Regular readers of this blog will remember that one of my cats recently suffered a terrible fate under the wheels of my neighbour’s car. He was badly injured, underwent expensive surgery, but unfortunately did not pull through and is now a sadly lamented ex-cat.

You will also remember that my neighbour’s motoring insurance offered me €750 compensation for the cat, but declined to pick up the full medical bill (just more than double the sum) on the grounds that it exceeded the value of the dead cat. Moreover, aspersions were cast by the aforementioned insurer, regarding the cat’s own complicity in its demise. In short, there was weasling out of responsibility and mud-slinging.

My neighbour is a German lady of some resource though. She was not satisfied by her insurer’s stingy response. And as the possessor of that quintessential German necessity – a Rechtschutzversicherung (legal insurance) – she took them to task.

The upshot, readers, is that there has been significant dead cat inflation in Germany. Little more than a month ago a dead cat was deemed to be worth €750, all in. In the latest missive from the insurers, the dead cat is valued at €1500. I shall be rummaging through my attic for dead cats later!

The catch (there is always a catch when dealing with German bureaucracy), was that by way of revenge, the insurer sent me a completely nonsensical and difficult set of forms to fill in, in order to claim the rest of the money. (Please excuse the paw prints on the image below – one of my living cats was curious about the procedure and inspected the form rather too closely. )

As you will see, before paying me the remaining €750 the insurer was first keen to find out whether my dead cat was actually receiving funds from a private or state health insurance. They were also suspicious that he might have been claiming a state pension at the time of his demise… or possibly unemployment benefits or other social contributions.

Personally I abhor the insinuation that my deceased cat might have been a benefits cheat. He was an assiduous mouser in his day, and apart from a certain tendency to narcolepsy – which he never claimed benefits for – he was an honest, hardworking moggie. So there!