There's a pigeon under my bed

Four years ago, on my way to my girlfriend's place to stay the night for the first time I was pretty nervous, not because I was a young Englishman who'd just moved to a big foreign city where the men pride themselves as being the world's finest lovers*, and not because I was carrying a cheap, probably disgusting bottle of wine that i'd bought because it had a nice label. No I was nervous because she lived with a cat. Or rather the cat lived with her. A nightmare for me because i'm allergic to cats, dogs, hamsters, parrots & pretty much any other animal someone might choose to keep as a pet. Now whilst I can get through a dinner or a few drinks chez a pet owner, sleeping over is another kettle of fish (incidentally im fine with fish & have a goldfish named Brains). But I thought I have to give it a go, maybe i'd be able to cope. However as soon as I arrived at her apartment I felt my eyes starting to water, my chest wheezing & my nose blocking up & this got worse as the evening went on. Not the most enticing thing for a woman, a wheezing man looking like he's crying & constantly blowing his nose. So I left. Not a complete disaster though because she still wanted to see me, & accepted that it was better if she always came to my place, which I liked not only because I wasn't allergic to my place but also because it saved me quite a bit of time & bother travelling on line 13. So if you meet a girl who owns a cat & you're not fond of travelling, tell her you have a cat allergy & she'll have to come to yours. That is the moral of the story.
But wait a minute you might be thinking, what about the pigeon under the bed?! Well, one day I had an urgent call from my girlfriend telling me to come round to her apartment. I grabbed a few packs of tissues & an asthma spray & jumped on the metro. On arriving I noticed pigeon feathers all over her floor & furniture, must be the latest decorating trend in Paris I thought but no apparently the cat had brought back a pigeon & my job was to find the pigeon & get rid of it (put it outside, not kill it). Im probably the worst qualified person for this job but pretended I could manage & hunted around the apartment for a scared, possibly wounded pigeon. Luckily for me I didn't find it & concluded that it had either escaped or been thrown out by the cat the same way it came in. I went home feeling relieved that I hadn't come face to face with a pigeon that needed evicting. Two days later, in the middle of the night, my girlfriend was awoken by a coo coo (pigeon noise). Panicking she jumped up & realised the sound was coming from under her bed. Probably the only place I hadn't checked to look & as a result she'd been sleeping on top of a pigeon for 2 nights! This time she called her mum & together they lifted the mattress & removed the perfectly happy looking pigeon before the cat could pounce. My girlfriend was a bit traumatised after this & would wake up in the night hearing a coo coo & not be able to go back to sleep before she was sure there were no pigeons squatting in her apartment. Fortunately for me she didn't blame me too much for not checking under her bed. Now we're married & because of my allergies don't have a cat, so we shouldn't be seeing a problem like this again!


*Although they're not.