Aged aunty's cat

Aged aunty loves animals but where she now lives in sheltered accommodation does not allow pets. Some time ago, passing this carpet shop, I saw this cat in in the window, a sleeping marmalade cat, comfy on the carpet. But it's a model cat, made of cardboard and rabbit fur! I found where to get one and took him up to aunty last time I went. When she was looking the other direction, I placed him on her sofa then stood away.
"How did he get there?" she startled! He is so life like that he gives her a lot of pleasure. She's named him 'Marmalade' and placed in a corner where she won't trip over him, but she can see him sleeping in the sun. Now she tells me on the phone that she has the cat, that he sleeps an awful lot, and that she's introduced him to people who visit, and his name is... "just a moment while I think ... Marmalade!"

Lovely Lola lost

This young, elegant little cat, an adventurous beastie, has been living next door to us for nearly a year, getting bolder and bolder, tripping across our patio every day to leap over the next wall, into the court and out to the street.  She caught a pigeon on our lawn earlier in the spring, taking it down to the bottom of garden to eat it.  Twice I've found her in my hens' run, causing a lot of clucking, fortunately hens 1:Lola 0. Initially she teased our old cat Cheeky by pouncing on her sleeping, but gradually they reached a truce so Lola would pass without the pair of them spatting and she would eat Cheeky's food only when Cheeky had had enough.  Yesterday evening, Lola was surprised by big black Torres passing and they had a cat fight, which she lost, being trapped between two large plant pots. This morning I watched Lola chasing the flies on the lawn in the sunshine, and later sitting lady-like on the patio, perhaps smelling where she and Torres had been.
This afternoon she was knocked down in the street, and then run over by two or three more cars.  I've seen a squirrel killed in the same spot. I wish the council would put a speed bump just at that angle in the street where it bends slightly and if you go too fast you can't see quickly enough if there's an obstacle.  One day it'll be a child runs down the steps and under a car.

Visiting Devon

Mother-in-law has a little cat, an old little cat, a slightly potty, old little cat that walks round and round her arm chair. Old little cat is called Sooty, has only one eye (accident when a kitten) and may be has a neurological problem. Last time I saw her, she was shy and hid, but this time she didn't run away from me, just plodded round and round.

Sleepy cat, sunny day

Snowdrops

The snowdrops are out. There's a mass of them down the garden but I can't see them from my desk because there's a stone wall in the way. I can only see them if I stand up and stop working.

From where I'm sitting I can see the top pond, the bird table and an old blue tarpaulin that we used to keep the rain out of the conservatory. The cat sits on the tarpaulin, watching for birds and hoping that someone will appear from the conservatory door to feed her. The tarpaulin is warmer and softer than the pebbles. She has just woken up, cleaned herself a bit and now is curled up really tight again. Her fur is thicker than it used to be, perhaps because she's an outdoor cat and needs it to keep her warm.

Cheeky cat

Husband took cat to vet, but found nothing wrong. However he does have a chip, and he is a she, registered in Putney in 1998. She is called Cheeky.

Her name suits.

Promenade concert & cat

We went out to a prom concert last night. If you saw it on BBC 4 you'll know how smashing it was. The theme was French with music from the ilks of Rameau, but the difference was that there were dancers too, dancing to this 18th century French music, which must have been written to dance to. Initially these were classical ballet dancers, but even so, they danced to the audience, making us laugh, not being serious. However, the energy came from the Soweto dancers, who drummed and danced and played the violin too. With steps like the Russian one where you put your hands on the floor and spin round your legs so you have to jump over your own legs, and leaps high into the air, with the occasional squawk the audience was enraptured. The enthusiasm and energy grew throughout the second half of the performance, with the Monteverdi choir encouraging by doing Mexican waves. It was a most memorable concert for a wedding anniversary.

And when we got home, we found one of our children had left a bowl of cat food out, so we were asking ourselves which of them didn't know that the cat had gone, lost, dead. But it turned out that youngest had seen the cat. He isn't dead, but thin and slow but back again.

Cat gone

That bouncy young tom cat that adopted husband has gone. Just disappeared. He was around at our family barbecue last week, trying to snaffle the sausages, but on the Monday, husband said that he wasn't interested in food, was shivering, and was sleeping a lot. I saw him on Friday, sitting under the bushes, with no energy. By the time husband got home to take him to the vet, he'd disappeared and we haven't seen him since. He must have eaten something poisonous. I think that in winter his body will turn up under the bushes when the leaves drop off.

Sick smelly cat

We have a cat called Dinka. But she is old, very, very old. We reckon being at least 17 years old makes her the equivalent of 88 human years old, and she moves and walks old. She used to scratch the mites in her ear, but she doesn't do that very much any more, thank goodness because the bits flew out over the sofa, cushions and carpets. Unfortunately she is totally deaf, so jumps when someone comes up behind her.

For the last year she has being having epileptic fits. Sometimes she doesn't have one for weeks, at least not when we are in the house to know. She had one last week at ten to nine in the morning. My mobile beeped as I got a text message:

"Dinka has had a fit on the new carpet. Where's something to clean it?"

And now, this last week, she has started to stink. She still cleans herself a bit, but her wind is horrible. Poor old Dinka.

In the above photo, she had been watching her territory out of the window. There's a young and bouncy tom that lives in our garden. He appeared at the bottom of the garden, near the rented houses, about a year ago. Husband and he got on very well together. Husband is a soppy thing for cats and started to feed him, delighted with his response to the interest and his purrrrr-rr-rr. Originally he fed him only once a day, but over the winter it got to be twice a day, and at the top of the garden and the cat (Whisper or Jack Flash - we can't agree his name) moved into the laundry house. So now that spring has come, Dinka notices Whisper out on the patio in the sun. Her patio. Here's a photo of him peeping in at the conservatory door, like he does the moment you go in there.