A Big Growly, Grey Cat

Back in December, I wrote about a carrot and a stick. A Shaguar - oh Behave!  Seems the carrot got caught and is now sitting in our carport!

Yes. Mr K got his much coveted Jaguar. Its so cute how a (almost) 50 year old man, reverts to a small excited boy who got a bike for his 6th birthday. That smile, the one in the picture, is reserved for the grey cat - I have caught him a few times now, out in the carport with his hand lovingly stroking her, with that grin on his face!

Now, anyone who knows Mr K in the flesh, will know that he is not a car-washing-every-Saturday-then-blowervac- the driveway-and-clean-the-pool kinda guy. He does 'man chores' if and only when they really, really need it. BUT, this Jaguar, that we have had for 2 weeks now, has been washed 3 times, polished once, vacuumed twice and had the leather inside all wiped over. (I know, my Mum will have gasped at this abomination). This is a man who can walk over cat sick for weeks, uses the same coffee cup for days without washing it, decides if a pair of worn undies are clean enough by sniffing them!

So, it must be love. For Mr K to take such care of her, it has to be the real thing.

The nice part - he is sharing his new love affair with me. I got to drive her down the shops the other night. I was terrified. It took me a full 15 minutes to back out of our driveway - I was so nervous I would scratch it. It tells you how to reverse, to watch out for things on your left, right, back front - even peeped loudly when I was about to back over the dog! It turns on the lights automatically, the windscreen wipers when 1 tiny drop of moisture falls.

Then when I got to the shops, I parked right down the back of the carpark, despite it being night and a dodgy area, just so no-one in their common old Ford would dent the door. I packed the shopping carefully in the boot, terrified the milk would tip over and spill. I drove home like a 100 year old Kalamunda granddad on his way to bowls. 

Secretly, I love it too. The walnut burr finish, the black leather, the way it thinks of your every comfort.

Oh and another proof of Mr K's starry eyed passion - he has not smoked in it at all, and said he never will!!

Dogs, cats and interuptions

Cat : "That dogs just a suckhole"

It used to be my kids that would stop me working/reading/crafting/being quiet.  Now its the three amigo's - Tommy the border collie, Minty the Maltese poodle and Tyler the mongrel cat.  I swear they get together and plan this out..

I sit down to write.  It's morning, I have an hour to write before I have to start work.  I have fed all three of them.  I have a coffee.  Mr K is still asleep, the neighbours are quiet.  

And it starts.  Cat starts to meow, loudly like he wants to be fed (I am sure he has developed Alzheimer's).  He comes into my office, jumps on my desk and proceeds to walk across my papers, books, keyboard, behind the monitor.  Me telling him off and his backchat just cause Tommy to rush to my office window, jump up on the window sill, scratch his paws down the fly screen and yip.  

Now I am telling off both the cat and Tommy.  They both think they are self appointed police animals and tell each other off as well.  This starts up the geriatric old girl Minty.  She starts yapping and running about in circles.

My once peaceful, quiet morning is now a cacophony of meow, yap and yip with the occasional well timed bark from the baritone.  This is the point I give up, go outside with them all following and bestow attention.

Just like I used to do when my kids were little and I was studying and they wanted my attention.  

Do I have to wait until the animals leave home until I get my own quiet time, free of interruptions?  Or by then will Mr K be retired and wanting me to find his glasses or make him lunch?

I have 4 blog posts, ones that need to be written carefully and thought about, to finish, and every day this performance goes on!! 

"I tell you, its all lies - silly human, I have been in bed the whole time"

"Don't make me get off the lounge to tell you lot off!"

"I am the good boy, yes I am!"

Where my time not blogging is being spent

This weeks assignment for a writing course (the one I will finish the same week Uni starts!)  was to write a character description, and link this to a life lesson.  I chose my Grandad as he was such an enigma to me.  The parameters of the essay were it had to be 400-500 words (so hard when I had much more to say), we had to use words to create the character, put the character in a physical situation and then join in the life lesson.  It could be essay or fiction.  I might try and write this again as a fictional story.

The upshot is that I am really enjoying the challenges of the assignments.  I start at Curtin Uni next Monday, the first unit is online. But it does keep me away from my blogging, I need to retire from work so I can just write all day!!

Grandad and Grandma - he always loved cats!

My Grandfathers Gift (or Don’t look a Gift Horse in the Mouth?)

My grandfather scared me.  He was gruff and looked like a small wiry pirate. With his ginger, long beard, sea swept face, and thick glasses, he always looked ancient to me.  His fingers were all bent, one of them at right angles, and he always smelt of wood putty and pipe tobacco.  He evoked an air of distance, like the leader of a dog pack, us littlies approached at our peril, especially when he was eating his sharp cheddar and bread.  He was fond of the saying Silence is Golden, something that I never really understood at the time, but I got the gist when he growled it.  Sometimes, he would pay me attention, by picking me up to show me the little blue cuckoo that would spring out of its carved wooden door when the hour hand struck.  If he was in a good mood, he would indulge my request when I said ‘again Grandad’. 

Grandad rarely gave us kids presents, and certainly not when it was expected.  Christmas, Birthday, Easter - we learnt to not ever expect gifts from him.  I never really thought of this until I was older because what we didn’t know did not hurt us.  As I got older, friends would show me amazing gifts they had got from their Grandparents.  One time my best friend received from her Grandma the biggest Easter egg I had ever seen, nesting in a cardboard box with cellophane and ribbons. I wondered why I never got such things.  It was a fleeting thought, certainly never an issue. 

No, Grandad did not spoil us with material things, but as we grew into more independent beings, and I dare say less silly, noisy and sticky, he was more than generous with his time, his careful teachings, his wisdom.  By the time I was a teenager he treated me as a grown-up. I knew this was given as a gift, so I acted as such around him.  I loved just being in his calm, quiet, contemplative company.  He was always doing something interesting, making things with wood, tinkering with tools, in the garden, reading, debating politics or religion.  Even watching him prepare his pipe, was engaging.

He took a keen interest in my horse riding.  He was a man who loved animals and appreciated the skills in handling them.  One day, he turned up at my parent’s farm, with a very pretty little palomino mare, in foal.  She was way too small for me to ride, but he wanted me to teach my little cousins to ride and care for a horse.  This was his gift to me – the temperament and tool to guide and teach the young as he had done in the ways of quiet, steady, consistent patience.  A horse was the perfect gift for this lesson. 

  

My kind of day

It's overcast and wintry and cool today.  It looks like rain.  There is a mild breeze.   It feels like a winters day. A little wintry holiday in the middle of a hell summer.  All the plants in my garden are smiling, the birds are more chirpy, the dog and cat are curled up on the carpet and not sprawled out panting on the tiles.  I can look outside and feel content, just for this small day of reprisal.  

Yes.  Today I am happy.

The best vege garden in suburbia

That's what I have always wanted.  And it still, to this day, it eludes me.  I am thinking of running off to live with Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall - here ...

River Cottage in Dorset UK

Then I could have chooks!

We built the house we currently live in 11 years ago.  It's smack bang in the middle of other houses, and although we have the beautiful Swan River only metres away, it's still suburbia.  To make my position worse, we live on a battle axe block next to, and I mean right next to, the train line.  We have neighbours on every side, including the front.  Now I know this is perfectly normal, and in fact we are lucky as the house at the back of us is on an acre of land and has huge, bushy gardens, but its still suburbia.  And I am still a country girl.

When I sit out the front yard I hear every word and movement of 2 neighbours.  If I sit out the side I can hear the side neighbour flush his toilet.  Really, the only place it is remotely peaceful is the side where the trains are ... and that's only for 15 minutes between trains!  I long, and yearn for my country retreat.  But in the meantime I try and have a little farm here.  Well sort of.

We can't have chickens because:

• Every square cm of the yard is being used or is paved/concreted
• I want to free range them and they will poo on the doormats (even when we had 26 acres and I let the girls out, they would still come and poo on the doormats - what's with that?)
• We have a border collie that will round them up 24hrs a day
• There just isn't the room!
• The neighbours on the side where we could squeeze a chicken pen have their entertaining area there and she is terrified that chooks will bring snakes.

OK, so no chickens, surely I can have a vege patch?

• The only spaces available are also walkways - and racing tracks for the dog
• I tried once to have a patch and it got run over by the dog, the cat used it as a loo, the dog thought that's a good idea and also used it as a loo, the couch came in and took over - fertilised by cat/dog manure.
• I asked Mr K if we could dig up our lawn and put in raised garden beds - apparently that was an affront to every red blooded Aussie male - to mess with his lawn
• For the past 5 years I have grown vege in pots - lots and lots of pots.  It cost me a fortune in pots, potting mix, Thrive and water.  Each tomato (although yummy) cost us $57! (approx!)
• I begged Mr K again to build me a raised bed, one I could keep pets off, grass out of and large enough not to dry out.  The colourbond sheets and timber are still sitting on the ground, no doubt now home to a family of dugites.
• I NEED to grow things in real soil and worm castings and sheep poo.  It's like breathing to me.

So I found this place and am going to order some raised beds and have them delivered and then the cat, dog, couch, Mr K and dugites can all go get nicked. 

I take out a mortgage today to pay for them!  Cost of tomatoes has just gone up to $90 each.

A very nice thing happened to me today...

... and I have been itching to write about it all day.  Itching I tell you!

Except I couldn't.  Tell you that is.  Well I could if I really wanted to, but it would have been a rushed and slapdash job and we all know about my perfectionism meets all-or-nothing tendencies.

I wanted to make sure this post reflected how I really felt, not some warmed up left over words thrown onto the page as a makeshift meal.

But.

I had work to do.  You know that damn four letter word?  And yes, I know I work for myself. At home. So if anyone could skive off work to play in Blog Land it is me.  Words and sentences kept popping into my head during the day - as I waited for my teabag in a cup of hot water to do its thing, as I held the door open for the old, blind, dog to go outside (she takes AGES!), as I stood in a shower that went hot and cold as I had stupidly put the washing machine on before I showered.

On my desk sat two fat folders - one says 'To Process' and the other 'To Action'.  I had to do both today - process AND action.  But finally, at 4:33PM in cloudy Perth I have finished.  Except now I have 30 minutes before its cat/dog feeding time.  They have already started to descend on me - the cat is on my desk, walking over the keyboard, sticking his head into my empty coffee cup.  Old Blind dog is on her mat beside me, with an ear cocked for the sounds of dinner being served, and the young and impetuous border collie is sitting up on the cane chair looking into my office window, nose pressed against the flyscreen and yapping at a decibel that only working dogs can manage. 

So here it is.  My Thank You post.

To Jacana,  a blog I follow and have loved for her warmth and humanity, thank you for your post about my Journey to Contentment today.  I don't know how you managed to capture me on a day when the sun struggled to shine, but seeing your post, about me, was all that I needed to change my bad day into a very happy one indeed.  After reading all that you do for others - I should not be surprised by your kindness.

So thank you, thank you so very much.  This post is for you.

More adventures of the Cat

Well, not really adventures.  He hardly stirs himself to actually have an 'adventure'.  Unless you count catching a poor little lizard and bringing it into the house to let loose.  I should re-title this to be 'more places the cat has fallen asleep'  or  'is he dead or just sleeping?'

My dad thinks I should start the cats own blog, but really, if he can't even be bothered staying awake, why should I write his own blog!  He is getting on, he is 14 years old, which I think in cat years is 72.*  So he may not be so keen to learn a new technology!

As I write this, he is asleep (and snoring!!  yes he snores) on my desk, on a pile of papers, next to the printer. 

This is how we found him on Friday (and I really did wonder if he had died!)

I think he was trying Irish Yoga ..

* To work out a cats age in human years

1. Allow 15 human years for the first year of your cat's life.
2. Add nine years for the second year. A two-year old cat will approximate 24 human years.
3. Add four human years each for successive years of his life.

The cats at it again

My Mum and Dad have been staying with me the last two weeks.  They stayed in the newly renovated guest wing.  The Cat tried to get in that room everyday - the more we closed doors and shushed him out - the harder he tried to get it. 

Everyday he tried and some days (when Dad would forget and leave a door open) he succeeded.  There are plenty of other places he could sleep (as we have seen in other posts - see below) but for some reason it was the forbidden that he wanted most.  Who says cats don't have character!

So, the room was vacated this morning.  I stood out the front of my house waving goodbye to my folks.  I walked back into the house, went to strip the sheets and found this ... the pictures say it all!

What????

Other Cat posts

Read 'The Cat who Sleeps Around'

Read about the Bad Cat here

The Cat who sleeps around

The story of the cat continues ...

Does this cat have no morals?  Or is sleeping around ok these days :-)

Caught sleeping in my In Tray

 

Caught sleeping in the dogs bed

 

Tom Dog had to be comforted when he found the cat in his bed

 

Caught taking up a chair on the deck

 

Caught in the little dogs bed

We are going to rename him GOLDILOCKS!

Cat and Dog - My First Reader

This is the cat in the dogs bed

Bad Cat!

 
This is the dog, on the floor, near the cat in the dogs bed

Poor Dog!


This is the cat on the keyboard

Bad Cat!

 
This is the cat on the guests bed

Bad Cat!

This is the cat on my chair

Bad Cat!


Where should that bad cat sleep?

In the cat's bed - that's where!

Bad Cat!

The End.