Mum's Hotel Place or The Jungle Book

Proper name is La Perla, but we call it Mum's Hotel Place because Mum once stayed in the hotel next door when Chaislongue and Lo Jardiner came to visit. Today, it nearly received another name.

I often work here to take advantage of their good wifi and the buzz that being out and about always gives me. Today's visit reminded me that there are few things, maybe only one thing, that I am prepared to kill for. And that is the day's newspaper! The worst situation is to have boarded a flight without one. I eye what those around me are reading and become agitated. I am alert to possible 'fold and store' moments and get ready to pounce with the smile of a baby but the intent of a panther. If one does not come about, it is all I can do to stop myself lashing out with extended claws to drag one to me - that it would be ripped to shreds on arrival would be no obstacle to my devouring every word.

Imagine my state today when I saw the only copy of La Vangaurdia newspaper in Mum's Hotel Place open on the table of a thick set man across the way. It was pinned down by his elbows as he texted someone . . . and texted and texted and texted. I looked away and then back. I shifted in my seat. A woman appeared and sat opposite him. They appeared to be friends and it looked as if their encounter would last at least ten minutes, maybe more. The man's elbows continued to pin down the journal, open at a spread of international news. I could see a photo of President Hollande with a Muslim cleric. I itched and squirmed. Five seconds proved too much. Instinctively and with feline grace I approached his table unnoticed. My enquiry was Bageehra smooth. 'Is that the your newspaper or the restaurant's?'
He looked up, panicked. 'Em . . . it's the restaurant's . . . ' He swithered for a second but a sixth sense told him that not to release it would risk my claws across his throat. 'Take it,' he said. My giant paw deftly swept the paper off the table and I returned to my corner, yellow eyes softening and a purr rising in my throat.