Fireworks!

The household was woken up at 3.30 a.m. this morning by a couple of very loud, very close, explosions. Needless to say this did not help with the collective blood pressure situation. The cat's and mother's both went sky high and mine almost shot up to normal. A few more of these explosions confirmed what we already feared, that someone was letting off fireworks up the back somewhere. Grrrrrr! Tempting as it was to ignore the cat and go back to bed, thoughts of RSPCA blacklists and fears of becoming a social outcast in the neighbourhood of eleven spitting dogs and the Ginge gang drove me to stick my head round the door of Austin's pied a terre. He was nowhere to be seen, which was unsurprising given the noisy ambience.

All of a sudden a black shape shot out from under the two-seater and streaked across the kitchen growling and making one heck of a fuss. I managed to deduce that this was Austin in a furry funk. All thoughts of returning to slumber vanished and I put the kettle on. While he was sorting himself out, I peeped out of the window and saw our deaf neighbour (not Toby, tother side) pacing up and down the road in his dressing gown, waving a torch and checking his vehicles (of which he has a few!). 45 minutes later I looked again and he was still doing it. It was also raining! I fleetingly thought about going out and telling him that our resident vandal wasn't out taking pot shots at his tyres this time. But quickly rejected this as it was pitch black and he doesn't lip read, even in daylight. And it was raining (did I already say that?) Had manic thought about police coming and arresting me for disturbing the peace when they should be rounding up the pyrotechs.

By this time Austin had calmed down somewhat. Poor fella, he'd already had a disturbed evening when Ginge Secundus attacked him from the rear and then attacked me from the front when I went to intervene! Austin was very brave - not! He hid behind the wall.

So all in all he was in need of R & R, so took him to bed with me for rest of the night. Big mistake! He was in cat heaven. I wasn't. Of course like all cats his ego is bigger than the available space, so when he wasn't purring loudly in my ear, he had his paws stuck up my nose and then I'd wake up struggling to breathe only to see his worried little face peering down checking that I hadn't died while his attention was diverted. But mostly he just laid out at full stretch across me and the double bed so I couldn't turn over without hurling him on the floor. So in the end I just lay there perched precariously on the edge, clutching one inch of duvet, a quivering wreck, a beached whale, a lump of exhausted misery. All this so he could catch up on his shut-eye.

When Fidget the Tabby arrived all perky this morning shouting at my bedroom window to see if Austin wanted to hang out at his place, I let him out with a sigh of relief. But I did see them having a good laugh about something as they trotted up the garden.