Smitten Kitten

Did I ever mention how much I bloody hate Bank Holiday weekends?

Actually I probably have.  Repeating myself is one of my favourite past times.  I am practicing for when I am old.

I hate all holidays which mean that children are off school, and particularly ones in which everyone else is off as well, and the only things you can find to do are the same things that nine million other people have found to do along with you.  Gah! I am joining my friend David in the grumpy old bastard rant.

Yesterday we spent the day with my brother, drifting around Leicester, trying to find Tilly a new coat.  I have never understood this seasonal shopping malarkey.  Why do people stop selling swimwear in the winter, when they know perfectly well that most people bugger off to Lanzarote every time there’s a cold front?  Why do people stop selling coats in the summer? Particularly in the U.K.  I cannot remember the last time we had a summer that lasted longer than three days.  Sometimes I wear more clothes in the winter than I do in the summer.  It is insane.

Fed up of failing to buy coats we ended up in an all you can eat Chinese buffet place in High Cross for lunch.  I hate those as well.  I hate food which sits in a bath of what looks like pond scum, steaming gently and becoming increasingly inedible.  And although I am a keen eater, I am not one of those people who can wallop down twenty quids worth of food just so that I can get my money’s worth.  Still, the children loved it, and Tilly in particular ate her own body weight in crispy duck pancakes.  I ate crispy pancakes and filled up on the Mr. Whippy ice cream machine they had to entertain the children who don’t like lychees.  I do love Mr. Whippy ice cream.

On the way home my brother had a genius idea.  He suggested we go and have a wander around the RSPCA centre which is about half a mile away from our house.  I tend not to go there very often.  I am a sucker for the lame, the halt and the blind.  I will come home with anything that nobody else wants, on the grounds that I feel sorry for it.  On the other hand, I do love looking at furry critters.  The children also love looking at furry critters, and it was free.  And the fact that it smells of dog pooh puts a lot of the usual crowd of holiday makers off.  We do not care if it smells of dog pooh.  My children are all filthy beasts anyway.  It is just one more unpleasant aroma in a sea of existing unpleasant aromas.

I was doing quite well, with only mild pangs of sadness for a Staffordshire bull terrier called Betsey, who was crying in the corner because nobody loved her.  Then we got to the cat cages.  I was lost.  LOST.  I wanted them all. The fat ones, the baldy ones, the ones with boss eyes, the fat ones, the skinny ones.  They were all needful and lovely.  I was in bits by the time we were three quarters of the way down the pens.  Then at the end there were two pens full  to bursting with kittens. 

I turned into a total and utter girl within seconds.  If I could have jemmied open the door I would have left, pockets bulging.  They were sooo cute.  I eventually narrowed it down to three that I decided I could not possibly live without; a teeny, weeny tabby who looked just like Tom Kitten when all the buttons burst off his blue blazer, and who was clearly incredibly naughty. 

Then there was an indolent silver, grey specimen, who was just lying across the top of a scratching post as if the whole world was waiting to do him homage, and an insane little marmalade striped one, who just went round pouncing on all the other kitten’s tails and whiskers, and being a juvenile delinquent.  He’s bound for cat Borstal eventually, but he would be such fun.

I came home with none.  I was so very sad.  I could not get any for our house because Jason hates cats and is actually allergic to them.  I could not persuade my brother to have any, and we agreed that mum and dad would kill us if we brought them any more.  Their lives are made miserable by the cat I left with them two break ups ago.  They do not trust my choice in felines.

But if anyone would like to adopt them and let me come round and play, pop round to the Woodside Animal Shelter on Scudamore Road in Leicester and I will send you a bag of IAMS every week in deepest gratitude.

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