The Big Read: What would Mingus do?

I was queuing for the ATM yesterday when I noticed a sign saying "Please allow the handicapped and physically challenged to move to the front of the line".

That seemed reasonable. That's definitely something I would do. I basked a moment in that warm glow of Christmassy goodwill and self-approval. What a very good man I am. And as I basked, a man in a wheelchair rolled up behind me.

This was a conundrum. Should I wave him ahead of me? Obviously he's physically challenged in some way, but the thing is, he's sitting down. He's more comfortable than I am. If anything, a guy in a wheelchair should allow me to go ahead of him. Plus, I don't want to be patronising. Just because his legs don't work, that doesn't mean he wants to be treated like someone's pregnant grandmother. But what does he think? Is he glaring at me? Is he about to take a photo of me standing in the queue ahead of him and post it on Twitter so that people hiss at me and form a mob? I don't know what to do.

If only I could just step up and draw my money and avoid this dilemma, but in front of me is one of those characters who pores over their statement like it's the CIA torture report, and then transfers R10 from one account to the other, R1 at a time. I have to make a decision.

I turn to the chap in the wheelchair and give him a smile. Fortunately he's white, so I didn't have to worry about "white smile" issues. Often when I'm unsure which of two things to do, I do a third unrelated thing. The wheelchair guy's wearing a T-shirt with a cat on it, so I start telling him about Charles Mingus's cat-training techniques.

As you certainly know, although actually I'm not sure the guy in the wheelchair does, Mingus was a legendary jazz double-bassist and composer, a heroin addict, an apostle of cool and a musical visionary. But besides being a hep-cat he was also a cat-fancier, and shared his New York apartment with a fine furry friend named Nightlife.

Some time during the hard-bopping year of 1954, Mingus wrote a handsome booklet illustrated with a photograph of Nightlife, who perches on the edge of a toilet seat, tail lifted, ignoring the camera with a dignified air of regal feline disdain. The booklet is called The Charles Mingus CAT-alog for Toilet Training Your Cat.

Mingus had high hopes for his book. He made it available through mail order and tried to sell it after concerts on some kind of rudimentary merchandising table. Man cannot live on jazz alone, he must have figured - it was time to diversify his commercial operations to tap into the growing demographic of apartment-dwellers who love their kitties but not the litter box.

The booklet provides detailed instructions for replacing your litter box with a cardboard box the same size (Mingus helpfully explains that the supermarket might be able to help out), and replacing the kitty litter with crumpled newspaper. There then follows an exquisitely patient process of incrementally moving the box around your apartment, describing a luxurious arc towards the bathroom, gradually trimming down the box's brim as you go.

The key moment comes when you are ready to move the box to the toilet. There are directions for cutting slashes in the side and securing it to the bowl with lengths of string. "Don't bug the cat now," Mingus urges, "don't rush him, because you might throw him off."

When the cat has followed the box up high and used it for a couple of days, cut a small hole in the centre of the box, less than apple-sized. Now begins the slow process of widening the hole and cutting down the box until one day the cardboard just disappears altogether, and you have a city-dwelling, apartment-friendly, scat-savvy, toilet-trained cat. Mingus claimed the process lasts three to four weeks but Mingus was genius; you should probably budget for longer.

I have a sense the man in the wheelchair was wondering why I was telling him all this, and to be honest, I don't know myself. I don't even know if he had a cat of his own: he might have just been borrowing a friend's T-shirt. But it was Christmas time, and I didn't have a Christmas story to tell, so I figured Charles Mingus's feline toilet-training technique would do just as well.

It has been a good year. I have enjoyed writing for you more than I can say, and I'm deeply grateful for all your kind words in return. I hope 2014 ends well for you, and 2015 starts even better. I'll see you all next year.