like a cat in a bag....

It's been a bit gloomy around here recently, so how about we change the subject, eh?

Look! It's a cat in a bag!



Can't you just feel your blood pressure coming down already?

She quite often wakes me up first thing in the morning by jumping on the bed with a little chirrup, poking her nose in my face and wheezing her breathy little purr over me. It's pretty much the best possible way to start your day. No problem feels too big when your cat wants a cuddle.

I'd heartily recommend it.

our castle and our keep...

The world is in recession; banks are being dragged under by bad debt and are being bailed out with Government money; shares are plummeting; people are being laid off in their thousands; the property market has collapsed.... Meanwhile, in my middle class world, we're having a loft conversion done.

People tend to raise their eyebrows when I tell them this, and they then leer at me suggestively and ask if we're feathering the nest. Nudge, nudge. Wink wink. Say no more. At this point, I generally feign confusion and ask them to spell out whatever it is that they're insinuating. It's a jovial way of asking if we're planning a family, apparently.

No. Not at the moment.

We actually talked about getting the loft converted from the very first moment that we looked around the house with a view to putting in an offer, but for various reasons, we never got around to doing anything about it. We actually considered moving somewhere bigger about 18 months ago, but in the end settled on getting our little garden sorted - last year's project - and getting the loft done. So why now? Well, the reason for the building work is that we've finally managed to entice our Austrian friends and their two kids over from Vienna for a week in the summer. We're going to try to repay the kindness they showed us when we got married (and every other time we've been to Vienna) by taking some time off work and showing them around the country. We've arranged to borrow my dad's big car so that we can shuttle everyone around in go. No, please don't ask why my dad used to ferry my two brothers, my mother and me around in a Fiat Strada and then bought a massive people carrier as soon as we all moved out. So, an extra room and an extra bathroom are going to be really handy.

Anyway. That's what C told me was the reason for getting the work done, anyway.

Hmmm.

The work has been going on for a few weeks now, but it's only since Monday that the builders have been working in the main body of the house (and not just in the roof), so things have moved on pretty quickly since then. I've got new stairs and things.

I'm hardly Kirstie Allsopp, but here are a few photos of what's suddenly appeared over the last couple of days.



This is the view from our bedroom. You can see the door there on the right hand side of the picture, and you can see how we've lost a chunk out of the corner of the room where the stairs turn and head up into the attic. Apparently our ceiling is in a terrible state, and bows towards the middle of the room, so the builders are actually going to completely replace it. Free. It makes their lift a lot easier, apparently. It will come down a couple of inches to accommodate that new landing you can see hanging down, but will still be tall enough that I will only just be able to touch it with my arms above my head. Plenty of headroom. They're also cutting down one of our tall wardrobes so that it will fit underneath the new stairs.



Apart from the photos that C. took though the hole in the floor last week, it was only on Wednesday evening, when I came home to find the stairs had been put in, that I was able to see what the builders had been up to for the last few weeks. It's somehow much bigger and more airy than I was expecting. I was also a touch worried about how much headroom I would have under the slant of the roof, but it's plenty high enough. The velux windows are absolutely huge too, and when the rain started to hammer down onto them, I was thrown back to my old bedroom in the house where I grew up, where the partially flat roof used to make a hell of a noise when it rained. I found the sound very soothing at the time, and apparently I still do.



Look at the size of that window! And there's our missing stepladder (on the left).



The room was looking quite a lot less spacious when I got home this evening, but only because the builders had started to box in the bathroom. There's another velux window to go in yet, and obviously none of the bathroom fittings have gone in yet, but things are taking shape really quickly.



It seems that C. isn't the only member of the family who is intrigued by the new room. Minou is staring into one of the cupboards that will provide us with storage space underneath the eaves, and it's surely only a matter of time before she explores these new and interesting places more thoroughly. Luckily, she is currently finding the remains of the builder's lunches more interesting..... She's in the habit of rolling around on her back, displaying her fou-fou to the world, and as a result has been filthy dirty since the moment the builders first arrived.... the little tart. Like everyone else she meets, Minou appears to have the builders wrapped well and truly around her little paws. Trollop.

More exciting middle-class building expansion news as it happens!

poison pen

We had a note pushed through our door the other day. It was in a plain brown envelope with "FROM A NEIGHBOUR" written across the front. C. was hopeful that this might be someone returning the tax disc she managed to lose between the front door and her car, but I've seen things like this before and had an inkling that it might be something else entirely. Indeed, upon opening the envelope, I was confronted by a piece of hole-punched A4 paper entirely filled with a carefully handwritten note. Well, I say carefully written, but as it is riddled with typos, appalling punctuation and features the liberal use of correction fluid, perhaps that not quite the right phrase. It's all in capitals and literally every other word is underlined wihth two pen strokes, presumably for emphasis.

I noted all of this, and then read on with a sense of some trepidation.

WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINGING OFF HAVING A CAT DOOR ON THE FRONT, RIGHT NEAR THE MAIN ROAD. YOUR CAR DOOR SHOULD BE AT THE BACK NEAR GARDEN. WAY YOUR 2 CATS SHOULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT UP THE GARDEN WAY. I HAD TO STOP A CAR FOR YOUR CAT THE TABBY ONE WHO IS VERY SCARED OF CARS FOR IT TO CROSS THE ROAD, I DONT KNOW IF YOU WORK IN THE DAY YOU DONT SEEM TO LOOK OUT FOR YOUR CATS, AT ALL YOU LET THEM WANDER. IF YOU ARE NOT THERE IN THE DAYTIME YOUR TWO CATS SHOULD BE KEPT IN. AWAY FROM THE ROADS. PUT YOUR CAT DOOR NR GARDEN END WHERE IT IS SAFE. AND YOU SHOULD BE OUTSIDE SOMETIMES WATCHING THEM. YOU HAVE 2 VERY LOVELEY CATS I WOULDNT LIKE ANY HARM TO COME TO THEM.

(A ANIMAL LOVER)

I read the letter again, scarcely able to believe what I was reading. It didn't really get any better second time around, and now I was just angry. Leaving aside the fact that we only have the one cat, I am struggling to understand where this person gets off leaving us an anonymous note like this. What are they expecting us to do, exactly? Yes, the cat flap is in the front door, and yes, I would have preferred it to be in the back door... but it wouldn't fit on the door. Besides, that cat flap has been in place for more than a year now, and I fail to understand how they think that having it on the side of the house would prevent our cat from wandering onto the road. What the hell is "the garden way" anyway? When we got our cat, we made some choices for her. Among those choices was our decision that she should have free access outside. We can close the flap, but we choose to let her come and go as she pleases during both day and night. We do both work during the day (again, something that's not very difficult for all but the most casual of observers to work out), but we consider it better for our cat's welfare that we don't shut her up indoors whilst we are away. Actually, I rather think she spends most of the day asleep on her beanbag, but she can go outside whenever she likes. She's not very road smart, I agree, and I wish she wouldn't sit on the road as a car approaches, but what exactly can I do about that? Most of our other neighbours know her well, and because she's friendly, they pick her up and move her when they need to. Rather than imprisoning her indoors, I'd much prefer that she lives as free-range a life as possible, even if that does perhaps introduce a risk that she might get hurt by cars on our (reasonably) quiet suburban street.



But why do I feel I have to justify our choices at all? What gives this anonymous note sender the right to be so damn rude and yet so apparently keen to remain anonymous? They have felt moved enough to write out this note, but they haven't even taken the trouble to check their facts before shooting from the hip. If they really cared about our cat (and I find it hard to believe that anyone could care about the welfare of that cat than we do - she's positively doted upon), then would they not just have a word with us? What, exactly, is this note supposed to achieve?



I know I'm wasting my energy just thinking about this, but sometimes people really piss me off.

rule the world....

At some point in the first episode of "Guns & Germs & Steel" that I watched the other day, Jared Diamond holds forth on the part of his grand theory that reckons that one of the reasons that Eurasian societies conquered the rest of the world was because we lucked out by having the most easily domesticated species of animals nearby (sheep, cows, goats, horses and the like). According to him, it was this fact, coupled with the equally convenient presence of easily domesticated and long-lasting crops like wheat and barley, that helped us move away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and into a more settled agricultural existence with the kind of specialised roles in society that enabled us to focus on things other than our next meal. So, obviously, with all that extra time on our hands, we built some really cool weapons of mass destruction that we then inflicted on the rest of the world.

Well, I'm not about spout off about Diamond's theory - although, if you ask me, it all sounds a little convenient, and besides, QI told me the other day that horses originated in the Americas, and if Stephen Fry says it's so, then it must indeed be so....

As Diamond was talking though, I did look over at the sprawled shape on the beanbag by the radiator and idly wonder at what point in history the cat had been domesticated. It didn't take me long to realise that, in fact, the cat has never been domesticated. They turned up one day, liked what they saw and found a way to wrap us so tightly around their little paws that we happily provide them with everything that they need and then ask if there is anything else we can possibly do for them. It wasn't the cat that was domesticated by humans, it was humans that were domesticated by cats.

This came to mind in the very small hours of this morning when I awoke to find myself distinctly marginalised in the bed. This isn't all that uncommon an experience, to be honest, but as C is currently in Paris, it took my sleep and Night Nurse addled brain a few minutes to work out what had happened and why I was now hanging out of the bed and slowly freezing to death.

It was a cold night, so as I had made my way up to bed, I'd made myself a hot water bottle (yeah? what of it?). The cat, it turns out, is no fool. She doesn't often sleep on the bed, but her special cat senses must have told her that there was an extra-warm patch to be investigated tonight. Upon discovering the source of this hot spot, she had proceeded to methodically elbow me off the hot water bottle and practically out of the bed all the better so that she could curl up and benefit more directly from this new heat source.



And so what did I do once I had worked out her little game? Did I boot her off the bed and resume my posession of the hot water bottle? Did I hell. I tried to grab as much of the bed back as I could without disturbing her, and then went back to sleep in a really uncomfortable position.

Cat's rule the world. Or if not the whole world, then at least the most comfortable parts of it.

the most beautiful girl in the room (the whole wide room)

Our cat seems to pick up adoring fans wherever she goes. She rather likes sitting just outside the house, either on the wall round the back or on the pavement in front of our bedroom window. Many is the Sunday morning that I have woken up to the sounds of passing strangers cooing over our cat as she rolls around on her back in front of them, showing then her tummy like the love-slut she is. Just in case anyone looks like they may walk past without giving her any love, she'll let out cute little yowling noises to catch their attention until they do. Barely anyone ignores her.

Tart.

I got home yesterday evening to discover a note from our cleaners*.

"Sorry to be cheeky, but do you think you could leave a note next clean with your cat's name on it please? She is so gorgeous and I don't like just calling her cat :-)"

Honestly. Our cat doesn't even like hoovers, and she still finds time to charm the cleaners as they go about their business. I'll leave a note next time they come, but I'll feel a little bit dirty doing it; sort of like the cat's pimp. It's all so sordid. The day is fast approaching where I am going to give up my job to dedicate myself to looking after my supermodel cat whilst my wife travels around the world earning millions in the boardrooms of the world like some kind of attractive and unbearded intercontinental Alan Sugar.

I know my place.

Actually, that doesn't sound so bad.

* yes, I'm aware that this makes me sound painfully middle-class, but they only visit once a fortnight and they do an unbelievably thorough job. Plus it means that I don't have to clean the toilet, so......

and always the right way round...

Our beautiful cat gave us a bit of a fright the other day. On a normal day when we're at home, Minou pops in and out of the cat flap all the time. She likes to be outside, but she never wanders far, and she likes to know what we're up to. On Good Friday -- it had to be a bank holiday -- she popped out in the early evening and popped back in about 30 minutes later. I didn't think anything of it, but when I went upstairs, she followed me... but was practically dragging herself up the stairs. There was something wrong. She was crying and couldn't walk properly. Of course we took her straight to the vet. It being an evening and a bank holiday, we had to go to the emergency vet... that's the best part of £100 before you've even started, but what else are you going to do when your pet is in pain? (and anyway, she's insured..of course she's insured)

The vet examined her and decided that she hadn't been hit by a car - apparently cats instinctively put their claws out when they are hit by a car and as a result often have claws that have been worn down on asphalt. It looked as though our silly cat had fallen off something and landed awkwardly. Given that she's a tiny bit clumsy and overly enthusiastic, this wouldn't really be all that much of a turn up for the books. She was knocked out and X-rayed, and the vet was able to tell us the excellent news that she hadn't broken anything, but had strained some ligaments in the knee of one of her back legs. Strict bed-rest, apparently.

And drugs.

It's not easy to confine a cat to quarters, but Minou clearly had other things on her mind and was content to just curl up on a beanbag.

The drugs help. They really help. Within a couple of days, she was almost back to her normal self and clamouring to get outside.

I was very pleased to hear that I wasn't going to have to try and feed the cat pills (have you ever tried that?), but I was sceptical when the vet gave me the little bottle of Metacam solution and told me I was supposed to give this liquid to the cat. Apparently cats love it. Hm. Do you know what though? After a bit of initial suspicion about the syringe-like device you use to administer the dose, Minou really did like the stuff. In fact, she couldn't get enough of it.

I think she might be a junkie.

Metacam is an anti-inflammatory, and is supposed to help Minou's knee get better. I'm sure it does this, but what it also does is to knock the cat out. Minou does like a good cuddle, but she's not really a lap cat, preferring a short stop before finding a warm pipe or something to sit on. When this stuff kicks in though, she just zonks out and wants to do nothing else but curl up on someone's lap.

Well, I say someone's lap, but actually all she really wants to do -- much to C's irritation and in spite of her best efforts -- is to curl up on my lap. The other night she climbed up onto my lap no fewer than four times, to my wife's increasing outrage.... especially when on the fourth occasion, the cat had to climb across C's lap to get to mine.

What can I say? She likes me....



Besides, she always goes to C for a cuddle in the morning when we first wake up - I think because she's a lot less sharp and angular than me and offers a much more comfortable chest to sit on than my hollow pigeon chest. And do you hear me complaining? I look across when I wake up in the morning to see my wife cuddling my cat and not knowing which one of the pair of them is the more contented.

Anyway. She's a lot better now, but she's still wanting a nice cuddle in the evening, and as my wife has gone off to Russia on business until the middle of next week, I'll take all of the affection that I can get.

So yeah. I love my cat. What of it?

pop ya collar....

When we first picked up the cat, the RSPCA informed us that she would have to wear a collar. Neither of the cats that my parents have had in my lifetime had been collared, but it seemed reasonable and sensible enough to give our cat a collar with an ID tag on it just in case she ever got lost (the RSPCA also implanted her with a microchip, which they do with all animals that pass through their care apparently). The only slight reservation I had about the collar was the fact that it is impossible to buy a collar without a bell. The idea of the bell, of course, is to try to give birds and other small animals half a chance against this vicious and instinctive predator, but part of me has always thought that it was a bit cruel to burden a cat like this. It's in their nature, after all.... I soon changed my mind though: more or less as soon as I heard the cute "tinkle tinkle" noise that the bell made as it clanked against the tags on the cat's collar. It was a noise quickly became associated in my head with the approaching cat - a noise often followed by a small "miaow". Pavlov in reverse, if you will.

Did you know that a cat's collar should either be elasticated or have a quick-release catch? I know it sounds perfectly obvious, and I'm sure you did know that, but as I'd never had a cat with a collar before, it hadn't really crossed my mind. Again, it's perfectly sensible. Cats go wandering; cats jump and climb on stuff.... if a cat was to get their collar caught on something, they could easily do themselves a mischief. It's only common sense, therefore, that if you are going to make them wear a collar, it's probably best to give them one that is unlikely to choke them.

When we got home from town the other evening, Minou was waiting for us on the doorstep. This was a little unusual: not only was the weather pretty crappy, but since we've had the catflap and she's had a magnetic "key" adding to the bling already hanging from her collar, she's been able to look after herself and - being a cat - can normally be found in the warm. It took a few minutes for the penny to drop, but we soon realised that she'd lost her collar somewhere. This meant that the poor thing must have caught it on something and had a few moments of desperate struggle before the stretch in the elastic will have allowed her to wriggle free. I expect her collar is still hanging off a branch somewhere... but at least the cat herself was alright.

Of course, the loss of her collar meant the loss of her ID tag, her bell and, with the magnetic "key" for the catflap, her freedom. And so, the next morning I trooped off to Pets at Home to buy a replacement. The collar was easy enough, and so now, instead of the disgustingly dirty plain black one she had before, she's modelling a natty little number with some fluorescent thread woven in as well as another bell. The magnet came in a two-pack, so we now have a spare, and the tags were done in a quite cool machine that lets you watch as it engraves (she has one tag with our address and phone number on, and another tag saying "scan me....I'm tagged"). Sorted.

She now looks broadly the same as she did before, but she sounds different: her collar just isn't tinking in the same way at all..... in fact, through the combination of a different bell and the (non-magnetic) ID tags, when she flops through the catflap, she now sounds distinctly christmassy, leading to the nickname "Santa's Super Sleigh".

She doesn't seem to mind at all. Neither the name nor the noise seem to worry her in the slightest... Judging from her mildly haughty look, I think she must be pondering issues of far greater importance.

Stick for instance. You can never have too much stick.

it only takes a camera to change her mind....

It was back at the beginning of July that we first caught sight of a certain 6 month old kitten who had been rescued by the RSPCA. She had been found several weeks before wandering the mean streets of St. Annes, and it took her all of about 5 seconds to capture our hearts from her little pod at the rescue centre with that lampshade collar around her neck and her pink paws pressed up against the window as we passed by. Naturally, she's very much the undisputed queen of the household, and has been almost from the moment she arrived.....



I'm hopelessly biased, of course, but I think she's a very pretty cat. It seems I'm not alone, and I'm pleased to say that our Minou is fast becoming something of a poster girl for the RSPCA: if you visit RSPCA-pix.com and click on "cats", you may just see a photo of a certain tabby kitten. Should you so wish, you can also purchase prints, mousemats, mugs, t-shirts and fridge magnets all displaying her pretty face.

I'm as proud as you like, but do me a favour and don't mention it to the cat though, eh? She struts around the place as it is.......

Credit also due here to a wonderful, talented photographer.

Now: would it be too much to get a t-shirt emblazoned with my cat's face?

Yeah, you're probably right.

P'raps not.

let's go outside.....part ii

It's high time we had the week's obligatory cat post, I think....



There can't be many more pathetic sights in the world than a cat's poor, mournful little face as it peers through a cat flap from the outside. Well, perhaps that's not quite as pathetic a sight as the owner of said cat on their hands and knees on the other side of the cat flap, trying to coax their pet inside with encouraging noises and freeze-dried prawns...



Oh bless her, but it appears that Minou is not the sharpest tool in the box. She knows how to get out (although she sometimes needs a bit of a reminder), but she seems unable to work out how to get back into the house, and generally sits mournfully outside, staring hopelessly at the little doorway that some part of her head is telling her is the way back into the house.

I'm sure she'll get there in time.

In other news, it turns out that -- thanks to the close attention of a particularly good photographer -- our cat may well become a superstar. The RSPCA like the pictures of her so much that they want to add them to their image library (or something... you'll have to ask Hen for the details). Minou was rescued by the RSPCA, of course, so perhaps it's fitting that they should be the ones to provide her with her first big break in the world of modelling.

I don't think I'll tell her just yet..... It'll only go straight to her head and, to be honest, I think she's got more than enough on her plate trying to work out the cat flap.

Turns out she's not the only cute cat in the world either....



There's always a younger model, eh?



Statler (on the chair, with the moustache) and Waldorf (in hand) are the latest additions to the Ultimate Olympian's family.... they're only nine weeks old, so still pretty small.... but cute, eh?

Tomorrow: a rather more manly discussion on rugby, music, pipe smoking and other such things.

now I got worry...

I'm a cat bore. I noticed this when I found myself waxing lyrical about my cat to a slightly bemused colleague the other day (he might have been thinking it, but at least he was polite enough not to call me a "gaylord" out loud because of it, unlike others I might mention....)

I'm going to try not to go on about it quite so much in casual conversation, but there's no denying quite how far this little creature has wriggled her way into my life. She's tremendously relaxing most of the time and yet entertaining all at the same time. I've found it really surprising quite how much difference it makes having a cat in the house when C. is away, instead of a completely empty house. She's somehow really good company, even if she's in a completely different room and doing her best to ignore me.

I worry about her too. I worry that she doesn't get enough time outside when we are at work (we haven't yet installed the cat flap), and when she is out, I worry about the road. I woke up yesterday morning to find that she'd developed an eye infection overnight, and I had to take her off to the vet to pick up some eyedrops. She looked so sorry for herself that I found it quite hard to leave her on her own and get into work.. luckily I have a neighbour who was more than happy to drop in to make sure that she was okay and to help me put the drops in this evening (thanks Hen - that's certainly not a one person job). All this TLC seems to have done the trick too, and she's much more herself today, yowling at the door for a bit of outside time.

Oh God. Listen to me.

Perhaps I am a gaylord.

and always the right way round....

photo part of a series by Hen...

I'm hopelessly biased.... but such a pretty cat.

soft

Whilst we were out today, it looks like someone was kept royally entertained....



Outside is great, but the stick game just makes it perfect.



Whilst I would never lay claim to being the most masculine man in the world, I have definitely gone soft over this cat. But surely you'd need a heart of stone to resist a little face like that?





I must never have children....

----

Photos by Hen, of course. Thanks for popping by and making sure our poor cat wasn't cooped up indoors all day.

making my escape, making my escape...

Although we haven't yet got a cat flap installed, now that she's had all of her jabs and things, Minou is allowed to wander freely outside for as long as:

-> we are at home
-> the back door is open
-> it's still light

Actually, she doesn't seem to wander very far at all, and she quite often sits in the garden yowling until someone comes out and plays the stick game with her (it's a very simple game really: you take a long twig from the bush in the garden and then the cat chases after it for several hours). After all that time of only being allowed out into the garden with a chaperone, I think she quite likes the company and isn't so sure about wandering too far on her own.

That's not to say that she doesn't wander though... oh no. She's quite a brave little thing and will fearlessly try to see off cats of twice her size when she thinks that they are encroaching on her territory (which now seems to extend outside the garden gate and out to the two cars parked immediately outside). Occasionally she will disappear out of sight entirely, only to reappear at the kitchen door every 20 minutes or so, as if she's checking that we're still there.

After getting up early to drop C. off at the station after her taxi let her down, I let the cat out the back whilst I was pottering about in the kitchen making breakfast, putting the kettle on and getting my football kit ready. After about 45 minutes, I was thinking about having a shower, but was getting a little concerned that I hadn't seen the cat at all. I went out the back and had a quick look, but no sign at all of the tell-tale "tinkle tinkle" from the bell and the tags on her collar. Hmm. I went back inside and fetched the tube of prawns and her bowl... a tink on the bowl and a rattle of the tube usually brings her running. Today, nothing.

I checked my watch. Nearly time to get showered and go to work. Now I was starting to worry... and then something caught my eye and I heard a faint "tinkle".

I looked up and saw that Minou was standing on the windowsill of the house over the road. On the *inside* of the window.

Bugger.

I'd seen the owner leaving about an hour before, so I knew the house was empty. I picked up the tube of prawns and found my way around to the back and into the garden. A kitchen window was open and there was a cat flap on the back door. As far as I know, Minou has never used a cat flap before, so I assumed that she had climbed in through the window. I quickly realised that she wasn't going to come back out through the window and that I was going to have to try and coax her out through the flap.

Was she having any of it?

Was she hell.

I rattled the prawns and called to her, and all she wanted to do was to wander about, clamber on the furniture and eat a second breakfast from the catfood that had been put down on the kitchen floor for the owners two cats (where the hell were they to protect their patch?). At one point, Minou yawned, and I really thought that she was going to curl up on the sofa and go to sleep.

I must have been there for about 30 minutes in all, trying to coax the damn cat to the catflap with a prawn and to either grab her, or encourage her through. No joy. She was keen on the prawn alright, but seemed wary of the catflap, and was doubly wary after a couple of failed attempts to grap her.

In the end, she came out under her own steam, looking a little skittish about the whole experience. She wouldn't let me get close enough to her to pick her up, but dashed out of the garden, down the alley and over the road until she was right outside our back door, where she mewled to be let in.

As soon as she was in, she mewled to be let back out again.

No chance sunshine.

It's a stressful business this cat ownership thing. This definitely wasn't in the manual.

let's go outside....part i

Do you think that someone is trying to tell me something?



The RSPCA told us when we adopted Minou that we should keep her indoors for six weeks until she was comfortable and knew where home was. Judging by the fact that she spends a fair bit of time now sitting in front of the back door mewling, I reckon that 5 weeks indoors is about as much as she can take.

We let her out into the garden as much as we can, but we still feel as though we have to stand there and supervise her to make sure she doesn't get into any mischief. It's not enough though. It's clearly not enough. She spends a lot of the day shut up indoors when we're at work, and although I'm sure she's perfectly happy with this arrangement and spends most of the time asleep, this does mean that she has a lot of energy to burn off when we get back. Just before these photos were taken, I had spent 45 minutes out the back with her getting her to hare around in circles after a small branch from the hedge. As soon as we came back inside and had a bite of tea, she was at the door asking - no, demanding - to be let outside again.

We're going to get a cat-flap fitted in the next week or so, and the plan is that she will have free run during the day and that we'll try to keep her inside when she comes back in for her tea. I'm sure when we actually do let her out that she won't wander all that far: she wants to be outside, but I think she's still quite timid. We were woken up the other night by a terrified cat with saucer eyes jumping onto the bed in the small hours of the morning. We looked out of the window and there were a couple of foxes barking at each other in the street. The big outside world is a scary place, and it's going to be something of a wrench when we let her go out on her own.

Goodness. If C. and I ever have kids, do you think I'm going to be one of those "You're not going out in THAT?!" type fathers?

the indisputable leader of the gang....

I just tried to take a cat for a walk.

Now there's something that I never imagined I would hear myself saying. How the hell do you take a cat for a walk?

Well, you use a lead and harness, obviously.


Minou has been gracing us with her presence now for a little over two weeks, and since she started feeling better after a cold, she has proven to be quite an active little tyke. She spends most of her day whilst we are at work either sleeping or pottering about quietly in the kitchen and the dining room, so come evening, she is ready to go. No sooner has she been fed when she sets off tearing around the house on a mad half hour, burning up some of that pent up energy. She calms down a little at bedtime, and although she doesn't really sleep on the bed with us, she has taken to sleeping at the top of the stairs on the landing.

This peace lasts until roughly 05:30 in the morning, when I am suddenly awoken by the tinkling of the little bell attached to her collar and the feel of her paw pressing against my nose. She's pretty much all go after that, haring around the room, walking across the headboard of the bed, and most frightening of all, balancing on the edge of an open window....

The RSPCA have told us that we shouldn't start letting her out of the house for another 4 weeks, but she's clearly starting to chafe at the bit a little. So we bought her a harness with the intention of letting her start to get accustomed to the world outside her vantage point on the breakfast bar in the kitchen.

Actually, she didn't really seem to mind the harness at all and she took a great delight in padding gently around the rather damp garden and carefully examining every nook and cranny. In fact, I think it's more realistic to say that I didn't take the cat for a walk at all: she took me. We certainly pootled around at her pace and did the things that she wanted to do.

Even a tink-tink-tink on her bowl didn't bring her shooting back into the house for her tea, and in the end I had to carry her in after she'd had a bit of a scare when she nearly fell off a little wall.

God. She's been here two weeks and already our lives revolve around this willful little creature.



How do you people cope with children? I'm exhausted just looking after a cat.

oh you know that I'd do anything for you....

Goodness me. Who knew that such a small thing could soak up so much attention?

She's adorable, of course... but she's also skittish, prone to begging for food and just now discovering all about climbing on the kitchen surfaces.

The cheeky little tinker.

The RSPCA advised us that we should keep her indoors for 6 weeks before we start to introduce her to the outside world, so although we can make a fuss of her when we are at home, when we're at work she's left all on her own inside the house (well, a couple of rooms anyway). Hen kindly came in to check on her at lunchtime today, and reported that she was all curled up and fast asleep. That was good to hear, but it does mean that when we go to bed, she's wide awake and eager to wander around her new home exploring.

Did I mention that she has a collar with a bell and a couple of tags on it?

tinkle.

tinkle.

tinkle.

tinkle.

tinkle.

.... until the small hours of the morning when she decided she wanted a bit of smooch and jumped on the bed in search of a tickle, which obviously involved making sure that we were both fully awake and actively responding to her polite (but insistent) requests.

It's funny really - to look at her you'd think that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Ha! She's been here for less than 2 days and I am already completely under her spell.

I think the Ancient Egyptians had it about right: cats are a higher form of life and we are their slaves.

Now if you'll excuse me, I am being summoned to worship.

what's new pussycat?

We've had a new addition to the family.

She's called "Minou".

We went to the RSPCA rescue centre on Saturday and she chose us.

I heart her.

(more photos here... courtesy of Hen, of course)