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The Cat Lady (part 1)
Ain't this a bitch… I haven’t seen her for more than twenty years and now she went on and gotten herself killed…
A few days ago I got a call from an estate lawyer or something asking me to come back to London. I haven’t been home since I was kicked out. It’s not my home anymore. I left London when I was eighteen and I haven’t been back since.
“Lord Howard..” The testatrix began her deliberation… however I had to cut her off.
“You know very well I am not a lord.”
“Yes, well, my mistake, please forgive me” she tried to apologize. “Mr Howard, or Nathan, can I call you Nathan? First please allow me to extend my deep condolences for the tragic death of your mother, the Baroness of Escrick…”
The Howards were never Lords. Although we descend from an old minor nobility on the Walsh cost somewhere, however my mother was a Baroness, and now that she had died in that helicopter crash, I guess I’m stuck with that stupid title if nothing else. So I let that Lawyer who wanted to fuck my brains ever since she met me in the airport and drove me all the way to her office this morning. Well, what else would you call wearing a mini skirt that barely managed to come to her thighs amount to? Okay. Maybe I was exaggerating.
“Mr Howard,” the Lawyer with the skimpy skirt tried to jolt me back to life so she can finish reading my mother’s will. I wasn’t really interested in what she had to say. I knew what my mothers’s will said. She told me that herself, the day she threw me out of her life more than twenty years ago. “I’m going to bequeath all our estate to charity,” the righteous and honorable Baroness said. “You don’t deserve any of it..” were the last words I heard before I was cut off from everything I own and left to fend for myself as a truck driver. Don’t mind me. I’m proud to have become a truck driver. I didn’t start out as a truck driver. It took me ten years working all sorts of blue-collar jobs in the US until I finally managed to become a good truck driver. As I said, I am proud to be a truck driver. It’s the only job I’m good at.
“Eehemmmm.. Mr Howard,” the Lawyer raised her voice again. “Are you okay Nathan?” She was concerned. “Shall I continue reading your mother’s will? Or do you want to go home and rest before we do this? I know you’re jet lagged….” She tried to put her hand on my knee as she was saying that. I believe she was concerned…or maybe I was exaggerating.
I stood up wanting to leave this office. I don’t know why I came here in the first place. “You brought me all the way from the States to tell me my mother is giving everything to charity. Why? You could have sent a letter or an email…”
“Oh no. nooo Mr Howard.” She smiled as she tried to explain. “I believe your mother is giving everything to you.”
“SAY WHAT!?!?” I shouted. That can’t be true.
I grabbed the papers from the lawyer’s hand wanting to read my mother’s will for myself. Of course I did not understand a word of what was inside. I barely managed to finish my O’ level in the U.K. twenty years ago. This was all written in legal jargon pretty much alien to me. So I gave back those papers to the expert in the room and slumped back into my chair waiting for her to explain.
She pretended to look at the will in her hand which she must have read a thousand time before to make sure my mother was not out of her mind. I wasn’t really the epitome of all that wealth. All three billion pound of it. Knowing my history with money, I would not have given me a pence of it if it was me. So why did she?
“It’s all here Mr Howard, every single penny,” the lawyer tried to explain. “If you sign those papers we will go ahead and transfer all your mother’s estate to you, under one condition.”
Here we go. I knew there was a catch somewhere. “What condition?” My mother was everything but stupid. I should have realized she would want something in return.
“Well, according to this you will have to take care of all her cats until their peaceful demise.”
“HER WHAT?” I think I shouted that.
“Yes well, her cats,” I think the lawyer tried hard not to laugh as she was explaining that condition. “I believe the last count was seven. And yes, well, one I believe is about to give birth. So I’m not sure how many you will end up with.”
“You’re fucking joking!!!”
“Oh no no. I don’t fucking joke in those matters,” the lawyer smirked as she was emphasizing the fucking in her remark. “I have been your mother’s close confidante and legal attorney for years now. And I assure you I don’t fuck around. Unless..Yes, well, …Okay let’s finish this. It’s getting late…” she was blushing… exaggerating my arse…
So by the end of that day I was the proud owner of more than one Billion Sterling Pounds in cash, more than fourteen thousand acres of farm land. Six hundred thousand shares in all kinds of companies I do not know anything about, as well as the lord of a manor in Wales that I had no idea our family even owned among other real estate in London and elsewhere, and finally I was sworn in as the caretaker of seven cats and counting. And I definitely am not exaggerating when I say I managed to hire my first legal attorney with a skimpy skirt… Ain’t life a bitch.
Note: The Baronet of Escrick was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1628 for Edward Howard, a member of the influential Howard family. The title became extinct on the death of the fourth Baron, in 1715.
Above picture is the Arms of the Baron Howard of Esrick
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