101 USES FOR A DEAD CAT part 2 (Languedoc)

I may well have posted this photo before? Taken on an evening's walk around St.Pons when the streets were deserted and silent, I rounded a corner and was fixed with a steely stare by this coven of cats. Who thought half a dozen little kittys could be frightening, it was all too Hitchcock like.

Anyway - back to the dead cat.

I was weeding in the garden and the porte d'entree swung open and there was our neighbour, oh, oh I thought. 'Viens ici,ecoute moi' - come here and listen to me - I'm in trouble. From there on my grasp of the conversation went way down hill. I got in first with my sincere apologies about the death of her cat and told a massive fib as I gestured up the garden vaguely and said the cat was under the ground (eluding to a christian burial and not under the local infill site). She to be honest did not seem particularly grieve stricken, (but I suppose it had occurred months previously so she was over it). The main thrust of her conversation was that she wanted me to get a large stone to cover up the rotten corner of the garage door so it couldn't happen again. I tried to explain my view that wasn't the problem, but she was very, very insistent on the rock solution and we were now standing outside the garage door, I having got her out of the garden and well away from the non existent grave. From here on the conversation went pear shaped, and bless her for the first time a French person actually spoke slowly and repeated themselves - I have always found they never make allowances for foreigners, much the same as English people just taking more loudly, French just keep going at a machine fire pace, each assuming whatever they are taking about will eventually sink in. O.K there was something about 'fenestras', and as she pointed up to a window that must be langue d'Oc for fenetres (windows) but we also had a bit about 'couronnes', which to me was french for crown - which I mimed on my head, and she just laughed. Looking later in the dictionary it is also french for wreath so that kinda makes sense under the circumstances! And then there was an awful lot about 'contessa/quantessa'?? I'd no idea, not a baldy notion and still don't. But at least I'd given her a laugh with my stupidity and she went on her way.
A couple of days later I spotted her up the street and said Husband had fixed the door and she said she'd seen it and it was a good job, and then she went off topic and it all resulted in more befuddled amusement for her and annoyance for me, I try to learn french and they go and speak in a dialect I defy a Parisian to comprehend, but I guess I could have been even more annoyed, if no.1 son had been there, he would have probably got every word. I'm just too old for all this.