Squirming

I used to think I had the signs of bad motherhood pegged. The desire for a glass of wine as your small bundle of joy greets you at 3.15 with a shriek of rage because you have, yet again, brought the wrong biscuits.

The outright refusal to read any bedtime story that bores you.

The occasional refusal to read anything at all.

The tendency to substitute Franklin the Turtle with whatever you're desperate to finish reading for your book club. (I can tell you now that few 7-year olds relate to Primo Levi. More fool them, perhaps).

But today, I have surpassed myself.

Readers, I forgot to worm the cat. No, more accurately, I thought I had wormed the cat but it turned out, I can only assume, that I mixed up the sachets of combined flea and worm treatment and flea and tick treatment and administered the wrong one.

And saw the consquences - bits of a tapeworm nestled cosily in the undercarriage of my cat's fur, apparently sharing a laugh and a joke about the humorous ability of primitive lifeforms to ruin an indequate mother's day before preparing to voyage further afield - obviously to attack my children with their toxoplasmosis-harbouring worm buddies - who, for all I know, were staging a pre-dawn invasion with the slugs showing them the way.

I was there at the vets just before opening time, thanking my lucky stars that it was Bad Lindy's morning off. Normally, she's doing her meeting and greeting act at the door, shrugging on her overalls with exaggerated difficulty, embonpoint pointing out into the street like weapons on a disputed border crossing.

The cat was caught, wormed and forbidden re-entry by 9.00 am. As I type, she's circling the house, mewing, tail held high, the better to display the evidence of failed worm control policy. I've put out food. I've even put out a towel for her to sleep on but I am still guilt-ridden.

Every time one of the children blinks, I assume they're going blind.

"Don't mention the cat," I keep saying to the children. "And do you have any flu-like symptoms? Or worms?"

They look at me as if I'm mad. (Is madness a symptom of toxoplasmosis, or am I merely mad?)

But I'm not really mad. Because the icing on the cake is that in less than twenty four hours my in-laws will be here, testing my cooking, my childrens' manners and, though they don't realise it yet, my emergency parasite management skills.

And it's all completely and utterly my own fault.