Two's company, three's another blog post!

Take a close look at the picture! Go on. …. look closer. Who’s that? No really; who is it? You might be forgiven for thinking it’s Austin, but I swear it isn’t – unless he’s managed to clone himself. Look at the paws though!

I have suspected for a while now – I know I’ve mentioned this before, like errr once or twice – that Austin and Tigger’s relationship is at times a bit edgy. For instance my elderly Ma once had to intervene to stop Austin disembowelling Tigger in the cupboard under the stairs. It was a very traumatic experience for her, poor dear. She hasn’t been able to eat offal since – or venture under the stairs. Then, of course, there was the conservatory door fracas, which almost resulted in me needing a couple of skin grafts. So when I heard the usual scrabbling sound of claw on fence yesterday, I was expecting to see Austin or Tigger, or Austin and Tigger coming over from next door after a few hours of the usual rampaging through the uncharted territory of the east Anglesey back garden “seeking whom they may devour”.

Well, there were two cats, that’s for sure; and there was no doubt that the first one was Tigger. He was quite sure of himself, the path he took, the route well trod. The black and white one behind was not so certain and Tigger kept turning back as if to check it was still there and offering encouragement; “it’s ok, just follow me; jump down to here and up the side and along the top”. I thought it strange. Why would Austin need detailed directions to enter his own domain? I turned round at this point to carry on with whatever I was doing to the sight of Austin lounging on his bed! Huh? Bit of a double take moment as I whirled round again to check I hadn’t been hallucinating. Nope! Tigger rushed through the door and headed for the food as usual and Austin mark 2 tentatively stuck his head inside “Is it ok if I come in?”

I backed up against the wall to keep out of the way and to watch and see what happened. Austin mark 1 made like a giraffe – all neck and antenna ears, his whiskers became huge and bristling. No sound though; no threatening growl or welcoming chirrup. I’ve no idea what would have happened next had I not trodden on Tigger (stuffing his face on leftover breakfast by the door). His indignant “yaaht” galvanised Austin mark 1 into action and with one bound he leapt to the door and it wasn’t until the dust settled that I saw the tails of Austins 1 and 2 disappearing over the fence at the top of the garden. Meanwhile Tigger …..
There has to be an explanation for Tigger bringing another black and white cat to chez Austin. Could it really be because of a breakdown in feline relations? After much thought and rumination I have concluded that it could be any or all of the following: a) Tigger, unfortunately resorting to racial stereotyping, thinks that because they appear to have the same ethnic heritage, they must be related; b) Austin and Tigger have had a big row and fallen out, so Tigger now wants to make Austin jealous; c) Austin mark 2 has applied for the job of Austin mark 1’s stunt double and was invited along for an interview; d) Tigger gives off a pheromone which is irresistible to black ‘n whites; or e) Tigger thought it was Austin all the time!

I believe Austin thinks he’s looking in the mirror when Two is around, as he tolerates him much in the same way as he does Tigger. Two does have less white on him, but I still have to peer a bit longer to determine which it is. In actual fact I really don’t know if it is a he, she or undecided. I will have to find out!

Anyway what we have now is a gang! I fear for the future of the neighbourhood if the mob from the other side of the estate gets wind of developments!

"Two into five won't go!"

I am starting to think that the cat(s) in my life are refugees from a cartoon strip. Or maybe they are just figments of my fevered imagination. There was an incident the other day that really defies description - but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try and form the words, even if I have to swallow the dictionary first and regurgitate portions at random – bit like one of Darwin’s descendents or the “infinite monkey” concept.

Ok, check out the pictures. As you, my loyal reader know, we have the famous conservatory door, which is upstairs and at the back. This door opens out onto a path and there is a wall on the left which leads to steps down below. Ahead there is the neighbour's wooden fence (he with the holiday home, the neurotic pooch called Toby and an unfinished balcony out the front). The fence as you can see has got a couple of what can only be described as vantage points - for cats. Austin spends a great deal of his outdoor time balanced on one of these three inch wide slats of wood, master of all he surveys. Sometimes I look out and Tigger is there instead. When I open the door, whichever cat is perched will leap from the wooden fence onto the wall, run along the top, jump down onto the path and in through the door. This is quite a precarious exercise as there is a 15 foot drop down onto concrete on the other side of the wall! When it was icy one day Austin did his usual leap and literally skidded along the top of the wall, very gracefully, rather like a little furry four-legged Olympic tobogganer who was giving his all for the gold medal.

On the day in question, they were both there on the fence, one up above and one down below, looking for all the world like a couple of tiny sphinxes on the watch out for the old “Giza” next door. Soon as my hand touched the door handle they both, in one unanimous fluid movement, leapt from the fence to the wall. It was like a scene out of Swan Lake! So balletic ….. so graceful …….. so dumb! In their eagerness to get in the door, they forgot that, mathematically speaking their combined body ratio was greater than the surface area of the top of the wall. They came together like a couple of juggernauts sideswiping each other on the motorway. The result was that Tigger, having the greater body mass index, managed by sheer weight to dislodge Austin from his claw-hold on the 5 inch wide wall! Thankfully Austin was on the side of the path, so, although he was surprised he wasn’t injured as he picked himself up from the paving stones. Tigger, however, because of the momentum (i.e. product of the mass of a body of matter multiplied by its velocity) disappeared for a second over the other side! All I could see were a couple of claws!

After what seemed like an age, his nose appeared, then his face, straining as he tried to get a foothold on the smooth wall. Somehow with a supreme effort he heaved himself back up on top. Any normal cat would have given it up as a bad job, but he was having none of it. With one leap he was on Austin’s back, who was making the most of the advantage and was halfway through the door. He almost made it. But Tigger was lightening quick, and with a yowl he wrapped his jaw round Austin’s neck and chomped a mouthful of fur. Austin squealed and turned to fight him off. There was fur, teeth and claws flying in all directions. By this time I had come to my senses. Galvanised into action I grabbed a scruff with each hand and wrenched them apart. Tigger struggled, Austin struggled, I struggled. I dropped one outside the door and slammed it shut. I took stock. The question was did I have the correct cat inside? By this time I couldn’t have cared less really. It was a cat, it was inside. The household status quo was one cat, two humans. It had been restored.

Balconies and Wardrobes!

Just thought I'd give a quick update on Mick and Pat Enterprises who are allegedly building a balcony next door. Remember them? They are now seven months into the 2 - 3 week job! Good old Bodgit and Scarper - I do believe the council are going to start charging council tax on the scaffolding, as it's been there so long. We've chatted up the builders and they say it's because the owner keeps changing his mind. We've also chatted up the owner and he says it's because the builders don't listen! Meanwhile a family of small rodents have moved in and taken up residence on the scaffolding, which would be advertised in the property pages as a one up, one down bijou residence with air conditioning and outdoor plumbing. Who can blame them? It's a steal.

I think it will be very nice when it's finished, but fear the scaffolding will still be there long after the house has become derelect with dry rot or rising damp. The latter would be from the Straits of course.

Apparently global warming is causing the polar ice cap to melt and the water to rise until the only hope we have left is Noah floating by in his ark, although have to say that the current health and safety regulations would not even allow him to start building, let alone have animals holed up in there with humans! Not that anyone would be worried particularly about the humans, but the furry, feathered and flying things have a host of regulations and legislation to protect them. So each would have to have it's own room, mini-bar and satellite TV, with room service and swedish masseur available 24/7. It would necessitate a rather large craft in order to accommodate everyone and their requirements, I fear.

I'm actually not totally convinced that, in the current financial climate, the necessary funding could be secured in order to purchase the raw materials, and also poor old Noah would have no end of a problem getting his carbon footprint down to an acceptable size 8 in order to obtain permission to sail. In any event I'm still waiting for that whole greenhouse effect thing to kick in, having had below freezing temperatures for it seems like forever - and snow!!! Here?? At least it would save on the heating bills.

Well, I've got a couple of digressions in first. So now back to Austin.

Way, way back when we first encountered him and he inveigled himself into our hearts, we thought he might be a bit lacking in the mobility department because of his putative disability. Ha! That thought was soon despatched and filed away in the drawer marked "yeah right" in the skeptics library of aphorisms, as I watched him strolling along the ridge of the neighbour's roof!

Since he's rediscovered "on high", he's conquered all the book cases, book shelves and wall cupboards, not to mention getting his head stuck up the back of the curtain rod in the living room! And now it's wardrobes! He can't see one now without having to plot a course to the summit. It can be quite tricky balancing on the top of the bookcase trying to negotiate the chasm over which he has to leap to reach his ultimate goal. Descent can also be tricky as he found out when he tried to jump from the top of the one in my room to the bed - and missed. Ouch! He was very graceful though, as his paws slid slowly down the edge of the duvet, landing on the floor with a thump and a bump. His embarrassment was profound, but he tried to cover it up by pretending it was all part of the plan and he really wanted to explore under the bed anyway! Have you ever seen a black cat blush?

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.

It's that time again!

Every so often the earth, moon and sun manage to get themselves all lined up in a row and scientists closely monitor the event to determine the likelihood of tsunami-like sea conditions ensuing. Apparently the gravitational pull of both the moon and the sun at the same time causes some cosmic aggravation here on terra not-so-firma, especially when there are storms brewing.

Well, in this household we had a similar cosmic occurrence when Austin's de-worming and de-fleaing administration coincided! The tooth and claw alignment brought about by the convergence of these two events caused some rather bloody gravitational pull on my skin - I suppose you could call it "terror derma"! Whatever! There was one heck of a storm! Usually the dirty deeds are done about a month apart, but for some reason (maybe because it's winter and parasite activity on furry hosts is virtually non-existent), we'd let it slide. Anyway I thought to get it over and done with in one go and thus only have to deal with the nuclear fallout once instead of running the gamut of his displeasure on two separate occasions. "Once" might possibly be understood as an error of judgement, but "twice" could be construed as habitual abuse.

We've got the pill popping down to a fine art - see "How to successfully give your cat a pill", although we have dispensed with the hammer, nails and head clamp, as being surplus to requirements. The two sticks and cat-apault are still necessary for a successful outcome though, and these were utilised to great effect, so much so that the usual coughing, wretching and sticking his paw down his throat was completely unnecessary as the pill was already doing the business down in his hindmost part. The flea thing though is another matter completely. You'd think WW3 had just been announced. It doesn't matter how I disguise it, HE KNOWS! The evil concoction is kept in the drawer of the table on the landing along with loads of other stuff like candles, batteries, candles, plastic rain hats, candles, dud biros, and all those other things you feel that one day might "come in".

Anyway on this occasion I approached the drawer with a duster, a can of furniture polish and a certain nonchalance, on the pretext of doing some light dusting. He was not remotely deceived because I never do any housework to speak of unless we've got people coming, and as he knew my diary was devoid of any social engagements - well only the double glazing man, and as our social intimacy only extends to a couple of polite telephone calls, he didn't count - there was obviously chicanery afoot! I opened the drawer as if on a whim, rummaged around in the detritus waving the duster like a magician's handkerchief and undercover of all the flapping and waving slipped the ampule in my pocket. None of this duped Austin, of course, who glared at my pocket and shot off into a dark corner. I retired temporarily. Eventually he would have to come out to eat.

Much later just as I was considering going to bed, he emerged from the darkness and made a run for the kitchen. Gotcha! With military precision Ma and I got him cornered, whipped him up onto the table, divided the fur around his nape, broke the ampule and rammed the contents roughly in the right area. Sorted? Well almost. He turned his head to take a chomp of my hand, didn't he!! I guess at least he will be free of fleas and mites in his left ear - and I definitely won't be receiving any unwelcome attention from fleas, mites or any other microscopic insects for the foreseeable future, as most of the rest of it went on me anyway!

Austin grumbled alot for the next day or so and slunk around trying hard to look victimised (but only when he thought I was looking), and every time I approached him he flinched! Now that really hurt. I hope he never learns how to use the phone, because I'm not sure how I'd explain any of this to the RSPCA or Social Services, or whoever it is he decides to call!! It is an advantage that his short term memory is suspect, though, because as soon as the requisite number of hours had passed, he was back in his most favourite place in all the world - my lap :>)

The Thought Process

I've just finished reading The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield. Never read it before. Find myself adopting similar style vocally as well as literarily. Minimal use of the first and third person pronoun, liberal spattering of french phrases en fait and words like "recrudesce" that send me rushing to the Oxford Concise. Set me off thinking. But it didn't last long as thinking is far too overrated, don't you think? But then it says in my profile that I'm an "avid collector of thoughts", so maybe I should start categorising them and keeping a record of thoughts already thunk, so I don't make a mistake and accidentally end up with the same thought twice! I suppose if I did I could do "swopsies" like we used to at school with beads and sweet cigarette cards.

But then, what if a thought that's already out there becomes secondary, you know not a main thought, but subsidiary, due to a cultural change or a seismic shift in the postmodern thought nexus? I suppose thats why second thoughts have come into their own in recent millennia! However, there are some who say that second thoughts are better than primary thoughts. To those people I would say "think on". If that is the case then third, fourth and fifth thoughts should be eminently superior and so on and so forth. But hold hard! I am here to make a stand for first thoughts.

There is nothing on this earth quite like a thought in it's most primitive and crude form. The embryonic concept, the incipient abstraction, the inchoate notion. Will it be brought to birth without defect? Will the flame of originality allow it to develop and come to fruition unblemished within the cranial academic matrix? Of course if one is in two minds, one can multitask and accommodate both the first and second thought concurrently. This will save time and allow the thinker to go about his or her daily business more or less unhindered by the unwanted and unnecessary third, fourth and fifth suppositions encroaching on the occupied territory. However, the schizophrenic nature of this exercise could lead to conceptual burn out. So on the whole, and with much singular reflection, I have decided to adhere to the perfectly formed and untarnished original thought, in all it's unrefined, prototypical state. This is because, when all is said and done, it is the thought that counts.

PS There is no doubt that my cat Austin indulges in some extreme thinking on occasion. But regarding which cat (Austin or Tigger) comes in at night, I have decided, after several rather fraught encounters on the door step at midnight, that as long as one cat comes in, I don't really care which it is. It is first come, first served from now on in this house!

Merry Christmas Austin!!

Ok, well this is an edited version of what about 2½ of you saw before! This is the young hero opening his Christmas present. We can see that it is causing him much enjoyment and drooling and general ecstasy. It is obviously something that can't be bought over the counter!

I wish to thank my nephew, Tarvi B deMille for his invaluable help in the production of this epic :>)