"I'll be good,"

the Senior Cat promised me, "I won't do anything I shouldn't do."
He was sitting there looking rather anxiously at me. His expression reminded me of a small boy being left alone for the first time.
Hmmm...
Middle Cat and I have our friend H... here for a few days. It is R and R for H so we aren't planning on doing a lot anyway but we do want to do a few small things. 
One of the problems at present is leaving the Senior Cat for more than a few hours. Until he fell in the bathroom I would have been happy enough to prowl off for a (short) day and have our neighbour from across the way casually "check" on him at around lunch time. She never minds doing that. I can do other things for her in return.
I was never happy about the Senior Cat making himself a cup of tea. He insists on  using a kettle "because jugs don't boil the water properly" and that means lighting the gas and making sure it is turned off properly and... well, you get the picture? Right.
But  yesterday Middle Cat decided H....needed to see a little place she had found. I hadn't seen it either. There is a cafe to one side and a garden/pet centre to the other. 
The Senior Cat promised he would not try to make himself a cup of tea. I didn't ask our neighbour to check on him. He said he was going to have a catnap and then do some "tidying" in his bedroom.
We went off and investigated the duck, the hen, the macaw, the parrot and the two budgies who live in the pet centre. It was also "cat adoption" day. Middle Cat cuddled the black and white cat up for adoption - and would have taken it home if she didn't already have two cats.  She had one little budgie sitting on her shoulder and "talking to her". H...took photographs of the other one and the parrot said "hello" to her. We all kept a good distance from the macaw. (She is a beautiful iridescent blue but her claws and beak look dangerous.) 
I prowled the plants and trees for sale... much too expensive unfortunately or I might have come home with some. The duck quacked at me. The hen gave me a quizzical look and flip flopped off.  I wondered what the Senior Cat was doing.
We arrived back several hours later. He was sitting reading a book.
       "I didn't do anything I shouldn't have done," he told me.
I suspect he spent most of the afternoon catnapping. He had a glass of ginger beer and read. He had done no tidying up.
That was fine with me.