London bricks: encrusted with snow

Side order of icicles

Today seems like a good idea to come up with Gedankenexperiment III, featuring a cat.

Probably my cat. The cat that shat on the bathroom mat in the middle of the night… before commencing loud miagolare so that those that serve her might wake up, let her out and clear up the mess.

Gedankenexperiment 1: The Buttered Cat Paradox

Feeding the cat – an epilogue

I returned the neighbours keys yesterday. I hope your cat is alright I said, I never saw it once. By the way is it a he or a she?

Oh, he’s a he. And you wouldn’t have seen it because it was shut in the wardrobe. We heard it miaowing and let it out when we got home. He was very grateful and ate three packets of food.

Oh dear, I said. I must have been feeding a fox with all that cat food I left outside. I think it was a fox because when I wasn’t leaving cat food outside in a bowl the creature was ripping into the black bags of rubbish that I kindly meant to leave out for the dustman in my neighbours absence… After all who wants to come home to a smelly heap of rubbish torn out of your black bags? Not me.

Then the neighbours gave me the ‘thank you’ gift for taking good care of their cat and said that being on holiday with the dog was a bit restricting. I obviously then volunteered to take care of the dog as well next time they are away. Hopefully they’ve got double wardrobes.

It’s not funny though, is it?

It's a disgrace says Kevin

Feeding the cat

I am ‘looking after’ a neighbour’s cat whilst they are on holiday.  So far, I have not seen any evidence of said cat, which is a bit of a worry.  On Monday, when I was in there doing my duties, someone knocked on the door.  A young man, quite good looking, slightly earnest.  I can’t remember what his opening gambit was but I quickly replied, oh, I don’t live here (meaning don’t try and sell me something).

He looked at me quizzically, so I qualified with, I am just feeding the cat.

Oh that’s a good one, he said.  I’ve not heard that before…

It would have been quite marvellous if he’d knocked at my actual house when he was working the other side of the street and I would have taken great delight in repeating the line at my own front door, but when I got in, he had already been.

Clearly, he’d not been reading the signs…

Ok, it is in a posher part of town, but still

A Holding Pattern Post

I have this post in the pipeline that is taking ages to do, it’s not even that long, but it’s causing me problems. I thought I might finally have cracked it this morning but actually I haven’t.

So rather than leave a blank space on a Saturday morning I thought I would share this.

The kids wanted pancakes for breakfast, a reasonably regular request. The thing is, since the kitchen got plastered, everything has been in a state of flux. Half the kitchenalia is hiding in the dining room and things are commuting between the two rooms on the misery line. In fact, I have given up trying to keep track; the kitchen is like the enemy within at the moment. So the pancake batter is made, but we can’t locate the frying pan. In complete harmony with my defeatist outlook, I sat down and the kids went off to investigate. They came back initially and reported that it should be by the toolbox: it was not. Then after some time had elapsed they came back and said it had turned up and could I go and get on with making a breakfast stack.

Where was it? I said.

Under the dog’s bed! they replied.

How, how is this possible? I wonder.

Just don’t go there… what is left of my rational mind whimpers.

I love my pets but… (title shamelessly plagiarised from Old Stokie)

I have spent the night with the dog pinning my legs down and the cat perched on me as if I were the shed roof on a sunny day.

Then there is my one wish about pets: to be free of their hair. Actually, that’s my one wish. If a fairy ever visited me and offered me wishes I wouldn’t want money or endless wishes, I would just want to be an anti-magnetic device for animal hair. When I had dogs to begin with in my mid 20s I went through rolls of sticky tape weekly. I could not tolerate a single hair on my clothes. My mother is the same now. She has two dogs, but you wouldn’t catch a stray pet hair on her. Not in a million years. I think she does a lot of hoovering.

Now my “standards” have slipped terribly. My two measures are to tell the girls not to roll round on the floor (hairs in their hair) and I usually give the settees a quick bash with a hair-covered cushion before I sit down. Then the dog comes and leans all over me anyway, leaving my left arm covered in cream hairs. The cat hair is worse, it can sort of float around in the ether before coming to rest where you don’t want it.

Once I bought some magic US scraping device in New York that was meant to easily get hairs off upholstery and so forth. It did not. So this is my mother’s top tip for pet hair removal: scrape affected areas whilst wearing a rubber glove. I have modified that slightly and find that a quick scrape with a Havaianas flip-flop does an excellent job too and you don’t even have to bend down. Except I can’t use the method on the cashmere cardies.

Thank Goodness

I’ve been thrown a distraction. The lovely Daisy of our family is a super-talented student of computer graphic design, or something similarly whizzy. I am now a sufficiently aged aunt to be allowed not to remember the detail of things which is quite nice I must say. Anyway, she has asked on Facebook for votes on her graphic novel illustration which is #7 in this link.

I don’t know what the brief was, but it seems to involve cats which is fine by me. Daisy has also reinterpreted the white fluffy cat image in an attractive but kickass way which is very much to my liking, but you are free to make your own decision. I’m not going to sit to your left glaring at you in a Simon Cowellesque manner to make you agree with me. Much.

Go Daisy

There’s been some austerity measures

round these sides too this week. I have been dry as dust for the last two days and have probably saved about a fiver that I am going to send off to “our” national debt as DavCam has it.

Unfortunately, the health benefits of this regime remain to be seen. I am not springing out of bed ready to greet the new day with bright eyes and bushy tail, I am just groaning and wondering why I drank so much and stayed up so late. That’s before I remember I didn’t touch a drop and went to bed whilst the fat farmyard cat was reading the depressing daily news @ ten.

The neighbours can’t see the benefits either. One greeted me just now. She said:

Have you been clubbing all night then?

Thanks for that. I’ll have to stock up.

An Upgrade

In my dream land I am upgrading the “family” car to this for continental touring purposes.

The new 5 series for 2011 with extended boot!

In my real life the only upgrade I can afford is this one.

A blue cat basket with distended cat fixture

I asked Bibi for a quote: she said she preferred the Greengrocer’s box.

A stereotypical ingrate. I feel like I work for that cat and I can tell you she is a demanding boss.

Cats (not the Musical thanks)

That window needs a good clean

“The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore:
When you let him in, then he wants to be out;
He’s always on the wrong side of every door,
And as soon as he’s at home, then he’d like to get about.”

from the Rum Tum Tugger, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot – a book I find very familiar and comforting particularly as it demonstrates that Tom must have had a lighter view of life on occasion.

The only “control” I can boast over Bibi Snowball, the cat who deigns to board with us, is whether I choose or no to let her in, or indeed out. In both cases she is very much like the Rum Tum Tugger, but she can throw in an extra special pleading look for coming in that is very reminiscent of Puss in Shrek.

Bibi has the requisite hat