There’s no fool like an old fool

You may have noted that there have been a lot of cat related posts this week.

There is a very good reason for this, apart from the fact that I find the cat endlessly amusing.

It is because I do not want to blog about the children, in case I break down into hysterical sobs and try and drown myself in my cereal bowl.

The few days of adjusting to the summer holidays has dragged on rather.

It is not helped by the fact that whatever it is that ails me is sucking the life force out of me.  The only reason I am awake now is because I fell asleep for four hours earlier.  I was so asleep that even if the house had fallen down round my ears I would not have heard a thing.  During the day I do not have the time to be patient. If I am patient I fall asleep in the middle of being patient.  I have to be impatient so I can fit everything in.

The children are still alive. This is probably a good thing.  Well in legal terms it is.  Whether their still being alive is going to help my sanity any I am none too sure.

They are all fed, clean, unbruised and quite jolly as well.  As jolly as they can be in between trying to murder each other, and trying to pin the blame for that on anyone else other than themselves.

When I say children I do not include Tilly in this.  Tilly is not trying to murder anyone.  She is worrying.  She is worrying for England, about everything, and anything, and things that you would never possibly think to worry about in a million billion years, even if it were your job to come up with new things to worry about eight hours a day.

It is quite wearing.  It is more wearing for her, as she goes about with a vague but perpetual frown wrinkling her forehead at all times.  The amount of worrying she is having to fit into an average day is also not helping her ability to remember to do things like get dressed, brush her teeth, or eat regular meals.  These are the things she should be worrying about, but she doesn’t have time to fit such mundane worries in when she could be worrying about whether dandelions might be poisonous to earthworms, or if hair grows out of your ears faster than it grows out of your nose, for example.

So I have two trainee murderers and Mrs. Worrywart living with me at the moment.

I can’t say that if I were forced to pick housemates I would choose these personality types.  Or short people who don’t want to wipe their own bottoms, or who think it is your sole role in life to trail after them picking up the tidal wave of debris they emit on an almost moment by moment basis.

Still, I volunteered, as my friend cheerfully said to me yesterday when I had to stop Tallulah picking up Oscar by the scruff of his neck and throwing him in a flower bed, and Oscar ran off to find a tree branch to beat her with.  Tilly in the meantime was worrying because she had attempted to leap over a flower bed, but had in fact landed in the middle of one and squashed a geranium.

I did volunteer, didn’t I?

I was a fool to myself.

Oscar wisdom

‘TALLULAH! Mama says that you mustn’t let the cat scratch your willy because it will really hurt.’

More Beastly Tales

My mum and dad have a lovely garden.  It used to be woodland, way back in the mists of whenever, and their quarter acre plot is still full of magnificent trees and shade loving plants.

Despite the fact that it is now hemmed in by houses, there is still a fair amount of wildlife frisking about in it, something which Tess would love, were she younger and more agile.  Even so, she still has her moments.

Last year she managed to catch a frog and set it loose in the house.  She is not, and never has been, keen on murdering creatures, or eating them.  She just likes the thrill of the chase.  And when she has caught whatever it is she has been stalking, she brings it into the house as a gift.

Frogs are interesting in captivity.  They make their way to the nearest water source they can find, and stay there, trembling, and hoping that someone will release them back into the wild.  This frog found the upstairs loo seat was open, and hopped in, causing much consternation to my aged Italian aunt when she staggered across the landing to perform her morning ablutions the next day.

Tilly took a picture for posterity.

Lovely.

Previously, way back in the mists of time, one summer when I was home from university, we had another frog in the loo incident.  This time it was my mum who found it, in the middle of the night, when she hadn’t got her glasses on.  The screaming and running about on the landing naked woke us all up.  From mum, that is, not the poor frog.  We approached the loo with caution because in her blind panic mum had decided it was a snake.  And this was what she was screaming at the top of her lungs as she lapped the landing for the seventeenth time…

‘SNAAAAAAKKKEEEEEEE!’ I believe was her exact cry.

She was almost as fast round the landing as she was round the hall when an earwig shot down her vest during a particularly fierce ironing session once.  If there was ever an olympic event entitled strip and run, she would be a gold medallist.  She is a ninja. A positive ninja.

As Derek is housebound due to being lady bits intacta at the moment, I do not have to worry about this kind of animal incursion yet.

But it is in the back of my mind as a potential hazard which Jason must be inoculated against (much like rabies).  He is Derek tolerant at the moment, but I can’t say the love fest is as mutual between them as I would like.  If he, like UE, when we had Derek’s predecessor, Pinky,  ends up as the recipient of a live mouse in his shoe, I cannot see things ending well.

Even if it does make me laugh immoderately.

Mum and dad’s house, as you know, by the fact that they have a ruddy big hole cut in the wall in lieu of a cat flap, is open to the elements rather.  They also have a beautiful verandah across the back of the house.  My dad likes to live on the verandah, even in the harshest of weather.  He seems to feel no cold whatsoever.  Unlike the rest of us.  He is forever flinging doors and windows open while we all huddle round a radiator, whimpering.  He would have made an excellent matron in a 1950′s T.B. clinic.

It may also explain why he has more than a passing fondness for the bracing air of the East Coast, and a peculiar devotion to Skegness.

As their house is accessible to wildlife, the local flora and fauna like to take advantage of this in times of extremis, and not just when they’re being chased by cats.

At one time or another they have been visited by hedgehogs, dogs, muntjac deer, mice, escaped ferrets and plentiful birds, as well as a trillion cats with loose morals.  One day I must relate to you the time my parents left me in charge of two small children (admittedly my own), my aged Italian Aunt ( and out pops the cloven hoof, Bertie), my frail grandmother, a highly skittish muntjac deer and an escaped pedigree ferret being hunted by an escaped pedigree ferret breeder.

It was a long weekend.

The other interloper that my parents enjoy visits from are bats.  Once, when I brought a boyfriend who was eventually to be my fiance (thank goodness he never made it to husband status), home to visit the parental pile, he found a dead bat folded up in a vase in the dining room.  He was not impressed by this at all (I knew I made the right decision in not marrying him).  We were all hysterical with laughter (which did not help), and terribly impressed.  I have often pondered how the bat managed to get in the vase.  It was folded up so very neatly.

Last week they had another bat incident.  One flew into the house.  My mother saw it, and began following it round in an attempt to shoo it out again.  My dad didn’t see it. After about half an hour, after he had accused her of imagining things, they concentrated on having an accusatory row along the lines of: ‘You’re mad’, ‘No, you’re blind’ etc, and forgot about the bat.

The next morning when mum went downstairs to wait hand and foot on the cat, she found the bat cowering in a corner of the cat’s litter tray.  The cat has a litter tray which she never uses. She loathes the idea of doing her business in the house and would rather explode with shame.  Nevertheless, there is a litter tray full of sand in case of emergencies.  I expect it will come in very handy if there is ever a small, litter tray shaped fire that needs putting out.  Or a bat in need of refuge.

The poor bat was squeaking and woeful and very sandy.

Mum picked it up and thought about washing it (it being all sandy and all). Then she thought better of it.

Then she thought about trying to feed it.

But she realised that bats probably don’t eat Gourmet cat food with 90% chicken, or cheese sandwiches.

So she very carefully took it outside and hooked it onto a tree branch in the hope that it would shake the sand from its wings and fly off and be free.

It’s hard to know what to do for the best for a bat, as she so rightly said.

With all her clothes on, for once.

 

Paws interlude

I am even dreaming of cats at the moment.

I am currently reading off piste again.  It seems I will do almost anything to avoid reading Les Miserables.  (I am sure it will be wonderful in the end).  I am deeply in thrall to Tracey Emin right now.  She has  just published a book of all her columns that she wrote for the Independent newspaper, entitled: ‘My Life in a Column’.

I love Emin, and her work.  Her writing is as interesting to me as her artwork, and there are times when her art and her writing become one, which I find fascinating.

She has a cat called Docket who she draws and writes about.

Last night I dreamed that Queen Derek Ditch kept waking me up because she needed to write a letter to Docket about something extremely important, but she could not hold the pen herself.

In my dream I went downstairs with Derek and got the pen and paper out, but then Derek would run all over the paper with inky paws, so that there was no room to write the letter to Docket.

Derek would then get annoyed about this, despite the fact that it was her fault that I could not write the letter.  We would start again, but then she would start putting inky, furry, face prints on the clean page, and so it went on.

We never did write the letter to Docket.

I kept dreaming this on a loop.

Then I woke up.

I remembered my dream and thought something like ‘Gah!’

I turned over, went back to sleep, and promptly dreamed the same dream again for what seemed like several days.

I woke up this morning thinking; ‘I must post that letter to Docket.’

I probably won’t.

Shampoo and Set

Cats are featuring rather prominently in my life at the moment, what with the arrival of Queen Derek of Ditch into our lives, and then finding out, that like her adoptive mother, she spends rather a lot of time on the CLD ™, with optional fur extras.

Then there is the whole being doused in cat wee at mum’s house this week.

And the fact that I have agreed to help her out with Tess next time I go over to their house.  Tess has a paw problem, along with all her other problems (she is nearly  18, which is about eleventy billion years old in cat years, to be fair to her).  She quite often gets a septic toe, for which she has to have antibiotics.  It keeps recurring, and as her kidneys are not of the briskest, it is best that she doesn’t have repeated doses of meds.

The vet has suggested that mum use a special type of cat shampoo, which should address the problem.

The words ‘cat’ and ‘shampoo’ should never be used in such close proximity as I am sure you are aware.  In fact, the two words, when placed next to each other on the page can be interpreted to mean: ‘Gigantic ball ache for you. Human!’

She does not have to shampoo the entire cat, which you think would be some kind of consolation.  Except that it isn’t. At all.

No. She has to shampoo the cat’s foot briskly once a day.  Then she has to keep the shampoo on the cat’s foot for ten minutes to allow it to soak in, before washing it off.

Every day for several weeks, and then twice a week forever.

Yikes.

It sounds so simple.  It is not.

I have to help because Tess used to be my cat.

I also have previous experience of cat shampoo disasters.

I would not say that this qualifies me to help.  I would say that this qualifies me to be a hindrance.

But there you go.

I shall share my previous experiences with you.  I have blogged this before, but it was hundreds of years ago, and I do like to get my money’s worth from a story.

When I first lived in London with UE, we had two cats, Ronnie and Reggie (yes. Named after the Kray twins).  He got them for me after I suffered a particularly vicious miscarriage, as a consolation prize.

We had to take Ronnie to the vet for something or other.  As a parting shot the vet said he thought that Ronnie might be suffering from skin mites.  He gave me some shampoo for it.  I had to lather him, rinse and repeat.

I was suspicious then of the matter of fact way in which the vet was talking about shampoo and cats.  I grew up around them, and I can’t honestly say that cats have ever been big fans of soap and water.

Nevertheless, I wanted to do my best by Ronnie, so I trotted home with him and incarcerated myself in the bathroom with the cat, the shower attachment and the shampoo.

Ronnie was huge. He wasn’t a kitten when we had him, and he was an enormous, sleek, black beastie of epic proportions.

Luckily for me he was also a total wede and an uter wet.

I plonked him in the bottom of the bath.  He sat there like a total numpty.

I turned on the shower and wet him through.

He sat there with a bemused expression on his face.

I could not believe my luck.

I squeezed out the shampoo and lathered him all over.

He sat there, looking smaller and smaller by the second, covered in lather, with his huge, lamp like eyes radiating humiliation between the bubbles.

I needed to pick him up to lather his belly.  I picked him up by the scruff.

He elongated and elongated.  I thought his bones might have melted in the shower.

I had to stand on the toilet seat in the end he was so long.  He measured about three feet from end to end.

He sagged from my hand, oozing in feline puddles.

I began to panic.

Then as I started to rinse him off he just stiffened, all over.

He literally went catatonic, there and then.

His eyes went all glassy.

I thought I had killed him.

I decided that I could do nothing with a soapy dead cat.

I finished rinsing him off.

He just carried on being all rigid and glassy.

I rolled him in a towel, like a giant cat dog.

He stayed as stiff as a board.

I manoeuvred him onto the landing and into our bedroom, taking care not to knock his head off on the door posts as I went.

I unrolled him on the bed, like a furry Arabian princess rolling out of a carpet for the delectation of her prince.

I sat and looked at him for a while.

I had no idea what to do with him.

Tears were welling in my eyes.  It was very emotional.

I decided to finish off, so I got the hair dryer out, plugged it in, turned it on and pointed it at the stiff, furry object on the bed.

As soon as the hot air touched his fur he shot up into the air like a rocket.

I screamed.

He yowled.

He raced round and round the bedroom and then hid under the wardrobe.

For about a week.

It was very traumatic for both of us.

So why mum thinks I’m going to be good with cat shampoo I really don’t know.

I will keep you posted.

A Damp Squib

I don’t know why I am bothering to blog.

This is one of those pointless: ‘I washed my face. I brushed my teeth.’ sort of blog posts.

It’s just that if I don’t blog it makes me feel rather bereft and guilty, and like things are really rotten in the state of Denmark.  Or Broughton Astley.

I figure if I can still blog, there must be life in me yet.

Not much, admittedly.

And what there is is not exactly sparkling and effervescent, but it is better than nothing.

I have even done some work today.  Some progress has been made on my project that I can’t be arsed to talk about.  Not because it is exciting or secret, just because I have done so little work on it, it is hardly fair to call it a project.  It is merely the seed of a germ of a project that maybe might be going to turn into something useful, possibly.

A very long way down the road.

I have also entertained the children by taking them to see the lovely Mrs. Roody, who played hostess with the mostest for me and my brood and Michelle and hers today.

We filled half the cafe with no problems whatsoever.

When we started spilling over into the other half due to sugar induced rowdiness it was definitely time to go.

We had a trot round the charity shops in search of treasure. No Faberge eggs today.

Curses.

This means my work must go on, and that I cannot retire on my ill gotten gains.  I am also slightly mournful because my premium bonds haven’t won a penny.  Not even the ones I found in the bottom of my money box which someone had put in there in 1973 and I haven’t bothered with since.

I think there’s more chance of winning the Euro Millions than there is of winning anything on the Premium Bonds.  Andrea is the only person I’ve ever met who won anything on them, and that was in 1988.

Jason hasn’t won Euro Millions either, so we strive and toil for another week, and my plans of living it large in a luxury castle surrounded by teetering piles of pottery have to go on hold yet again.

The children don’t mind.  They are very phlegmatic about these things.  They were delighted when I suggested that tea might be rounds and rounds of hot buttered toast sitting in front of a film.  They’re not allowed to eat in the lounge usually, and this illicit pleasure was more than enough to make them think they had riches beyond their wildest dreams.

I wish I was so easily satisfied.

To be fair to me, a nice slice of cake and a large vat of coffee can go a long way to cheering a weary soul.  Although not at this time of night, it has to be said.  Even I am not foolhardy enough these days to start imbibing full strength Illy at ten o’clock at night.  Despite the fact I am typing this on autopilot with my eyes closed.

 

L’air du Urine

After our exciting morning we went to granny’s for a bun and a run round the garden.

While we were there granny asked me if I would help her take a box of books down to the local charity shop.

I jumped at the chance because a) I might find treasure, which is always welcome, and b) I got to have ten minutes away from the children.  At this point Tallulah was singing her fourteenth verse of ‘So long, farewell’ from The Sound of Music, and Oscar was competing with a contralto version of ‘I like big butts and I cannot lie.’  It was a good time to go.

I carried the box.

As I picked it up I noticed it was rather odiferous.

In fact it absolutely reeked.

Of cat pee.

Granny and grandad have a rather unusual cat flap.  It is in fact a ruddy great hole cut out of their utility room wall.  It has a drawbridge type thing, but one which has to be manually operated by someone with opposable thumbs.

This means it is either open to all cats, or shut to all cats.

Mostly it is open to all cats, and Tess, the rightful owner of the house and cat flap is too weedy to beat them to a pulp.

She cowers under the bed while every cat within a five mile radius breaks into the house to eat her food, sleep in her bed and occasionally piddle on large and unwieldy boxes of books.

By the time I had registered the odour and where it was coming from, it was too late.

I absolutely hummed of cat pee myself.

We took the box down to the charity shop.  We browsed around, chased by the fierce odour of cat piddle.

I bought a Malene Birgger scarf for a quid, in a gaseous haze of stench.

We drove home in a fug of cat widdle.

I then gathered the children up and drove them home with the windows down, the odour of pungent cat urine whipping into our faces.

I did a quick change when we got in.  We were due at swimming, but I decided that half an hour in a humid swimming pool with me smelling of tom cat would probably not endear us to the already long suffering swimming instructor.

It is now quarter to eight and I do not smell of cat pee.

I cannot tell you how nice this is.

Bookish

This morning we pushed the boat out with an exciting morning of supermarket shopping and signing up for the annual jamboree that is the reading scheme run by the libraries.

Every year the children get hideously excited by this.  Every year I find myself completely baffled and wondering ‘Why?’

The library likes to boost the number of books people take out over the summer.  This is fine by me. Libraries are shutting in droves, and soon the public library will be a thing of the past.  I think this is a terrible thing.

I moan about the library system with alarming regularity, and like the NHS it is not perfect, but it is better than no library system and no NHS.  The fact that I can wander into any town in Britain and borrow books, plentiful amounts of books, on any subject you care to mention, for free, is something that still gives me a deep sense of contentment, and even joy.  It is a wonderful thing.

I am very lucky. I grew up in a house full of books.  In a house where books were not considered a luxury but a necessity.  I was always allowed to buy books, no matter what else was rationed.  It was unthinkable that I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on a book, or books.  And we still went to the local library at least once a week, despite the fact that the whole house was already bristling with the things.

I have continued this tradition with my own children and my own house.  We have thousands, and I mean thousands of books in our house. Only a fraction of them are on display at the moment, as there is no room for them in this house. The rest are in storage, and the thought pains me.

But the reading scheme fails to set my enthusiasm alight every single year.

This year’s scheme has a circus theme.  It sounds great, but it is just like last year’s space theme, and whatever the theme was the year before.

Each child gets a chart, which is a picture of space, or circus or pirates.  It has six spaces on it.  Each space is for a book.

On your first visit you take out three books.

When you have finished reading them, you write the titles of your books in three of the spaces.

When you take your finished books back to the library, the librarian gives you a sticker to stick on your picture.

Then you take out three more books.

You repeat the process.  Then you take the books back, the librarian gives you a yo yo (last year it was a plastic alien). Your book journey is then officially over.

Then the library writes to your school to tell your teacher that you have completed the book challenge, and if you’re lucky, the head teacher reads your name out in assembly in September.

Fin.

Nobody checks that you have actually read your books.  Nor do they ask you if you liked the book you read, or why, or if you didn’t like the book, and why.

It is merely an exercise in getting people to check out books so that the stats look good.

Sigh.

Last year all my children finished the reading challenge in the first week and a half of the holidays, and then promptly lost their aliens.

It is going to be the same this year, but with yo yo’s.  Except this year Oscar was too young to join (he’s four). I don’t see why they put an age limit on these things.  We wangled him entry on the understanding that he is actually going to school in September, and is very tall for his age.

Tilly was too old to join.  There was no way we could get round this.  She sighed, gave up dreams of yo yo’s and sodded off to borrow four Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris.  Like Jason, you might think she is too young for this kind of book.  It’s certainly going to make Twilight look tame if she ever gets around to reading them.  I don’t have a problem with it.  The children have the freedom of the bookcases, and if they’re old enough to stick with it, they’re old enough to read it.  Anyway, by the time Jason found out she was reading them, she had already read half a dozen of them so it was too late.

I think Tilly got the better deal, deviant sex and vampirism or a yo yo? You decide.

 

Pooh Plop Arse Wank

Wow!

Tough few days.

Not just the whole children settling into being free for the summer holidays malarkey, but the fact that my health took another dip and it has been like someone just pulled my batteries out.

I have had no energy. None at all.

Yesterday we had some friends over for the day. It was lovely to see them.  We had a lazy day. My friend has a new baby, so she’s not really up for olympic hurdling and the like.  The most effort we made all day was a forty minute walk across the fields at the back of the house.

Still, I was absolutely shattered.  To the point where I was finding it hard to keep awake even when they were here, and they’re not dull people. It’s just that the moment I sit down, I power down.

I can do small spurts of energy for about ten minutes tops, and then BANG! I just want to go to sleep.  This is not very convenient.  Along with the children I have a project I am working on where speed is of the essence. It is not speeding. It is snailing.  I am also behind with my reviewing and reading, which is really depressing.  The reading in particular is proving fatal. I only have to read five pages to fall asleep.  I am making super S L O W progress on all fronts.

I was in bed and asleep by nine thirty last night. I slept until nine this morning when Oscar crept into bed with me to show me his latest dance moves.

After eleven and a half hours of sleep I still felt absolutely battered.

My doctor’s appointment is on Monday.

In the meantime I am seeing a reflexologist, who has helped me in the past when all my lady bits got out of alignment (and I started wearing my vagina as a hat!).  You may think that reflexology is a load of rocking horse manure. I don’t care. It has worked in the past, and while the doctor is grinding exceeding slow I am going with whatever I can think of.

My dietary changes took a slight nose dive last week due to me wanting to mainline chocolate, fat, chocolate, fat and a sprinkle of sugar on the top to assuage my petulant hormones, but I have been pulling straight again over the last few days.

It doesn’t seem to be making a jot of difference.

I am so frustrated with myself. I am driving myself insane. There is so much I want to do, but if I can’t do it in a ten minute slot it’s game over at the moment.

Grrr.

 

Everyone Has To Have A Dream

It is important to have a goal.  It turns out that Tallulah’s is slightly more bizarre than most.

That shouldn’t really surprise me after all this time. But sometimes her eccentricities just creep up on me.

As well as generally scrubbing the house, we have been scrubbing ourselves.  It was the dreaded toenail and fingernail cutting time today. I had been putting it off for far too long frankly. I hate cutting their nails. Even when they were tiny I hated it, and it hasn’t really improved with age.

When they were weeuns I used to worry about accidentally chopping off their fingers.

Now I want to chop their fingers off to justify the amount of squeaking and wailing they do about it.

Tallulah has the most terrible toe nails.  She has inherited them entirely from UE. If you put her feet next to his, you would be able to spot the parental link straight the way.

They grow all twisty and pointy and hard, like hooves.  They are a devil to cut.

She also hates having them cut.

I have to pin her down every few months and practically sit on her chest.

Today as I caught her she was shouting ‘No! No! You don’t understand! You are ruining my plan!’

Once I’d got her in a relaxed half nelson I inquired as to the nature of this plan.

‘Mama! If you cut my toenails you are ruining my chances of stardom forever.’

‘What?’

‘Yes! I am growing my toenails so that I can have the longest toenails in the world, and I will get into the Guinness Book of World Records, and I will be famous.’

I cut her toenails.

She was not best pleased.

As she flounced out the door she tossed this little aside over her shoulder:

‘Well. I hope you’re happy now that you’ve ruined my dream.’