Courtney Dave was the prettiest girl in England. Or so she told me. She grew up on a road not far from another road, and worked in the local convenience store selling convenience.

At the age of 12, Courtney began learning tap dancing. Although she wanted to learn ballet, her mother had suggested rather forcefully that she ‘might want to learn tap instead’. So every Thursday evening she tapped away until her feet were sore and her tutor was bored. By 14, her tutor had given up on her and she left tap dancing lessons and began to search for another hobby. After her 14 year old ex-tutor left, Courtney was forced to find a new hobby. When she could not find one she liked, Courtney decided to invent one. And this is when napkin parachuting was born.

You see, Courtney Dave liked the idea of falling from a great height, gliding through the air and then landing safely on the ground, but there was just one problem… she couldn’t be bothered to do it herself. So she decided she’d watch someone else do it instead. When none of her family or friends agreed to go parachuting whenever Courtney wanted them to, she decided to ask someone who could not reply.

After being told off for forcing her mute grandmother to go parachuting – which she very much enjoyed by the way, but nobody knew that because she couldn’t tell them – she was sent out into the garden to think about what she’d done. This was not an ideal punishment, as it only increased her longing to see someone fall from the sky. It was at this point the neighbour’s cat wandered into her garden and made itself comfortable on the patio next to a pile of napkins. This gave Courtney an idea. Quickly she grabbed a handful of napkins and began tying them to the poor cat’s paws, before tying the whole lot together to make one big sheet. After several minutes of struggling to do so, she picked the cat up and climbed up to her treehouse. When she reached the top of the treehouse she hurled the cat into the air and watched in amazement as the cat glided beautifully, if a little scared, through the air.

One thing Courtney Dave had not taken into account during her grand experiment was the weather, which just so happened to be very windy. This meant that the cat continued to glide through the air not just for a few minutes, but for several hours. The wind carried it away over many houses, down the road and off into the city. Courtney, who had now satisfied her lust for seeing an airborne kitty, climbed back down the tree and went inside to watch a cooking show on television.

Two days later there was a knock on the door. Courtney’s father, Malt, opened the door to find the neighbour crying her eyes out.
“What’s wrong Barbara?” he asked.
“I can’t find my Treacle.” she sobbed.
“Well I’m sure we have some we can lend you,” he replied, “Are you making pancakes?”
“No!” She wailed, “My cat, Treacle, has gone missing.”
“Oh,” Mr Dave said, “That is sad. I think I might have a cry myself.” And he did just that. As the two stood on the doorstep crying, Mrs Dave came to see what all the noise was about.
“What are you two crying about?” She asked.
“Treacle.” Mr Dave replied.
“Well I don’t like it much either,” Mrs Dave said, “But there’s no use crying about it.”
“Oh you don’t understand!” bawled the neighbour, “My cat’s gone missing.”
“Well if your cat’s gone missing, why are you coming round here crying about treacle?” Mrs Dave asked, now quite annoyed.
After several minutes of explanations, Mr and Mrs Dave agreed to help Barbara Smears look for her missing cat, just as soon as Coronation Street had finished.

Two days later they found Treacle the cat hanging off a washing line in Pimbrook Close just outside of Wales. The ordeal had affected Treacle seriously, and had even changed her fur colour from black to brown and she was so dazed that she didn’t recognise her owner. Mrs Smears took the cat home and cooked it a nice dinner of fish and chip flavour pot noodle.

Over the next few days, several things happened. Well, billions of things happened but only a few relevant to the story. Firstly, the real Treacle returned home with several army badges attached to it. Then Mrs Smears got a phone call from the police about a stolen cat, but she simply told them “I don’t know who stole your hat, now bugger off.” and she was later arrested for verbally assaulting a police officer. Finally, Courtney Dave had, in the absence of her parents, opened up a college teaching people how to make napkin parachutes for cats. So I must be off now as I have to get back to the second half of her wonderful class.