a flap, but Mr Tibbs just stood
who you gonna call? CATFLAP MAN…
This one had me chuckling all the way through! Reminds me of when I was in high school and this guy approached me at the beach and asked me come with him in his car to another beach to help him free a seagull caught in some fishing line… certainly a flimsy story as well. The question is not “are you paranoid?”, its “are you paranoid enough?”
Maybe the guy knew you were a Christian and thought that you be of some assistance, or maybe he thought you were friendly guy. If not for your wife, maybe you would have gone to help. Why she go and so no if a harmless thing to help out? Why she shake her head vigorously? How can we judge him? I do understand that today we must be weary. My question then is how do we tell if it can be a scam or not? What if the person is in real need of help?
dude, it’s 9.30pm and the guy is asking for help to get his cat through a catflap and so no. not so much judging him as judging the situation as being a bit of a strange one. and finding some humour in the circumstances. the dude was from a different conplex and so had no knowledge of us or who we were or anything. i think my wife shook her head vigorously cos it was 9.30pm and a strange man was knocking on our door with a strange request. and this is south africa.