CatCalling

A busy weekend CatCalling ....two of my favourite calls and an exhortation from my online Horoscope (which I take seriously when it suits me ) to consider spending time on my own in Creative Pursuits and the like meant that I spent extra time in each house just enjoying being with the cats , bird watching at one of the houses and making meaningful conversation in another with W , a very rewarding cat I've known for some time about how he spends his time now his sister is no more .

At the Fairytale Garden which I've written about here before , Mr and Mrs Blackbird are nesting and the family are feeding the adult birds Felix cat food mixed with water in a bowl . As soon as I had got my coat off , organised the cats ( known as the Girls ) their tuna , read the explanatory note and got out into the garden with the bird food , the cats were out there to follow my progress .
Usually they're far more interested in their own supplies but today was different . Stumbling cautiously across the flagstones and grass ( neither of them is particularly sprightly these days ) they soon set up camp behind two different stones , staking out the garden ready to Keep an eye on Things ...... as the note had said , no sooner was the Felix down and my back turned , I could see Mr Blackbird's beak flashing in the sun ......and was he desparate to get down to check out what was in that bowl ..... but , despite their best efforts at stalking the cats were none too steady on the pins and both were slipping and sliding in their hiding places .
I retreated indoors and took up my spot in the sitting room .

Silence .
Now what ?

I could see the bird , tail dipping , beak flashing . Cats still in place , craning their necks , willing the bird down where presumably they were hoping to pounce , not much chance of that though at their time of life but enough to stop the poor bird coming down . Hopefully the propect of the tuna would drive them in within a few minutes .

And I am back into the sunshine and on to my next call where a tiny siamese kitten needs to be coaxed to eat more ...

Its a life .

I spend a rare four hours at the office ( rare for a Sunday ) and then call back on the kitten concerned that she has not eaten enough and could possibly be coaxed to eat more . Result .... and I go home happy , to assist with guinea pig cage scouring and litter tray deep litter clean , highly satisfying with hose and hot sunny yard .

Don't mention walks please ..... I'm worn out .....Greyhounds can only go so far .... didn't you people get the leaflet ?

Just Don't Ask

This is my seat , on top of the fridge freezer , on the family heirloom , which Sarah sewed by hand for Nat before she was born , and which is here temporarily waiting to be washed and wouldn't you know it , Toby has to butt in behind me .... Just don't click to enlarge an dlook too closely at my face that's all I can say .

I often get the giggles in the early hours .
This morning , with my fist crammed in my mouth as D stirred somewhat impatiently as I hooted and tittered to myself I tried to work out what this is all about and more importantly , did I used to do this when I lived alone ? I cant remember , is the simple answer , and as the answer to almost everything these days , is enough to set me off afresh . The thing which sparked me off today was initially seeing Kitty out of the corner of my eye as she nosed her way into the bedroom at four fifty three am and spotted me already reading . ( " Welcome to the World Baby Girl " by Fannie Flagg , and the name itself was enough to set me off on another tangent a few moments later but that's another story . Remind me , if you can bear it . ) Kitty has all the grace of a warthog , and she pushes into the room , stumbles over fallen debris and lands with a thud on top of D . She has no sense of the need to walk round the guy in the passenger seat to get to the driver . Her beady eye is fixed on me , and I try to remain steadfast , holding my book firmly in two hands and reading on , Neighbour Dorothy holding me in thrall . As she bakes cakes and broadcasts from her back yard without missing a beat in the fifties , I read , oblivious to the fact that a hefty tortoiseshell she-cat is craving my attention and is hell bent on pushing her way between me and my reading matter . Whack ! The book goes flying . I sigh , do the Planned Ignoring that my sister taught me many years ago when she had toddlers , and pick up the book . Soon Kitty is where she needs to be , nose to nose , chest to chest , weighing a ton as ever , and my book is held at arms length and the world is at peace .
Fiftteen minutes of fifties Missouri ( was it ? I forget ? ) is enough to set me back on the road to sleep , my body is relaxed , kitty is purring for England and the book is discarded .
This is when the tittering turns to snorting and choking .... as I do my customary , I can see three things which are ...... I can hear three things , my mind wanders off to my blog and a post I read yesterday from Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds about Gillian Mckeith ( unfortunate popular health guru freak(?) who advocates quinoa and butternut squash and rootles about through peoples' fresh poop , all whilst dressed herself in a smart neutral suit . Looking at poo while dressed in beige ? no thanks , I'd be in navy or brown ..... ) . Anyway the thing which got me going at six ten was the word "legumes ". Wide Lawns ( I wonder what her real name is ? She can't really be called Wide Lawns ) said , having watched Ms Mckeith that she loved the way we Brits call things different things , ie she had never heard of "Pulses " and she supposed pulses must be the things she calls " legumes " ..... I got to thinking I couldn't recall what a pulse was though obviously being a Brit I often cook with them and had a picture in my head of a bowl of them ..... it took me several minutes to come up with the name .....( some giggling here as I wondered if this was the pre-pre- perimenopause , my topamax , my age generally , or the time of day ..... ) and then Hey Presto Lentils ..... I had the name ... lentils !
That's of course when it really got silly . Lentils and the like just cannot be called legumes . Surely a legume is a big yellow thing like an aubergine ? A legume has to , just has to look something like a leg . It just cant look like a lentil !
My shaking finally dislodged a very disgusted Kitty , who cannot abide movement when she is happily settled . Laughing and sneezing are verboten . D was not best pleased either , but being asleep was unable to express it except by disgruntled turnings and then some snoring activity of his own .

And as for Fannie Flagg ? A colleague of mine was appalled some years ago when she went to Disneyworld Florida ( That can't be right , but you know what I mean ) wearing what we call a BumBag and a woman approached her and asked where she got her FannyPack . Despite my appalling short tem memory I still recall the look on my daughter's face ( the sheer delight at hearing such a rude word, fanny of course here a crude word for the female external genitalia ). And bum would not be a word recognised in the States , in fact here butt too is taking over . As I pondered in the early hours , would leave us with buttbag and for some reason this left me with an image of two elderly sheep ( Clifford the Sheep anyone ? the childrens' book with sheep dressed in wolves clothing riding around in a sports car ? Ok I'm making it up ... ) rummaging around their underparts inspecting their scrotums for ticks .
Oh dear . We've come full cycle here . Its got to be the Topamax .
Enjoy the weekend ....

Lottery Winner!

I wake with my usual/ sometime 4 am headache ( though not quite so usual now , you tend to realise when it re appears that there has been a wondrous spell when it has been missing . A bit like the early morning greyhound starts . )

I edge slowly downstairs to avoid waking said greyhound and take a syndol and fall back to sleep using my insomnia technique of old ( see previous post) . At five I wake again and read The Wild by Esther Freud . I hate the William character with a vengeance and hope Jake shoots him . I'm not a violent person but ....( I suppose this is how all violence gets started ) .

I am up at 6 45 and in the shower for work when I realise there is a sensible plan waiting to happen here . I hatch it and switch my work day to Saturday when I was planning to go in to clear my desk in any case .

My head is hurting too much to partake in the morning walk but I am eager to avoid falling asleep again as the head will get worse . Texts from here and there let me know that this is likely to be some kind of bug as I am not the only sufferer .

I watch tv downloaded from last night for the first time on my laptop hardly believeing I am doing this . TV in bed ? Me ? It feels like luxury .... " Mum and Me " a documentary shot by a daughter, Sue in her fifties and her daughter, Holly , seventeen , making monthly visists from London to Ayr in Scotland , a round trip of some four hundred miles , to visit Ethel Bourne , in her eighties , who has Alzheimers and has little if any memory . Although she seems always to know Holly at times she has no idea who her daughter is , mistaking her for her grandmother or her sister . The thing that strikes me is the warm welcome Ethel always gives her daughter . At some level she does know who she is and is delighted , full of joy at her arrival and at contact with the outside world . She makes no complaint about her plight in the nursing home , seeming to be unaware that this is where she is living . The three women laugh and joke and smile much of the time . It makes me think of myself ... will I be as gracious in old age ? Doubtful ?
And it makes me reflect that my mother is always pleased to see me , presumably to see all of us , her three children . We always get a warm welcome . I never hear her complain about anything , however she is feeling . Maybe I will be the same , in old age with my daughter , always delighted to see her , and this delight and pleasure in her company will overcome my grumpiness about my situation ? Sue talks of the improved relationship between herself and her mother at the start of the programme and as things progress we start to see some of the more negative aspect of things , when after three of four days away together things start to wear thin . Its painful to watch and Sue is brave to portray herself warts and all . She comes across as the villain of the piece and yet how easy to slide downhill there very rapidly oneself when faced with the loneliness of cancer ( which she doesnt feel she can burden her mother with ), and the exhaustion of all that she is doing .
My mind wanders .....
My own grandmother lived alone in her own home until her death in her mid nineties . Suffice to say she was in very good mental health , no sign of Alzheimers there !
When we said goodbye on our regular Sunday visits we rarely made specific arrangements about our "next time"( always at the back of my mind that awful , will this be the last time I see you ? ) but on my last visit to her , in June 94 , I said I would see her in a fortnight if I could make it and her last words to me were " Well , if you can . Its always a pleasure to see you " . She spoke so steadfastly , using my name which she rarely did , and stroking my three month old baby 's hair , and when I got there , on the Sunday , two weeks later she had died in the early hours of the Saturday morning .

The post arrives shortly after these reflections announcing that I am indeed a lottery winner and have won ten pounds for the third time ! The first was the very first week of the lottery , the second was soon after I took out a monthly subscription and here we are again .

I fall sleep and dream that I am in attendence at an international conference about sex offenders , sitting next to Karl Hanson no less . He is both on the stage , giving the keynote speech and sitting next to me , in the audience , watching himself quizzically . It is a scene from Six feet Under no less.
I look on in amusement .

He makes a joke against himself ( from the stage ) and I giggle ( in the audience ) , and he( his audience persona ) reaches down and tickles the heel of my foot so that my sandal falls off . This is highly sigificant for me , not that Mr Hanson ,no less, is messing with my foot but that I am wearing sandals not boots . Anyone who knows me will understand . I find the giving up of my boots in Summer nigh on impossible but here my dream self had made the transition with ease .....

And on the subject of Alzheimers I flick to my telephone calender and realise I have forgotten my nephew's birthday ... oh dear ....

After an early start CatCalling ie looking for a missing cat which didn't come home last night , and still wasn't back by 8 am this morning and despite my best efforts , shouting all manner of endearments at the back of the house and sending her mate out onto the patio to help me , it was to no avail . I wasn't too concerned as the food left out over night had disappeared ( though I suppose a passing hedgehog could have had that ) but the cat-left-behind was definitely beginning to be concerned and was sniffing all over the lawn and around the garage and under the plants as if in expectation of a miracle . In the end there was nothing much more to be done . I sat in the leather armchair and read the Laura Ashley Catalogue from cover to cover and talked to Ms-left-behind as best I could in the sunshine , but in the end my growling stomach got the better of me , having come out before breakfast , and I headed for home and fresh coffee and rye toast and peanut butter .
Difficult to get started for some reason but once we got out at ten with Alice , the sailing club was a hive of activity with some kind of sailing lesson going on . The sun shone over the water and we picked our way over the rocks poking in the rock pools with Alice joining in the search for live beasties . Much calmer now when we are out , she seems to have almost recovered her equilibrium after the attack by the jack russell terrier and slippping her a biscuit as we pass any dog which looks vaguely interesting means she is distracted and tends to keep her mouth shut until we are safely past .


Still finding it impossible to get going , this afternoon I have been mostly fiddling about with sweet potato , coriander , curry paste , and salmon from a tin and am now ready to produce some Indian fish cakes when the moment is right ......


NB the cat is back .