Local wild life

The cat has turned out to be a good mouser. Perhaps a local farm would be interested in him. I know cats catch things. I know they tend to catch things for the sake of it and have a nasty habit of not killing their catch quickly or bothering to eat what they catch when it eventually dies.
I object to the cat because he is mean spirited, which is mean spirited given the grim start he had in life. I can't help it, I can't like him.

Yet I accept him catching pigeons and littering the garden with their feathers, setting up camp on the neighbor's garden shed right above the nesting box they so kindly attached to it.

What I find difficult is coming downstairs and treading in entrails that are strewn across the carpet. I thought I had developed the knack of intercepting him as he brings these creatures in; I've succeeded numerous times in liberating field mice and birds he's brought home.

I failed last night; he came in with a mouse clamped between his jaws. I was at the far side of the room and he knew what I would attempt so he backed out through the cat flap. Bye bye mouse. I just wish you hadn't squealed so pitifully on the way out.

Now the nasty little rat faced interloper is curled up on My Bed, looking like butter wouldn't melt. Want a cat? Excellent mouser. Free to Good Home. Must be prepared to collect. [Neutered male, vaccinated.] Even his cute girlfriend can't save him. And if her arse gets any bigger she won't be fitting throught the catflap.

As if that wasn't enough we're heading for an almighty row over things. It is bad enough that he drinks himself legless every night. One night this week I came home to find the house wide open and the offspring fending for herself. He hasn't cooked her a proper evening meal all week, she hasn't had any help with her homework. He regards his parental responsibilities as being met when he escorts her from the gate back to the house in the afternoon.

Once he's settled her in front of the television with a microwaved meal on the table in front of her he is at liberty to return to his Ricard or his vodka, fags and book outside. I suspect that they don't exchange a word from one hour to the next, then he shuffles her off to bed without a wash and without brushing her teeth.

I suppose I would be castigated for giving up my job, flinging him out and throwing myself on the mercy of the state, when obviously this current arrangement of us being married and working creates a so much superior environment in which to raise a child.

I'm depressed and words are not flowing, or at least not useful ones. I'm going have to work myself up into a temper and get out of this.

The Demise of the Pink Palace

Should be doing this in the style of a Death Notice, of course. Ah, well. Live with it.

The gist of the matter, however, is that I've brought down the Pink Palace. The mattress, sleeping bag and pillow case are in the wash, along with oddments of clothing. The books are back on the shelves, the videos, DVDs, games &etc are all in a pile for madam to properly tidy up. Several soft toys have been gathered and deposited on the bed upstairs, a plastic bag has been filled with bits of paper and other detritus of her Summer in Residence. All in all it wasn't too bad which is more than can be said for the bits of the house I can only now reach with duster and vacuum cleaner.

The cat hasn't yet learned the terrible truth. He's been in a foul mood all week anyway so we probably won't notice a mood shift when he does put in an appearance.

That Effing Feline

All joking aside I loathe that cat, with a fierce and deep flowing passion.

I've now been out to clear up today's windfall (that bloody plum) and what I've found is the strawberry bed covered under a white blanket. This summer's been a complete fucking joke but it hasn't actually snowed; this was a blanket of white feathers. The only upside here is that the slaughter happened outside rather than in the house - that would have been a catastrophe given the scale of spread of evidence.

I peered in some trepidation but was forced to conclude that the corpus delicti - yes, yes, I do appreciate that the feathers constitute in ample sufficiency the evidence necessary; consider this covered by poetic licence - had gone the way of the body belonging to the mouse's head The Slug found in the other garden yesterday morning.

Only after fetching gloves and gearing up for the really squishy ones did I finally spot the wood pigeon prostrate on the paving. Buggeration. That meant a clear up operation.

Of course that nosy minx from a couple of doors away turned up right in the middle of the procedure. She's still a kitten but she actually growled when I dragged her off the body and dumped her by the biscuit bowl. That gave me enough time to bag the body. I thought the food might have driven thoughts of dead birds from her tiny little mind but oh, no. She came back and sat by it, I turned away, I turned back, the bag was upside down. Minx.

The bag, along with the body therein, has been donated to Tesco. Couldn't think of a worthier cause on the spur of the moment. Sorry.

Snore

Photo posts are the last resort of the lazy blogger. Given that the sum total of my accomplishment today is one load of washing washed - note, not hung out to dry, ironed, folded and put away. As the scrumptious Carl would say, this is Shocking, Shocking! Lower your expectations all ye who enter here.

This is the hated cat after taking a gander at this last Sunday's Funday Times and passing editorial comment.

A bloody cat tale

The cat has launched a valiant but doomed challenge for Ted Heath's record for the longest sulk in history. With every fibre of his being, flick of his ever so expressive tail and hunch of his shoulders he demands "what have you two done with the Little One". Well she's back tomorrow and that will leave him some decades short of Ted's back bench brood record.

At first he simply occupied space, indignantly. One morning he wandered the house for a good hour crying inconsolably. Then he took up residence on the ironing board (which means the cover needs de-cat hairing). When I took a chance during one of his loo breaks to fold that up and put it away he set up camp on the landing, outside the bathroom, where he stood a good chance of either tripping us up or being trodden on. There's definitely something of the martyr in the way he's conducting himself.

Over the past couple of days he's rediscovered the fine art of waking Him up by rattling his door handle until He's forced to get up and open the door. Once inside the cat curls up behind the door so that He has to squeeze his flabby bulk to get through for the urgent first thing in the morning pee.

There's also something rather malign in the way the cat's conducting himself. It will all be over some time tomorrow evening.

In the meantime

The Pink Palace is down and the cat is trying to suck up to me by way of getting sympathy. Doesn't he realise I don't like him? Without actually being a 'cat person' I normally quite like cats and I'm normally happy to have them about me but this one is an obstreperous little shit and he's cost us a small fortune in vet bills. He isn't even ours but his previous owners, who were neighbors, moved town and left him behind. I'm not surprised. He has a little girlfriend, a kitten that arrived in the area about four months ago. She's almost completely black and still wide eyed. Until a couple of days she'd fall through the cat flap and take on startled look of The Doctor's new assistant on first stepping into the Tardis.

But she's finally got the hang of the big indoor space the other side of the little door and made her way upstairs. She's crawled under the bath and got stuck, attacked the net curtain's in the Offspring's bedroom, tipped over the clothes airer, clambered into the fireplace and trailed soot over the carpet and expored the Pink Palace.

The Feline Girlfriend loves it when we do that gardening thing. She'll crawl into a pile of cuttings then trail them about like MacDuff on his way to the rout, except going in circles. Today and tomorrow we have to Panic. That's official. Not one thing's been packed. Between now and 3:00 every last required thing must be identified, sourced, labelled and packed. I'm not going to panic yet. Instead I'm going to procrastinate. Tomorrow I'm going to do panic. And the hair cutting thing.

Seasonal Loose End Activities (Part 3)

The offspring and her El Cheapo tent are still an item. It is a dome tent. It came in a box together with a bag of pegs a square of nylon to lace over the ventilation webbing at its summit, a roll mat a sleeping bag and an air pillow. Not a bad buy for £4.99.

Except one of the two rods has now given way under the stress of Holding the Dome Tent Up, and the cat has now shredded the roll mat. It (the cat) did this in a fit of pique it seems when the offspring inadvertently rolled back onto it in her sleep, thereby trespassing on the cat's domain. Now that the roll mat is in several pieces he has reverted to kipping in the neighbors garden.

Good riddance and here's hoping he stays there. Little shit bag. That camping set was expensive - for something we hoped would at least be durable enough to last the summer holidays pitched in the living room.

The cat wot I hate

Up to a point, at least. We had two cats. I didn't want the responsibility. I had a plan to restart my life on the other side of the world. Now I can only dream of what might have been and mourn what I've no longer got. He bought them any way. I fell in love. They were the only living things in the house I could tolerate. Then she came along but I still loved the cats. The grew older. One was injured by a car. He was never the same afterwards and one day he was killed by next door neighbor's dog which broke into our back yard to get him. The other never quite came to terms with the absence of his brother. He faded away slowly.

No sooner had the second died than we drew the attention of a small odd-ball that had begun to appear in the block.

One morning he decided to come in. He eschewed the standard feline approach of popping through the cat flap and flung himself and the door handle. Repeatedly.

I could either ignore this little black and white body flinging itself at the door handle or I could let him in. While I was deciding what to do His Lordship and my baby let him in. And fed him.

They decided to take him under their wing about three years ago now. We've forked out a small fortune in vet's fees: he got himself cut up all over his legs fleeing fight or a car. He wanders in and out as he pleases, sleeps where ever he wants (he has a very low tolerance of closed doors and will fling himself at internal doors until we give in). He brings in muddy paws, fleas and an an assortment of birds and rodents (usually not dead). He scratches the furniture and regards the dining room table as His Perch.

It is like living with a stroppy adolescent. Time hasn't bred affection. Sympathy has failed to fill me. I don't care that he regards this as his home. I don't care that his previous owners abandoned him. I don't care that he was injured when still a kitten and has a strange walk as a result. I don't care that he was removed from his mother too early. They probably abandoned him because he's unloveable. The physical injuries are healed and in no way inhibit his ability to catch wildlife. I do care that he has a teddy bear fetish (regarding them as mother substitutes) and leaves drool puddles on my daughter's collection.