Vertigo and Polystyrene Balls!

After over a year of trying to pluck up courage, Austin has now managed to take a leap of faith on to the top of the high bookcase! This is how he does it:

It's become a bit of an evening ritual, and I must say that it really cuts down on the need to dust and hoover! What with him hiding in every available dark and dusty corner down below to try and avoid being medicated and then enthusiastically dismembering cobwebs up above, he is a real little mother's helper! And all this furry duster needs is the odd fish head and ritual chin tickling to keep him happy. Much cheaper and less fraught than any human alternative :-}

This morning I heard Ma absolutely shrieking with laughter upstairs - in fact I thought it was hysterics!! Somewhat trepidatiously I ascended the stairs into the living room, only to find myself treading in about 500 zillion polystyrene balls! It seems that my aged parent was trying to take the cover off a bean bag to wash it without finding out whether there was an inner cover. Hence the sea of little balls. Well Austin was ecstatic. He thought it was Christmas all over again. I'm sure he ate a few thousand before I whisked him off the floor to de-ball his paws.

Parenthesis - We've had an incident with these things before, only it was slightly more embarrassing. I was hoovering them off the walls of the garage when the man came from the "Lectric" to read the metre. Now as the garage has been totally taken over by the junior members who are building a train set on a ping pong table AND there were lots of rubbish and little polystyrene balls everywhere because of a burst poof, I had to lend the poor guy a pair of binoculars so he could see the numbers on the metre. It was also a very hot day, so he was in his shorts and was sporting a towel round his neck AND we had to close the door because of the cat! It was an impossible situation. The binoculars were too strong (well I use them for bird watching) the metres were too inaccessible, so in the end one of us (I forget which because I'm still really in denial about it) had to crawl under the ping pong table through the miscellaneous melange to wedge their head up the side of the metre and shout out the numbers to the other. By the time this was done we were getting quite intimate - by "initmate" I mean we were on first name terms and falling about laughing! Funny thing was, when he left he said "Thanks for the therapy"! I've no idea what he meant? Anyway, I digress.

Today our resident furry duster had reached saturation point with the little polystyrene balls, so after hoovering up the excess I tried to hoover him. It wasn't entirely successful. So if any of my neighbours weaving their way back from the pub come across a tuxedo cat that looks like it's got impetigo, it's mine! And keep clear because it IS catching.