Life with Austin - Annual Report!

Yep! It's a year since young Austin decided to move in and adopt us as his life's work. So I suppose now is a good time to take a moment to reflect on what both parties have learned from this merger, this fusion of two cultures. The word culture as we all know means "to grow a living organism in a controlled environment". Yeah right!

From the first glimpse of him, scratching frantically at the glass of his cage in the rescue centre, to this moment (as he rampages the neighbourhood with young Tabby - who now tells us he wants to be called Tigger after his hero in Winnie the Pooh!), it has been a steep learning curve and I am still not sure which culture has the preeminence. I do wonder sometimes what life was like for him before he was found, badly injured, trying to keep warm in a car engine. The nice people at the rescue centre were not forthcoming as to how he got his injuries, but I cringe at the possibility that it was because someone started the car engine before he had a chance to escape!

How long had he been on the road? Was he from a discarded litter of kittens? What was it like for him out there? Perhaps he's a reincarnation of Dicken's cat William (who turned out to be Wilhelmina anyway!)? Or maybe one of T.S. Eliot's that didn't quite make the cut? Or worse, perhaps he lost his job as understudy to Mr. Mistoffelees because he wasn't black enough and has been unable to come to terms with his mixed race antecedents and decided to end it all by throwing himself into the oily embrace of Wankel. I shudder to think about it now. They said he was about 6 months old, but judging by how quickly he gained weight after we took him in, he was probably nearer a year old, but very undernourished. That would make him about two years now.

He settled in very quickly and adapted himself well in his new environment. As I have noted before though, it was about 4 or 5 months before he would venture outside - and even then needed a bodyguard to watch his rear while he availed himself of the facilities. Even now he prefers human companionship out there. When I open the door to let him out, he looks back and chirrups and I have to say "It's ok buddy, off you go, see you later", and he trots off quite content that all is well with his world. I have often complained here that he hates to be picked up and cuddled and I have now put it down to his fear of being confined, maybe because of his earlier experiences. He just becomes one big claw. However, if he decides that cuddles are the order of the day, then it doesn't matter what I am doing, he will plonk himself on top of the most accessible bit of me and start his shiatsu technique and drools all over my person. And my laptop is in danger of being waterlogged!

He is a creature of habit, most definitely, and his body clock is to within a couple of seconds. Even the hour going back hasn't fazed him. He tolerates visitors, but like most cats will always go to the one person who hates cats and has allergies! Anything new has to be sniffed and patted and sometimes watched from a distance, until it finally passes his strict inspection criteria, which is far more rigourous than any government health and safety regulation.

We have come to an agreement over housework - I do it .... and he watches from a safe distance. He is intrigued by the vacuum cleaner, which to him is a dragon with a very long tail and every so often it lets out smoke and fire (when the bag needs changing - and I forget!). Fireworks are an infringement of his cat rights and he is trying to get legislation passed to ban them forever. He has been lobbying to get his accommodation upgraded to something that includes central heating and excludes Tabbies - except when there is an R in the month. He always comes when he is called- except when he doesn't. He knows his name and responds with a sound that I swear is catspeak for "yes my dear mistress, I am yours to command". Despite his phobia about being picked up, he likes to follow me around and then falls on my feet with grunts and sighs when I stop for a cuppa - I do believe he thinks he's a dog. He's even followed me up the road. I know that because although I never saw him actually walking behind me, each time I turned round, he was always exactly the same distance behind, sitting looking bored and feigning interest in a discarded cigarette butt or a gazing languidly at a leylandii that's currently a bone of contention between two neighbours. No door can be closed to him and the issue of catflaps has been under discussion for a while now. However, seeing as he uses the small vent window thingy in my bedroom to go in and out when he thinks I'm not looking, a catflap is not a matter of urgency. NB How does he manage to get in through about one inch of open window I have no idea?

So to sum up I would say that Austin has successfully made the transition across to big school and has fitted in well with the class (mostly). However, he must learn not to daydream and stare out the window during lessons and sleep through afternoon lectures. He shows tremendous leadership qualities but must curb the tendency to yowl, spit and punch when he doesn't get his own way. He has been registered for anger management classes to help him deal with this and also his inclination towards the gang culture (see above) as personified (or is that catified?) by Big Ginge and his merry band of feline thugs. This is a work in progress. Austin must try harder. But I am hopeful. Given his expertise at entering and leaving through small windows, I am sure he would do well in a future career as a cat burglar!

A Big Softee!

I dunno! What is it about animals? They get under your skin (literally in some cases!). Since getting Austin, I've become a big softee. I've had cats before, but don't remember being quite so gooey about them. Maybe it's because I'm at home much more now, or perhaps it's knowing that I'm well past child-bearing age and have discovered my inner mother rather too late? Whatever!

Anyway I took the little fella to the vets yesterday for his second and last feline leukemia vaccination. Because he has rampant ginger-vitis the vet had said last time I was there that he wanted to do some tests to see if there was an underlying, more serious, cause. I decided that if he did have any of these horrible diseases (AIDS included) I really didn't want to know and it would be too late anyway. But no, the vet was quite determined. So I had to leave him there for a few hours as they needed to sedate him before sticking the needle in. Having been "on the road" for goodness knows how long before he was rescued, no one had a clue what he'd been up to or what manky infection he might have caught.

Now unlike the NHS the results are instantaneous. So when I returned to pick him up, I also got the results. Negative. Yippee! Still don't know why he's got the problems with his gums, but hey, he's managed ok so far. Just a little aside here. I have decided that in future I will book myself into the vets when I need medical attention. The staff are friendly, the place is spotless and the results immediate. And you get your own cage with clean bedding. Ok so if you've got a problem with heights, it might cause some grief climbing up if you're allocated a penthouse cage, but nothing's perfect in this life is it! Of course having read James Herriot I'm well aware of what vets get up to with their soapy arms! Let's please not go there.

Anyway I digress. Austin was still out for the count when I picked him up, so there wasn't the usual pushmepullyou strife with the carrier. Getting him in it has become the stuff of cartoons, all legs like a giraffe and talons. You get one leg in and one leg out, you shake it all about, do the hokey cokey and turn around and start all over again! Once in the car he sings along quite nicely to the Lighthouse Family, if a bit loud. (His taste in music is quite eclectic). However, there was none of that now. Got him home and plonked him on his bed where he stayed for about four hours. He had a slight accident, which we won't mention as he was rather embarrassed about it.

Once he started coming to, all he wanted was to cuddle up on the nearest lap (usually mine) and if I left him for a moment he hurled himself drunkenly around until he found me, falling on my feet until I picked him up again (this is a first, actually wanting to be picked up. Maybe I should keep him permanently sedated!). He seems much more like his old self this morning, except I think he's remembered what happened yesterday morning, so is keeping a wary eye on my movements. If I go within ten feet of the carrier, he's out the door like a rocket.

The Green-eyed monster!

I know Austin loves his little buddy. No, he does, really. Except, well, there are signs. They can be playing together nicely. Bit of chasing around, some hide and seek, some gentle thwacking around the whiskers with a paw. This is when he thinks they can't be seen. As soon as Austin sees, hears, feels, my presence he morphs into the Terminator, or that bloke from Karate Kid, you know, when he makes like a crane before he does that kick thing!

Now Tabby is a nice cat, there is no two ways about it. He's insinuated himself into the household very successfully. He's seen what Austin does that annoys and does the opposite, the little creep! So we can cuddle him when we want and he eats all the leftover food at which Austin has turned up his delicate nose. In fact I would say that he's probably of the lower classes despite his ravishing good looks and expensive looking coat. He eats like an uneducated peasant and tears up the furniture much more vigorously.

Anyway today he made the move from spare bed to master suite and slept the whole day away. Austin has his nose so far out of joint it's practically on top his head ;> Now every time I really want to annoy Austin, I make sure he's looking and then go and make a BIG fuss of Tabs. Works every time! Trouble is Austin gets used to having him around and then Tabs goes off on one of his four day expeditions into the interior and Austin has to revert to "playing" with me. I'm only his second reserve playmate and it can be quite a painful experience! There's a bit of chasing around, some hide and seek, some gentle thwacking around the whiskers with a paw! He does this "meyat" noise as he leaps out at me as I trudge wearily up the stairs. He biffs me through the bannister rails and then as I round the corner, four sets of claws and several teeth leave their marks quite artistically arranged on my calf! As I bend over to inspect the damage to my limb, he repeats the aesthetic claw and teeth motif, this time on my "buteaux". As I leap up clutching at my dignity, he assumes a totally bored expression and looks the other way.

Sitting on the fence!

Had to rescue Austin from the fence today. I heard this awful racket. Sounded like a hippo dancing the paso doble on an elephant! I opened the front door and stood looking out. Then I heard Austin's "I'm-in-a-heckuva-fix but-don't-want-you-to-find-out so-you-will-go-on-and-on-about-it-forever" meowaaaarghhoouw. Looking round the side of the house I espied one black tail, one white paw and a couple of whiskers sticking out from the middle of the slatted wooden fence. How he got himself in there I do not know? But it was a scruff of the neck jobby to get him out. Had to disentangle each body part one at a time! Boy was he embarrassed! The black cat from next-door-but-one was sniggering behind Mick and Pat's scaffolding.

I'm sure I saw Austin blush and his humiliation was evident as he slunk into the house, his street cred at an all time low. Serve him right. He'd not long chased that same black cat into the garden of four of the eleven spitting dogs.

Girders and cat flaps!

I've been looking in here the last few days to see if, by perchance, anything new had been written on the blog. Totally fed up now with seeing "Bodgit and Scarper update" every time I enter boringoldblogland. Duh! It has now finally dawned (not being overly endowed in the brain cell department) that these things don't write themselves, more's the pity.

Since I've started writing this catachrestic masterpiece today, I've had to get up and let Austin out the door and in the window several times! Well he knows he's supposed to be the point of this blog and is eager to help me out by doing something interesting so I can write about it. Well Austin, try again! I see nothing remotely amusing about your door 'n window fetish. And another thing. What's all this about cod liver oil capsules? Don't I give you enough fish? Isn't Tesco's own brand dogfish shark and barracuda bites doing it for you? So why did I have to stick two fingers down your throat and rescue a 1000mg pill? Have to say though, you have the most luxurious coat of all the mogs in the neighbourhood :)

Re: Mick and Pat. Well we're now about two months on and progress is being made .... oh yes! Muffled banging and clanging reveals there are now several girders lying on the ground, one large hole in the wall and some more scaffolding balanced precariously on two bricks! Still no sign of the little pixies doing all this though. It's so exciting!! Maybe it's the tooth fairy on work experience, or those weird ones that are usually at the bottom of the garden? It all causes great amusement to the feline population, who cease their internecine squabbling to line up along the wall to indulge in the cat equivalent of watching paint dry!

There are some very strange sights around if only one would take the opportunity to look up now and again. We were having one of our not infrequent outings to Plas Newydd our local national trust property. It has to be one of my favourite places:>) We were ambling along around the back of the house, when senior neff pointed out a rather novel looking cat flap type thing in a window about twenty feet off the ground!

Now I know the family of the Marquess was a bit eccentric (the first Marquess lost a leg at Waterloo which was careless, but it was found, according to leg-end buried under a tree in Brussels where it had become a bit of a shrine) but didn't know their cats were into abseiling! Anything, however, is possible! My mind, at this point, wandered off into Random Musings - where it spends so much of it's free time, being a happy haven, a place of boundless reflections - and I pondered the thinking behind abseiling cats. Maybe it's a novel way of getting them to sharpen their claws, so they don't chip the Chippendale or shred the Louis Quinze? Perhaps they are exceptionally tall cats? Or maybe the 1st Marquess's prosthesis prohibited him from hopping downstairs to let them in and out? After much deliberation I decided that the Marquess, being a bit of an innovator, probably designed it as a prototype combi catflap and air conditioning unit. He was well ahead of his time.

Bodgit and Scarper Update ....

..... just in case you're thinking I've lost interest in the activities next door, let me assure you I haven't! To bring you up to date. Weellllll, the word "nothing" just about covers it. Still a hole in the ground with a pole growing out of it, but now there does appear to be bits of wood sprouting from the pole. This must have happened overnight when I wasn't tweaking my non-existent nets. Despite the fact that I spookily hear men's voices and the sound of hammers first thing in the morning, there is no sign of any activity! I think it is clear to all that Mick and Pat have bodged it and scarpered - at least for the time being. However the bit of orange plastic they've left guarding the hole is rather fetching.

Moving on to more feline activities, the inclement weather has meant that Austin does not venture out much. Being a modern lad, this means that he gets bored very easily and tends to trash the place. When Fidget comes over to "hang", one may as well go out and leave them to it!

The young tabby has taken over the spare bed in Austin's pad and seems to be insinuating himself into the household bit by furry bit. When I open a door now - or even a window - I can never be sure which one is going to be first over the threshold. And then of course when you're wandering around without your specs on you can find furry rugs where you never had them before!

Fidget's a nice cat. He doesn't mind being picked up and cuddled, he just nestles in, head under my chin - but then he needs to be in full unctious mode if he wants to keep getting Austin's leftovers and the odd tickle under the chin. Whereas Austin (as I have no doubt mentioned before) is all spikey claws, biting and yowling, unless of course he initiates the cuddle. Then he embarks on a process that can only be described as "extreme snuggling" when he drools and pummels and head butts my nose, looking up at me with adoring green eyes. It is, no doubt, a kind of self-help regression therapy that he's learnt about from the internet! For me the effect is something akin to shiatsu (which until today I thought was some kind of Japanese dog!). After he's done this for a while, and I'm about to start charging rental, he sees Fidget out the corner of his eye and magically morphs into the hoodie teenager from h*ll.

The following night .....

.... well he was having nothing of it, was he! Having feasted in the Elysian fields and drunk the nectar of the gods, Austin has now decided that his compact and bijou residence- complete with en suite and mini bar, I might add - is a bit infra dig and he has packed his bags ready for the move to the larger and more affluent suburb of my bedroom.

However, I have informed him, through my solicitors, that this place ain't big enough for the both of us! He replied, through his solicitors, that this contravened his human rights and he will take me all the way to the supreme court at the Hague to prove it. I mentioned that as he wasn't human, it mattered not what he thought under European law. He declared that the Human rights law was universal so therefore I couldn't discriminate just because he was a cat and anyway didn't cats and humans share about 96% of the same DNA? I countered by saying that we shared approximately 93% of DNA with a komodo dragon and I wasn't about to let one of those kip in my bed!! I directed him to the 32nd chapter of the introduction to the preface of the appendix, paragraph 15, sub-para 28, addendum 12, codicil 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says that it "does not constitute binding international human rights law - especially if you're a cat and are DNA deficient". So he could go fry his titbits! He muttered something that sounded like rowlocks.

Well things got a bit ugly after that. There was a tussle - skin, fur and DNA flying everywhere. Harsh words were exchanged and we parted.

One has to live with the consequences of one's actions, but certain issues need to be addressed and some questions answered:

1) would redecorating the kitchen remove the stains completely?
2) could caterwauling be accepted as an olympic sport by 2012?
3) how much will it cost to replace the broken glass?
4) could splinter embedded in paw be removed without taking the door off its hinges?
5) Will the NHS cover the cost of counselling if your DNA doesn't reach the required level?