O my paws and whiskers...

...I just caught Jess reading this and made the mistake of having a quick peer up from the floor with my razor-sharp eyesight.

MIAAAOOOOOUUUWWWWWCHHH!!

How dare they?

Tom is on tour with his noisy box and the house is delightfully peaceful. That is, until Jess gets on the phone to him... As far as I can gather, he is in America, travelling around, making a lot of noise with 99 other people who also make a lot of noise. But it's not the noise that's currently alarming me.

Jess has cousins over there and it seems they invited Tom to dinner. He had a great time...playing with their cats. A white one and a black one - Maine Coot, no less, those great fuzzy monsters that must have left genes somewhere in the dreaded Artie at No.17. Apparently they do laps.

Laps are not written into my contract. I do purrs. I do stretch-schmoozes. I even occasionally deign to let Jess or Tom stroke the white fur on my tummy (not many others dare to try, except for one pianist who knows what to do with his fingers and has an alarmingly soothing effect). But LAPS? How demeaning can you get?

Unfortunately people want cats who do laps. So Tom says to Jess, "Maybe we should get another cat."

Excuse me???

A little cattiness

Have you noticed that women, when they get together, talk about men and children? Presumably when men get together, they talk about women (and sometimes children, though not as often). And when children get together, they talk about cats.

Jess had a friend round to tea yesterday. They sat in the kitchen and ate chocolate cake (did I get any? did I hell) and talked about...men and children. I tried to join in. Why should I be left out? I am a member of this family. But what happened? What always happens. The minute there are humans around, The Cat suddenly loses status and becomes merely The Household Pet. My plentiful contributions to the conversation produced nothing more significant than the occasional pat on the head and the comment from Jess's friend, "Aah, it's almost as if he's talking!" Jess kindly pointed out, "He IS talking..."

Something in the air...

What is it? I can't tell. Something fresh. Something new. Something growing. It wafts in from the garden and I have to follow it. The air is cold, but it doesn't seem to matter. Plants are appearing in the flowerbeds that I haven't seen for some time. I heard Jess expounding to Tom about the wonders of things called witch hazel and winter-flowering daphne and daffodils. Humans do love to label things; we cats prefer to get down to business and spray them.

I went out for a walk this morning and tried my sense of balance on the garden fence - yes, even after vegetating all winter, I can still walk along it adequately enough to make the little girls next door watch me apparently in some fascination. It's not so difficult, because there's energy in the breeze and something in the sun which actually feels like sunshine. At such times, a cat feels he could do anything...

...oh...except, that is, to convince Jess to give me my supper at 1.15pm.