Last night we had to lift the front door mat. This is part of the continuing saga of persuading the kitten to start doing the toilet business outside.
The little furry shitbag decided that initially it would use the backroom – the door mats, the play mats – and then one morning after a night outside thought it best to celebrate coming indoors by curling one out in the corner on the carpetless kitchen floor.
The next stop was the before I came home from work, smearing her less than solid waste all over the front door rug. The rug was so wasted that it couldn’t be saved: no amount of Dettol would remove the pungent aroma; it was either a dark stain or a bleach created white mark.
Under this rug is a recess in the floor. In that recess has been a nice, thick, and itchy looking door mat, just to keep the floor level. We’ve never thought to lift the door mat before. This evening we did. And underneath we found some bits of board, boards that weren’t consistent in size. Initially they just looked like, well, bits of board assembled together to fill the recess, like a puzzle which had some practical end.
It’s only when we turned the boards over we realised the boards were a hoard of oil paintings. We know nothing more, except that the lady in the blue seems to be wearing a dress from the ’50s. And it’s that last touch, the dated feel of one of the pictures that makes the discovery exciting, but also quite spooky.
