My darling dear had a terribly close call while driving to the shops recently. An auld wan pulled out right in front of him, on a wet road, when he had a young wan about a meter and a half off his bumper. (For the non-Irish: wan means woman, basically just ‘one’ but rarely used for men.) Cars coming the other way, too. He made the quick decision to pass the old dear right snappy, nearly clipping her wing mirror in the action, and facing down the oncoming traffic. He made it, and left the young woman tailgating his arse to deal with the slow car instead.

Braking hard would have made a sandwich of our Mini, and steering while under ABS braking isn’t ideal. So he went for it, as I would have too, because while the Mini is 11 years old and just went over 125,000 miles on Friday, she is quick when you need her to be. I trust in that car daily when faced with slow arseholes behind slower tractors going around hard curves on narrow ass roads.

There is a dammed good reason Minis are used as rally cars!

As usual, I’ve gone off into a story instead of getting to my point. Which is entirely based on the Facebook update he did after arriving home: “Many thanks to the lady who pulled out in front of me (doing 65mph) today. If I braked, Ms tailgater behind would’ve been on my lap so boot to the floor into oncoming traffic & bye. Missed her wing mirrors by inches & lost one of my cat lives.”

Cat lives… we say that cats have nine lives, of course. I know hubby has had some bad times and if he thinks this is a number down, I believe him. I know of one other time he came close. So unless I want to get him all grumpy thinking about other times, I’ll say he still has seven. In reality, it’s probably six, but I don’t want to put him in a bad mood by asking. Maybe five. Who knows. Four? Sure there was at least one close call when he was very small.

I already did one post about a time I could have died, so I won’t go into the others. That post was gory enough!

How many cat lives out of nine do you have left? Tell me a story or write a post and link back if you find it’s a really good story!