On a charge!

How come going wireless means you end up with more wires? Curious to know? I reckon it’s all a conspiracy put out by Mr Cable of Cable and Wireless in his endeavours to take over the whole shebang! Wifi is an oxymoron and I am probably the moron part of that. Will come back to that later.

One has (well, I have!) so many gadgets that need to be charged on a daily basis, it’s getting to the point that finding a free plug hole is well nigh impossible. I reckon the pressure this household alone puts on the national grid is quite significant - so much so that we’ve had a couple of power “outages” in just the last month! What with the ipad, ipod, kindle, laptop, phones of various kinds, camera, toothbrush …… not forgetting all the items that need to be plugged in all the time! Sometimes the house resembles the poop deck on the star ship Enterprise. Beam me up Scottie! Which reminds me. What about the wifi? Surely that can’t be good for us, all those little beams darting about the place. I could get fried without even knowing. Come to think of it, I’ve been feeling a bit frazzled for a while now. Am I slowly being irradiated?

The logistics surrounding the charging up is quite complicated and I’m having to draw up a chart so that each item has its allotted time for charging, making sure that at no time the elastic band at the power station undergoes undue stress. This of course means I have to ascertain how long each one needs for the charging process.  A degree in physics would help. I  prefer the chargees to be plugged in concurrently but lack of strong enough current means they have to be consecutively charged. Bit like some prison sentences!

Of course the worst thing is you can have about a hundred chargers around the house, as you keep everyone of them from stuff you’ve discarded or “recycled” BUT you can never find the one you need at that moment OR it is the very one that Austin chewed right through the night before! At least he’s wireless, but he does have antenna!

Life used to be so simple!

One’s address used to be 123 Letsbe Avenue not crinkly@something.con

A PC was the bobby who used to clip your ear after a minor misdemeanour before he "sent you on your way” back to your mother

Social networking was done down the pub

A laptop was your cat

A mouse was the little furry creature your cat brought to your laptop

Tablets could only be got on prescription

Oranges, blackberries and apples were only fruit

An eReader was a typing mistake

A keyboard was a piano

Tweeting was an activity exclusive to birds

….. and windows crashing? That was next doors kid with a well aimed football!

Finally, just in case there is someone in the world who has not seen Ronnie Corbett’s brilliant blackberry sketch. Here it is. Meanwhile Austin and I are crawling back into our cave:

In which Austin accidentally …….

….enjoys himself,…..

…..then realises his mistake. Ahem!

That’s my boy :)

Real Housecats Of The Blogosphere - Episode 2

If you can’t view above you can see the video here

So here it is! The long awaited (well not that long) episode 2 in the series Real Housecats of the Blogosphere. In which the gang party and get up to all kinds of high jinks and Austin gets “nipped" in the bud by Katie! They will have to get married now and I’ve told him that he needs to grow up and get a proper job and stop lying around all day “chillin” with the gang. He said:

I think you can guess what he said!

It’s all gone to his head along with the nip. *sigh*

The brilliant Glogirly and her production team are on a roll with this series. There is even a shop!! Check out her site especially if you are a cat (or know of a cat!) who would like to feature in a future production. Auditions are taking place at a cyber venue near you! 

Meanwhile I have to take Austin to a session with his therapist. It’s tough at the top!

I look absolutely …..

…..ridiculous!

…AND I can see a little green man! 

PS Happy St Paddy’s day >^,,^<

PPS Look out for the next exciting instalment 

of the Real HouseCats of the Blogosphere

coming to a computer screen near you very soon! 

Da Bird!

It was a joyous day when Da Bird arrived. We’d heard so much about it, so I sent off to Amazon and three days and £9.99 later, this cardboard tube arrived in the post.

Austin - Retired injured

Da Bird - Banished

Blue Arrows - Victorious 

Match to be rescheduled at a later date after Austin's eyebrow surgery.

Austin, a Real Housecat and why I blog!!

I have been thinking for a while now about why I blog? I’ve written about it before a couple of times - in fact one post was very sarcastic about blogging in general and the other was to do with the growing phenomenon of pet related blogs, especially those written from the pet’s point of view. 

As you might have gathered, I do not very often allow Austin near the keyboard - it’s an ongoing battle for supremacy and keyboard control (he has a tendency towards eBay and Amazon and the button that says “buy now”), anyway it’s me that has the voice, all he does is meow in Welsh and look handsome and disinterested in equal measure. So for Austin it was “bye now” to his retail ambitions and for me it was “hello” to my literary pretensions.

A few years ago I joined a group on the internet (it’s not something I do often), but it was geared towards those of a certain age who liked a laugh and as I was of a certain age and liked a laugh and was at a loose end, I applied to join. The rigorous application process completed, I embarked on a journey with a bunch of other (mostly) ladies in their cardy years and have now spent over seven years in their cheerful company. It was these dear ladies who were polite enough to laugh at some of the things I wrote and it was they who fed my ego to the point where I thought “I am going to blog”.

Where does Austin come in to all of this, I hear you ask? His arrival coincides with the genesis of this blog and as I say in the “About” page, I just fell into the habit of writing about him and his antics. He’s a conduit for my attempts at humour and, as it turns out, he became the star. That is fine by me because through him I met a load of other crazy (mostly) ladies who love their moggies and pooches.

And now Glogirly and Katie have included him in the cast of Real Housecats of the Blogosphere :) Ok, he’s not technically a house cat, but he managed to bribe speak to the producer (hi Katie xox:) and he was allowed in on a technicality (the form of which he will not divulge)! I believe I have created a monster!

Anyway check out the brilliant first video here

That’s all for now. A slightly different post and if you’ve made it this far then thanks x

It’s Gunk Time!

Gunk is the stuff I have to put on the back of Austin’s neck every two or three months so that he doesn’t get little friends joining him on life’s journey. Much as I feel that Austin needs company, I do draw the line at anything that can jump higher than my house. It’s a time of great stress as I have detailed before (probably at great length, but intensive therapy has made the memory rather nebulous).

Because giving him a pill has really become impossible now - without a fatality occurring - I have got to give him gunk now twice as often. The trouble is his reaction to it has me helpless with laughter and that compounds his shame and embarrassment. He also knows my thoughts. This has become very apparent. For example I just think about spending some time catching up with PC stuff - blogs and facebook and twitter and Google+ and GoodReads and and and ….. Austin will have nothing of it. It’s "me me me" time (followed by "ow ow ow" time if I don’t acquiesce immediately).

So, in approaching the moment of touch down with the ampule, I have to pick the optimum time. If he’s too much awake and alert, then it will be me down the A & E with a shredded arm. If he is too deeply asleep then the shock will cause him to leap three feet in the air and again I’m down A & E, this time for a catectomy to have Austin prised off my face. No, he needs to be just a bit dozy with his neck facing upwards. Approach is cautious but determined. I make to walk by him but at the last moment as if I’ve just remembered something, I turn. As I turn I bend over the sweet puss and like an assassin with a stiletto I move in for the kill procedure!

Three seconds it’s all over and Austin realises he’s been “done”, but that’s ok as I’m already in the car and on the way to Llandudno for some much needed coffee and a quiet read in Waterstones.

By the time I get back he’s still doing his low-slung cat thing and scratching, but that’s just for show. He sure knows how to hold a grudge. The scathing look, the threatening tail, the derrière of disrespect! I am history …… for all of five minutes :) "Treats, Austin?”

Life is hard when you are a cat!