A Cat Called Kat

Chapter Two - On The Hatefulness Of Lettuce

The little flat above the restaurant was already full to overflowing, of course. The twins were snuggled together into one bed - Giovanna said they usually ended up sleeping like that anyway - so Terri had adopted the spare bed in their room. Dr Nil was sleeping on the floor in their little living room and Zi'Anna was managing to sleep sitting up in the armchair in Mr Bossy's room whilst keeping half an eye on him.

So, after the long wait for the bathroom, I collapsed into bed with Terri. It was just a small single bed but, after the desperate fear and the loneliness of the last couple of days, followed by the horror of Master's coma, it was a relief to be able to snuggle up tight with my sister.

But somehow, even though her arms were wrapped around me, I could tell Terri's mind was on other things.

"Vertical expansion!" she said at last.

"You what?" I responded sleepily. I was totally knackered after spending the last two nights on trains and, anyway, Mr Grumpy wasn't in any state to grumble about my English!

"Vertical expansion!" she repeated excitedly.

I sort of guessed this was some sort of plan for fitting more beds into the little flat but in my befuddled state I really couldn't make much sense of it.

But she was obviously way too excited by her idea to let me sleep so I gave a huge yawn - without bothering to cover my mouth - and then I made a funny sort of grunty noise at her to let her know that I didn't have a clue what she was going on about.

"There are two ways of growing a business," she explained, "horizontal expansion, the restaurant puts in more tables and things; or vertical expansion, where you take over more elements of the supply chain."

I seemed to remember something about this from the business study stuff... but I still had no real idea what she was going on about... and I still really wanted to sleep.

"We can't really increase the number of tables - there's not enough room and, anyway, there are only so many people who want to go to a restaurant in La Conia..."

She did a bit of a dramatic pause thing.

"But Uncle Alfredo buys in a lot of his ingredients... salads and vegetables and things... pre-prepared. If he starts buying in raw materials instead, he can reduce costs and improve his profit margins.

I guess that made sense in a fuzzy, sleepy sort of a way.

Anyway, she seemed happy enough with her idea because, at long last, she settled down and let me sleep.

But, within a couple of days, I'd learnt what vertical expansion really meant. And I'd decided that I really hated lettuce.

Not eating it. It was alright, I suppose... not very exciting but alright.

Just cleaning the stuff.

The whole idea had made whole heaps of sense when Terri had been explaining the idea to Uncle Alfredo the next morning.

But what it meant in practice is that I had to clean and prepare about a million lettuces per day.

And, if I left the slightest smudge of dirt... or the smallest, most inoffensive of creepy crawlies... on the stuff, I had to deal with Uncle Alfredo.

And he wasn't angry. Oh no! Uncle Alfredo didn't do angry.

But he was disappointed.

And, to be honest, I would much rather deal with angry!

And when I'd finished with the lettuce, I had the tomatoes and onions to look forward to!

At least I had the occasional break from lettuce polishing to play with the big pizza dough mixing machine. It was a huge thing that took about a ton of flour and mixed it into the dough that they used to make their delicious pizzas.