Saturday, 24th May
Mum has these old purple flip-flops with a big flouncy flower on which I like to wrestle with from time to time. The only trouble is, Mum is usually wearing the flip-flops when I’m wrestling with them.
She’ll be standing at the sink either cleaning her teeth in the bathroom or washing the dishes in the kitchen and that’s the very moment I’ll pounce on the flip-flops.
I like to hug her ankles too, giving little kit-nips (as I call them) on her toes but she yelps – completely destroying the moment.
I haven’t quite got the hang of head rubbing yet – which I’ve seen all the others do, both to each other and to Mum. Personally, I like to show my affection in more physical ways and ankle hugging and kit-nips will be around for a while yet.
Monday, 26th May
I’d sit on the tower and watch as Billy and Timmy did a sort of dance down the garden path and wonder what they were doing. It looked like unsynchronised T’ai Chi and although they would periodically jump in the air with their paws outstretched I thought it was all part of the seemingly endless number of movements to T’ai Chi.
I never did find out what they were doing until I started to go out in the garden. To my great astonishment and acute embarrassment I started to do T’ai Chi as well. It was as if I had no control over my own legs – they would fly out in all directions completely and utterly without thought of how it might look to the neighbours.
The cause of this involuntary T’ai Chi was the humble, but exquisite, butterfly. Kevin Costner may have ‘Danced with Wolves’ but I, Ollie the award-winning Diary-Writer Extraordinaire, have Danced with Butterflies.
They’re a bit of a disappointment if you catch one as they’re very papery and dissolve like a Communion wafer on the tongue.
Mum was in something called hysterics when she looked out the window and saw Timmy and I dancing with butterflies. She said we looked like Morecambe and Wise when they used to sing a song on telly called ‘Bring me sunshine’, and they did a silly dance to it.
Silly dance indeed! Purrlease! This is the ancient art of T’ai Chi – we are encouraging the yin and yang to flow and balance our inner parts. Silly dance indeed! If you want to see some silly dancing, you should watch Mum when she’s playing some music pretending she’s at a disco in the front room! She looks like <cautiously looks over left shoulder in case she’s peeping and withdraws my food rations> John Travolta’s Aunty Mabel at the office party. If you know what I mean!
Wednesday, 28th May
Something else I like to do is catch flies. I say I like to do it, but I haven’t, as yet, actually caught any. It starts off well with the stalking bit but then the fly flits off. I do one of my T’ai Chi jumps, clasping my paws together believing I have caught the fly. But once I open my paws very carefully, there is usually nothing there! Or the sneaky fly escapes! Just in case any one has been watching me I pretend that the paw clasping is part of the T’ai Chi and I meant to do it and I do it again to make it look like I’m doing so many repetitions before moving on to the next bit.
At the moment, I’ve enlisted Mum as co-flycatcher. She’s not as agile and graceful as me, and has a tendency to whack the fly (rather heavy-handedly) intending to stun it so that on its descent, I can make a valiant attempt to catch it. What usually happens is the fly is so stunned, that it becomes unconscious and loses the will to live. Playing with dead flies is not as interactively challenging as playing with live ones. It lacks the stimulation and fun that I have built myself up for. At these moments, I usually give Mum one of my ‘disgusted’ looks and walk off, leaving her to scrape the deceased fly from the newspaper or wherever it has become ingrained in her whacking-attack.
Mum hates flies but having the windows and doors open at this time of the year the house is absolutely abuzz with them. Here in the UK we don’t have fly screens over the doors but Mum did tell me about a beautiful macramé screen she once had at the back door.
Apparently, this beautiful macramé screen was at the back door one summer and Biggles (God Bless his soul) decided to make a dramatic theatrical entrance. But just as he went TA DA!!! he got entangled in the knots and, far from looking dramatic or theatrical, he just managed to look pathetic.
Fortunately for Biggles, Mum saw what happened and tried to free him but he kept struggling. Eventually Mum calmed him down and managed to free him but never put the screen up again.
Thursday, 29th May
PetShopMan brought round some nifty collars for us Mewsers to wear with our new ID disks. Sam, Timmy and I wear flea collars and our disks have been put on them, but Garfield, Ricky, Charlie, and Billy are all allergic to flea collars. They have to wear ordinary collars with the disks on. But Billy’s collar is no ordinary one – it’s LEOPARD SKIN and he struts his stuff now down the back alley showing off not only his collar, but his disk as well!! He thinks that he’s the bee’s knees.
< Must ask Garfield – do bees have knees? I don’t dare ask you-know-who because I’ll be a senile geriatric before she’s finished her dissertation on whether bees have knees or not, >
Garfield has a purple collar as befitting one of royal status and he looks really nice. Ricky’s is reflective silver and Charlie’s is a nice blue. All our collars have got bells on which means the birds will hear us before we can get anywhere near them.
Tuesday, 3rd June
A horrible alien ate Mum last night and had the cheek to wear her slippers and dressing gown! I was just passing the bathroom on my way out through the cat flap and I pushed the door open with my paw. I saw this really scary ‘thing’ dressed in those purple flip-flops that I like to wrestle with, and I jumped out of my skin. Mum was nowhere to be seen! The creature had a big round whitey-green face which began to crack while I watched it; all I could see were these huge black eyes and wide nostrils. It bent down to pick me up and I screamed – I thought if it had eaten Mum it might eat me too.
While I was zipping myself back into my skin, the creature started to wash the whitey-green cracking stuff off and suddenly Mum was back. I hugged her ankles and nipped her toes in relief, which made her yelp a bit, but I was so glad that the creature had gone and Mum was back.
Friday, 6th June
A terrible thing happened today. Garfield had a mild stroke and had to go to the vet. He has to take some tablets now that might make him better, but they might not. When Mum got back from the vet with him, she gently lifted him out and put him on his favourite bed. After she put the carrying basket back in the cupboard, she made some phone calls to tell her friends about Garfield. Then she came into the front room, where she likes to do her thinking, and she started to cry.
I came in and sat on her lap and gave her a cuddle. She picked me up and I got covered in wet stuff. It took me ages to get spruced up again and dry. Then she gave us all some dinner and took Garfield upstairs to sleep in her room so that she could keep an eye on him.
We’re keeping all our paws crossed that he’s going to be all right as he was the only one to talk to me for ages and he is the nicest cat in all the world.
Sunday, 8th June
Found out today that fridges make a really good sound if you climb up and down the back of them. It sounds like harp music – like water flowing. It’s very calming and therapeutic so I did it a lot. Well, I did it until Mum came to investigate where the music was coming from. As the fridge is in the larder it took her a while to figure it out but then, like Columbo on a case, she didn’t let go until it was solved.
‘Ollie!’ she called, just as I was perfecting a delicate 3-point turn because I had created a pretty tinkling sound. ‘Ollie! Is that you?’ ‘No!’ I called back, ‘it’s not me!’
To prove it wasn’t me I made the mistake of peering over the top of the fridge. A few inches above the fridge is a shelf and it was a very tight squeeze trying to manoeuvre myself up the ladder effect of the back of the fridge and up onto the top part. I had to flatten my ears down and crawl on my belly a bit.
The next thing I know, is that I’m being yanked out very unceremoniously and clasped tightly. ‘PLUMS AND CUSTARD Ollie!!!!! You’ll get stuck! You’re too big to go behind the fridge now.’
This last remark was in reference to the fact that when I first arrived here, I used to squeeze along the side of the fridge to get to the back and walk right round to the other side before squeezing myself into the skinniest shape imaginable to get out again. As the gaps are literally a few inches Mum was always amazed that I could do it. But I must have grown these past few months because I can’t even get my head in the gaps now.
Another area of pleasure denied to me. Sometimes, it’s just not fair what a kitten has to go through to please its Humans.
Dogs Come when Called
"Dogs come when called. Cats take a message and get back to you."
"Of course, every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room."
Edward Verrall Luca (essayist)