It Shouldn't Happen to an Estate Agent But...

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THE ONE ABOUT…………………………..The cat.

Back in our very early days, when we ran just one small office in The Square in Axbridge as ‘Annagram Property Services’, Neil and I used to work together just the two of us, so we shared a car for work.

One warm and sunny summer’s afternoon Neil had a busy afternoon of viewing appointments so off he went to his first one, leaving me to ‘man’ the office. The clock ticked by and after about an hour I was surprised that he hadn’t come back yet. Another half an hour passed, and by now I was getting a little anxious as he was getting a bit tight for time before his next appointment, and a quick glance across confirmed that the keys for that house were still ready and waiting for him on his desk.

Twenty minutes later, just as I was starting to get very concerned, the office phone rang. Answering it, a very flustered Neil was on the end of the line asking if I could please bring the house keys out to him in his car and that he would be outside the office in a few minutes time?

Perplexed, I waited outside. Sure enough, a few minutes later Neil screeched to a halt and the first thing I noticed was a cat looking angrily at me through the back window of his car. Neil wound down his driver’s window and one look at his face told me that all was not well! I gave him the keys but before I could ask any more questions Neil was off, with the cat still glaring at me as he drove away…

It was only much later when Neil returned to the office and had been suitably calmed down with a nice cup of coffee, that I got the whole story. Neil had arrived at the viewing and parked on the driveway of the first house, but as it was a country property and it was a hot day he had left his car windows wound down. His viewers had taken a long time to view the house and so after they had left he quickly jumped back in his car but it was only when he was a few miles into the journey that he became aware of a loud ‘mewing’ sound. He slowly turned around to investigate and came face to face with a very angry looking cat, perched on his back seat. He’s not sure who was more startled!

Short on time, so unable to take the cat back home, Neil wound the car windows up to keep it safely on board, came back to the office, picked up keys and headed off to his next two viewings, all the while carrying an extra passenger! Finally, a good two hours later, he was able to return to the first house and deposit the cat back on the drive from whence he came. To this day we’ll never know if the owner was ever aware that Neil had inadvertently ‘kidnapped’ his cat for an entire afternoon, but Neil learnt his lesson and never left his car windows down when parked at a client’s property ever again!

Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed this story. Next edition is about 'The Blue toner!'