Winter

Yikes, it's cold here. I'm told that the wind is blowing straight from Siberia. My priority at the moment is to keep warm and find suitable spots in the house in which to do so.

Tips for finding the best spot in the house:

1. Know your pipelines. Beneath the floor runs a convenient hot water system and in combination with the softer patches of carpet, the rising warm air can be most soothing to the stomach.

2. Balance this with avoiding draughts. These come from doorways, cat flaps, people going in and out through the front door...

3. Naturally the music room is a no-no. Why Jess and Tom feel it necessary to make so much NOISE is beyond me. That squeaky thing Tom plays is the worst, even though it is so much smaller than the piano. The high frequencies do horrible things to my sharp feline ears. Therefore a spot must be found on the first floor, well away from source of sound.

4. One wants quiet, but equally one does not wish to miss out on the chance of extra food. If the spot is too secluded, They may forget about you, and you don't want that.

5. And finally, having exhausted the possibility of the bed, the blanket box, the kitchen chair and mouse-watching in the bathroom (still no sign of it, by the way), I have hit upon the perfect compromise: half way up the stairs. They can't understand this. But They wouldn't, would they?

Why?

Instead of hugging me, for the last 24 hours Jess has been hugging a book that was brought yesterday by a hairy man on a motorbike. What's the big deal with this book? I mean, you can't eat it.

Tuesdays

My 'owner' tells me there's a song called 'I don't like Mondays'. Well, I can't bear Tuesdays. A girl comes every week, takes out the dragon and goes all over the house with it roaring its blue head off. The dragon doesn't like my cat scents and does its best to suck them all away. All I can do is pad from room to room in the hope that the blasted thing will let me get some rest.

I've now taken refuge in Jess's study, but she's got a pile of CDs to work through and it's bloody noisy in here. For the last hour we've been listening to some guy bawling his head off in a foreign language, with a piano going alongside and people clapping from time to time. Jess was sitting there with her hanky, snuffling and saying stupid things to me like, "Don't you love Schubert, poochface?" Wretched woman. I shall be demanding extra dinner later on as my retaliation.

OH, FOR SOME PEACE AND QUIET.

This is the disc, by the way...

Copycat!

There's a cat in California that has taken my idea. At least he/she/it can't type very well. The owner writes rather nice music so I'm told I have to forgive them. Hmph.

It's extraordinary what human beings will do for the sake of music.

Hazards in the house

I often have the feeling that They don't know how much danger They are in, living in what seems to be a pretty, suburban houselet. I am smaller than Them, and my eyesight is considerably finer (every time Tom goes out he asks Jess where his keys/mobile phone/wallet/business cards/vioin are, and she has no more clue than he has).

Therefore I am closer to the action they miss. For example:

There's a fox that comes into our back garden in the summer. As soon as the sun rises above a certain height and pleasant sunny patches appear under the pergola, there he is, sunning himself like a bloody dog, lying on his back with his paws up as if he owns the place. They purr over the way he and I 'tolerate' one another, but you won't catch me within ten feet of that thing. You want a fox in your garden? Did anybody ask me? They were afraid he'd try to eat me (as if! those animals know all about claws) - but reflect, I pray, upon what else I have to put up with from foxes. They carry fleas. They spray horrible scents on MY terriroty. And they raid the leftovers in the recycling bin before I can. None of this is acceptable.

Then there's the hole in the wall. In the bathroom, behind the loo. There's a mouse in there. I know there is. You want mice in your house? OK, I bring them in as gifts, but generally they are dead by then. Should I detect an untreated mouse alive and kicking in my own house, there'd be serious trouble. I'm not going to allow VERMIN to attack my bag of Science Plan Cat Food. Mice. Ugh. Everything has its place. And so, although I've not caught him yet, I stand sentry by the hole in the wall, motionless, waiting. Sooner or later, that mouse will emerge. And I will be there to get him. You wait and see. For now, all I hear is: "What are you doing in the bathroom, you silly pussycat?" Grrr.

Birds are another case in point. You don't want them in the house either. Not that they normally come in, but some day they might. The more of them I can put them off before they try to, the better. Can you imagine the mess? Feathers everywhere. All that tweeting. Droppings (we cats are extremely particular about such matters, but birds just do it anywhere). Birds, too, have a place, and it is outside, in the air. I am considered brutal should I kill one, but I promise, there is a reason.

There is always a reason. It's just that you have to be a cat to understand it. Humans never understand anything: they're too busy thinking.