March 2014: Spring fever and March madness

Hello readers and welcome to my March Mewsings.  

How have you all been?  It’s not been a bad winter where I live but I know some of you have been beset by floods and you have my sympathies.  We cats aren’t the largest of creatures so how you’ve all been coping and getting about I can’t imagine.  I like to keep up with current (no pun intended) affairs so I saw the flooding on the news.  Talking of news I have a snippet for you, I have finally taken the plunge and got a Twitter account!  It’s very exciting tweeting people all over the world, I’ve made friends in America, Lithuania, Switzerland and heaven knows where else.  Please feel free to look me up @SquirtTheCat.  What I’d really like is a mobile phone as well so that I can keep in contact with the world but Staff refuses to buy me one.  She is a cheapskate and a meanie.

My other bit of news is, as you know, I have become the agony uncle for The Daily Mews.  I was deeply honoured to be asked and, with my experience of life and the world and being a common sense sort of fellow, I think I am up to the challenge.  I certainly hope so!

 Anyway, winter is nearly behind us and spring is fast approaching.  I can’t wait because what does spring mean for us?  Mouse Bonanza time!  Fleas!  Roaming far and wide in search of adventure!  Sunbathing!  It’s the best time of year to be a cat.

March also brings Mothers’ Day so I thought this would be a good time to tell you a bit about my own Mother, Moondance.  You know how children get to the point where their parents are an embarrassment?  I’ve been there since I was a few weeks old.  In short, Mother is mad.  Completely bonkers.  She is a tiny little cat with a bushy tail which she holds up over her back as she scoots and zooms through life.  You could be forgiven for mistaking her for a large red squirrel.  She goes everywhere at speed and if cats had engines then hers would be powered by four hummingbirds and a woodpecker.

Uh oh – she’s realised I’m writing about her and she’s got so xcited that she’s jumped on the deskk and keeps stepping on the laptap.  I’d better apologize here and now for any smelling pistakes that may occur.  I have to keep pussing her off the keys.

I love her dearly of course but she drives me up the wall sometimes.  She is a highly individual cat with a brain full of jumbled up elastic bands – she never stops to think which is probably why things happen to herrrrrrrr.  Mother, wil you GET OFF?  I’m trying to work here.  Staff, will you please put her outsize?  I can’t concentrate on what I’m boing.

Where was I?  Oh yes, things happen to my Mother.  I don’t believe she looks for trouble but she certainly finds it.  A few years ago she fell asleep too close to the fire and set her own tail alight – how silly is that?  Staff grabbed her and ran her under the cold tap so she escaped with minimal damage, just a scorched tail, but she looked very odd until the hair grew back properly.  Then of course there was the time she collided with a barn door (chasing an intruder cat away) and knocked a canine tooth so loose it had to be removed.  And you know what?  She blamed me for that because I was on the roof and didn’t get down in time to chase the cat away.  Last summer she climbed onto a trailer that was stacked high with big bales of straw.  If she had stopped to think she would have remembered that cats can climb UP a lot easier than they can climb DOWN.  But no, she scuttled up to the top of the bales and was stuck there, screaming blue murder.  Staff heard her, fetched a ladder and rescued her. 

In short she is a very dainty, pretty little cat who looks like a fairy but attacks life with the speed of a charging rhinoceros.  But she’s a great companion and really my best friend in the world so I thought I pay tribute to her in this Mothers’ Day Mewsing.

Back to the problem page for a moment.  I have here a letter from a Mr M. Ouse from Aberdeenshire (where I live, what a coincidence).  Apparently he’s having a hard time at the moment because he’s too scared to leave his home.  He hasn’t been out to scrounge for scraps for three days and his family are starving.  This is because……..just a moment, hey Mother! Come and look at this!  ……….He is being harassed by two red cats.  Hmm.  Apparently every time he sticks his nose out of the door he sees these two cats staring intently at him and looking like they fancy a snack.  One of them is tall, sleek and handsome and the other is small with a bushy tail.  Mr M. Ouse, eh?  Oh don’t worry Mr Ouse, I think I can solve your problem for you.  Permanently.

So that’s all for now friends.  I must go now because I have a little job to do outside.  Come on Mother, let’s go out and do what we do best.  Let’s go and get the little beggar!

Squirt has written a fantastic book: Reservoir Cats: True Stories and Cat's Eye Views from Squirt (aided by his Staff member: Penel Ashworth).

Available on Amazon Kindle here: Reservoir Cats

For a review of Reservoir Cats, click on this link

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