You learn lots of interesting things about your fellow stand-up comedians while waiting around for a gig to start; preying that an audience will actually turn up on a Thursday evening in the middle of a council estate in Westbourne Park. Take tonight for example at the Retro Bar. A few of us were just chewing the fat and killing time, when somehow the conversation made its way round to Scott Rutterford and his love/hate relationship with cats.
"I hate my cat," Scott explained. "It eats better than I do. Every evening and I get home and have to cook it fresh fish."
Clearly something you would do for a creature you hate - serve it up a delicious bass (as Napoleon Dynamite would say).
"But I thought you said you were a vegetarian?" Aatif Nawaz - our MC for the evening -
asked.
"Oh yeah I am, but the cat likes fresh fish. So every week I at the supermarket I end up buying budget food for myself just so I can afford the fresh fish and chicken."
You can almost imagine the James Bond villain going through the same scenario with his cat.
But this was just the start of Scott's rant. For the next 10 minutes, I listened on with fellow comics, including Jonny Freeman and Gary Southam, as Scott explained how down-trodden he felt living with his feline-friend.
"He waits for me to get home from work to feed him, and then he buggers off into my flatmates room. He doesn't even spend any time with me," he continued as the smallest violin in the world played in the background. And for the record, this cat barks like a dog, has a hunchback, and sh*ts on the floor.
"Why did you even bother to get a cat if you don't like them," Aatif asked the question that was clearly on everyone's mind.
"Oh," Scott said waving his hand in the air. "I didn't buy the cat. He just happened to walk into the house one day and because I cooked him a bit of fresh fish, he decided to hang around."
Yep, somewhere out there a small child is crying themselves to sleep every night, hoping her pet cat Tiddles will eventually return. That's what we comedians do - we sprinkle a little bit of joy wherever we can!
