C is for Classroom Cat-astrophe!

Welcome to my posts for the A to Z Challenge 2016.

This year, I am posting 

Special School Stories

 tales from either my time as a teacher or teaching assistant within classrooms in the U.K. or from my own school days growing up around the country

The interconnecting door between our classrooms flung open and a child shouted “Come quick, Mrs Turner needs you.”

My wonderful teaching assistant leapt into action to take over and I raced through the door wondering what calamity had occurred.  I found Mrs. Turner standing on her desk and her poor T.A. up on a chair too.  The children in the classroom looked slightly perplexed at the situation but the majority had remained seated with only the odd one huddling by the classroom door.

“Oh Mrs P, you like cats,” Mrs Turner cried and pointed towards the open window the other side of the classroom.  It was then that I realised that two black cats were slinking their way across the carpet obviously having jumped through the window.

“No problem,” I replied and making my way through the children’s desks I approached.  Both cats came straight towards me, tails up in greeting.  It was so easy scooping them up, one under each arm and then asking one of the children to open the door onto the playground where I deposited them.

I turned to go back in through the classroom door only to have one cat scoot through between my legs and its sibling jump effortlessly through the open window again!  By this time, the children were all up out of their seats wanting to watch what was happening so it was a little trickier rounding both cats up again.

“Can someone close the window, please and the outside door?” I asked and this time took the pair around the corner of the school into the school garden. Putting them down, I gave them both a bit of fuss before legging it back and letting myself in through the main school door without them.

I returned to my class and our English lesson wondering why on earth two cats would be so desperate to get into a school classroom full of children on such a hot, sunny day and how in all the years I had known Mrs Turner and her assistant I had never known they were both so scared of cats!  

Not that I am disparaging that - if it had been a tarantula then I’d have been standing on a chair on top of the desk!!

So now it’s your turn – have you had to step in when someone’s phobia got the better of them?  What animal would make you jump on top of your desk?  Or alternatively, which animal would have you running to pick it up?