Story 47: Reza Shadey and the Problematic Pea
Okay, snuggle down tight, little ones.
Let me tell you a tale about a very cheeky and magnificently fluffy cat who discovered that even the grandest of creatures can be troubled by the tiniest of things.
Reza Shadey, a Persian cat of immense self-importance (and even immenser fluffiness), was meticulously polishing his whiskers.
He was, as was his habit, contemplating his glorious future.
"Any day now", he mused, with what he imagined was a deeply profound expression, gazing towards the distant bustle of London.
"Downing Street will make the call. That Larry fellow is surely getting on a bit, bless his cotton socks. They will undoubtedly require a Chief Mouser of my unparalleled calibre. Someone decisive. Someone... regal. Someone like me."
He practised a dignified, Prime Ministerial nod — and nearly wobbled off the windowsill.
Just at that precise moment of profound political contemplation, Mrs Higgins, his long-suffering human, bustled into the room.
She was carrying a magnificent new cushion. It was plush, velvety, and a rather fetching shade of royal blue.
"A new throne for my little prince!" she cooed, placing it reverently in Reza's favourite sunbeam.
Reza Shadey inspected it with a critical eye.
"Hmm, adequate", he conceded internally, though he tried to look unimpressed.
"Suitable, one supposes, for a future figure of great importance. The colour does complement my fur rather well, I must admit."
That night, Reza Shadey settled onto his new cushion, anticipating a night of serene slumber, filled with dreams of chasing rogue parliamentary mice and receiving tuna-based honours from the King.
But sleep, the fickle fiend, would not come.
He tossed.
He turned.
He fluffed the cushion with an imperious paw.
He patted it with aristocratic disdain.
The cushion felt... lumpy! Wrong! Utterly, catastrophically, UNACCEPTABLY uncomfortable!
"This is an outrage of the highest order!" he fumed silently, his whiskers twitching with indignation.
"How is a feline of my distinction supposed to obtain his vital beauty sleep on such a... a... lumpy, bumpy contraption? My important duties may suffer! National security could be at stake!"
The next morning, Reza Shadey was a grumbling, rumbling storm-cloud of disgruntled fur.
His neighbourhood acquaintances — the ever-so-slightly-less-important cats of the vicinity — found him scowling thunderously by the bird bath, looking as if he had swallowed a particularly sour lemon.
"Goodness me, Rezzi, you look like you've wrestled a badger and the badger won!" chirped Penelope, a fluffy white cat whose gentle amusement often irked Reza immensely.
Ginger Tom, a large, amiable orange cat whose main concerns in life were the pursuit of food and the perfection of napping, yawned a yawn so wide you could see his tonsils.
"Rough night, mate?" he rumbled.
Tiger, a stripy young kitten perpetually filled with bounce and beans, tilted his head, his eyes like saucers.
"Did a monster try to eat your whiskers, Reza? Was it a big one?"
Reza Shadey drew himself up to his full, fluffy height — which wasn't very tall but was certainly very fluffy.
"My dear, simple-minded companions", he began, his voice dripping with the sort of condescension only he could truly master,
"You could not possibly comprehend the tribulations, the sheer, unadulterated AGONY, I have been forced to endure. My new sleeping apparatus — a device clearly designed by an individual with absolutely no understanding of feline comfort — has rendered me practically sleepless! It was a torture — all lumps and bumps! I am, frankly, exhausted from the sheer effort of attempting to find even a moment of repose!"
He finished with a dramatic sigh that ruffled his whiskers.
The other cats, slightly bewildered by Reza's rather lengthy explanation, followed him meekly to inspect the offending cushion.
Penelope, ever the pragmatist, hopped on. She curled up into a perfect, fluffy circle.
"Oh, it's lovely, Rezzi!" she declared, a contented purr rumbling in her chest. "So soft! So warm!"
Tiger, never one to miss an opportunity for play, pounced onto it with a joyful boing!
"It's bouncy!" he giggled, doing another little hop for good measure, his tail waving like a flag.
Ginger Tom, with a sigh of pure bliss, flopped onto it like a sack of very relaxed potatoes.
Within seconds, a loud, sonorous Zzzzzzz — like a tiny, furry chainsaw — rumbled from his chest.
Reza Shadey stared, aghast. His jaw practically hit the floor.
"Philistines! Barbarians!" he muttered under his breath, his tail twitching furiously.
"They clearly have no appreciation for true comfort! Or perhaps... perhaps the fault lies not with the cushion, but with... them? No, impossible. It must be the cushion. Definitely the cushion."
Penelope, ever observant, noticed a tiny, almost invisible wrinkle in the plush royal blue cover.
She gently smoothed it out with a delicate paw and, curious, patted underneath.
Her paw touched something small, round, and surprisingly hard. She nudged it out with her nose.
It was a single, small, green pea. A petit pois, to be precise, looking rather innocent and very much out of place.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Penelope. "Look, Rezzi! A little pea! How did that get there?"
Reza Shadey stared at the minuscule vegetable with a mixture of horror and dawning indignation.
This tiny green sphere — this insignificant legume — was the source of his discomfort? The reason for his dreadful night?
He puffed out his chest, attempting to regain his regal composure... and quietly pivot the narrative.
"Ahem. Well. Obviously", he declared, his voice regaining its usual booming authority,
"It takes a feline of extreme sensitivity and refinement, such as myself, to detect such a... significant disturbance. You coarser creatures simply wouldn't notice it."
He sniffed disdainfully at the pea, as if it had personally insulted his ancestors.
"The sheer audacity of it! To disturb the vital rest of a future Chief Mouser! It's a matter of the utmost importance — a scandal of pea-sized proportions!"
Mrs Higgins, hearing the rather dramatic pronouncements, came in to investigate.
"What's all this fuss about a pea?" she asked, smiling as she picked up the tiny green culprit.
"Oh, you silly kitty", she chuckled, giving Reza a scratch behind the ears (which he tolerated with the air of a monarch bestowing a great favour).
"That must have rolled off the counter last night when I was shelling peas for the stew."
Reza Shadey flicked his magnificent tail with an air of profound understanding that mere humans could never grasp.
"Humans", he thought with a sigh. "They understand so little of the delicate nature of feline comfort."
But as he settled back onto his now perfectly smooth, pea-free cushion, he couldn't help but think that perhaps — just perhaps — being quite so exquisitely sensitive was rather exhausting.
Still, it was all part of the burden of being the magnificent, the incomparable, the soon-to-be Chief Mouser...
Reza Shadey.
Night night. Sleep tight.