The woman. the cat and the wheelie bin

The woman. the cat and the wheelie bin

Welcome back to Listen to English after the summer break.

Many British people take their holidays in August. Our politicians are on holiday, so there is no political news. Our business and finance people are on holiday too, so there is not much business or financial news. And, worst of all, TV people and minor members of the royal family are on holiday, so there is no news about celebrities to keep us happy. Newspaper reporters still have to find stories to fill the newspapers, however, and in August they find some strange things to tell us about.

For example, in the past week we have all been entertained by the strange story of the cat in the wheelie bin. There is a YouTube video on the Listen to English website, which will show you what happened. In the video, we see a street. There are a few cars parked in the street, but there are no people anywhere. Perhaps they are all on holiday. In the foreground, there is a green object with a lid. It is a rubbish bin. Many British people have bins like this to put their domestic rubbish in. The bins have wheels on the bottom, so that it is easy to move them. We generally call them“ wheelie bins”. So, this is a video about an empty street with three parked cars and a wheelie bin. It is just about the most boring video ever.

Then a woman appears. She walks along the pavement past the wheelie bin. A cat jumps up on the wall beside her. The woman stops to stroke the cat, and to scratch it behind the ears, which cats love. Then she looks up and down the street. Perhaps she is looking to see if anyone else is around. Then she opens the lid of the wheelie bin, picks up the cat, puts the cat in the wheelie bin, and walks away. And the street is empty again, apart from the parked cars and the wheelie bin.

The cat stayed in the wheelie bin for15 hours before its owners rescued it. They wondered who had put it there. They had a security camera outside their house, and when they checked the recording, they found what you have just seen on the video. They told the newspapers and the TV what had happened, and for a few days we could read and watch all about the strange case of the cat in the wheelie bin.

People reacted to the video in one of two ways. Some people were outraged. How could someone do such a cruel thing to a little cat? Other people thought that it was one of the funniest things they had ever seen. Yes, alright, it was not good to put the cat in the wheelie bin, but it was also very funny. And we all wondered, why did the woman do this? Was she mad? Did she have a grudge against cats? Did she plan to put a cat in a wheelie bin that morning, or was it something she did on the spur of the moment?

Within hours of the video appearing on the internet, people telephoned the police to say that they knew who the woman was. A crowd of cat- loving people gathered outside her house, and the police had to come to tell them to go away. The woman says that she does not really know why she put the cat in the wheelie bin. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

And that is all the news from Listen to English. You always knew that the English were mad.