Gotcha Week Reflections (5) - The Austin Imperative!

This is the last of our week's reflections from the early years of Austin's residence here. Thank you very much for joining us. We've had a lot of fun :) 

The post is called "The Austin Imperative" and was first published 9th January 2011. By this time we were starting to get noticed by the wider cat blogging community - of which I had no knowledge until the wonderful Caren Gittelman from Cat Chat with Caren and Cody pointed it out to me! As a result, Austin started to get some very grandiose ideas!

Perfecting "The Chicken Stare!"

Austin's third anniversary has come and gone.  I don't actually think he even noticed.  His age must be somewhere between 3½ and 4 now.  To say he's settled and feels at home is a bit of an understatement.  He totally rules the roost, except in one area - bedtime sleeping arrangements. The negotiations are still ongoing as to where he lays his not-so-weary head.  Trouble is, as with most cats his awake times are very early morning and very late at night.  This is when, of course, we are well and truly ready for ZZZZ and are shouting for him to "Austin, come, now" at the top of our voices and peering myopically out into the North Wales night, which is "starless and bible black" as all stereotypical Welsh nights are!    

If he's not out pillaging the countryside then he's stuck like velcro to my lap and I have to heave myself to my feet and shuffle along with Austin clinging on like a koala on a eucalyptus tree.  Totally bizarre scene!  Whatever way it's done, getting him to bed is a painful experience. 

It has been interesting to see, how, over these three years, Austin has learnt to "work the system" so that he achieves the maximum amount of comfort for the minimum amount of effort - I'm sure there is a universal law about it? Oh I know! I think it's "the law of perPETual transmutation of energy".  This is the law that says all pets have the power within them to change the conditions in their lives by harnessing the principle of energy sapping!!  Cats are the masters of this and in addition Austin has been spending a lot of time lately studying "CATegorical Imperative" the seminal work of that famous German ailurophile Immanuel KAnT. 

Here are just some of the many imperatives he's adopted - you will see how he employs the law of "diametric contradiction" in many cases:  

• Every exit door has to be checked with human panting along behind when it's raining.  
• No internal door must be closed to a cat or severe trauma to the carpet will ensue.   
• A cat should not go up the stairs unaccompanied at any time and the accompanying human must be raced up the stairs and thwacked on shoulder through the bannisters.  
• All food must be picked at disdainfully when human is watching.  
• A cat must never let on that he knows how to use a cat flap, as it could mean that all the time saved by not running from door to window to window to door would weigh heavy on the human's hands and she could become bored and grumpy. 
• The cat must always jump onto lap of human to have a long nap at the very moment she decides to get in the car and go shopping.  
• And finally ......  when the human decides to sit down and write interesting blog post, cat must jump up onto keyboardd aanndf kfkbjdhfihfgoh ujrkjld khf kfgj;phpuoteio.

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maximum (Brit. Informal) - large mother

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