Thus I found myself dialling Mr Cat's phone number. As a gentle refresher this person is very good friends with my CEO and was working for a well known, publicly listed, financial services company. The original strategy had been for him to introduce me to his 'contact list' in the middle east and in return his bank would be provided with a glorious amount of trades to execute, making monies for his company. In truth, the arrangement seemed to be limited introductions to friends he enjoyed entertaining whilst we provided them with some of the biggest currency trades they had executed in the region. Occasionally he would pass on a name from a print article which I had invariably already seen thanks to my trusty google alerts system. Nevertheless, attempting some degree of magnanimity, I will try and think of any brilliant Mr Cat introductions garnered. No luck really, aside from one of the local Sovereign Wealth Funds, the introductions were extremely limited. 

We did manage a trip to Oman that involved meeting a variety of pension funds (none of whom were able to invest for a few years thanks to the re-organisation of their entire pension fund system, which was handy). But in reality this trip involved tagging along on a pitching exercise that had already been organised by one of Mr Cat's colleagues as they were trying to garner interest in there trading platform. I do wish to highlight every trip has a silver lining and my sliver of metal was witnessing my chairman's sleep paralysis during meetings for the very first time. At one stage a gentle snoring emanated from his frame as we met with the CEO of Oman's Police Pension Fund. Their generous offers of strong local coffee served in shot glasses were enthusiastically accepted, and this worked until around coffee number seven. As I was still extremely unconfident about my knowledge of the fund I'm sure the Pension Fund community in Oman were astonished when forced to deal with a mute person (myself) and a narcoleptic chairman. 

So I dialled Mr Cat's phone number to find out why a vast number of distressed staff, friends and neighbours seemed to be crammed onto his couch late at night, moaning about cats. 

Mr Cat answered promptly not surprisingly (it was definitely one of those times I wanted the dulcet tones of voicemail), and at first the conversation was strained but at least civil. I was genuinely full of empathy knowing how loved these animals were and just as genuinely baffled as to what had happened. The jist of this intense mystery was that one of the cats had gone missing, and it was assumed one of the inhabitants of the house had led them to freedom, I mean let them out. So Mr Cat probed with military type questioning as to my timing, cat visuals, door locking procedure and peripheral perception of surrounding enemies upon vacation of the premises. I answered a little vaguely as to the exact deployment and timing regarding my last sighting of the cats, and this apparently was my first mistake. Not having lived at the house for any extended period (three weeks to be exact) I was ill equipped to notice the  intimate, detailed movements of the aforementioned moggies. My second mistake was to misunderstand the intensity and depth of love for these pets. I am an animal lover and to prove this fact, this very minute I have just cleaned up the vomitous mess my friends puppy has lavishly layed out on the couch (cmon that is love). Although I reticently confess the puppy managed to consume some of it back up as my stomach churned in revolt.  Nonetheless, being accused of causing his wife to look at suicide as an option to the cat never coming back is serious infatuation.

So this was the first part of the call that was to change the next year for me...