Chez Spud

Posts Tagged ‘cat’

Dog Cat

Posted under Cats

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110 365 Dog Cat

Parker, the Dog Cat. Wherever you go…he goes. If we’re out in the garden, he’s out in the garden. If you walk down to the bottom of the garden, so does he. If you go for a walk down the fields, he’ll often come too. Who needs a dog when you’ve got a dog cat?

Recently he’s taken to needing to be physically on one of us at all times. He tries to claw his way up our legs in to our arms and, if he makes it, he refuses to be put down. If you bend over, he’ll leap up and lie on your back.

I lay down on my back on the grass to take a photo of our wisteria, as you do. Parker saw his opportunity and moved in for a cuddle. Here he is, perched on my chest pinning me to the ground. I put my camera over my shoulder, pointed and released the shutter and this is what I got. Not bad for a totally blind shot.

It was another 10 minutes before I could finally push him off. It’s a love thing.

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The Week in Photos

Posted under Photo A Day 2011

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66 365 Meh

Monday: Meh…a day of no time and no inspiration…hence the bliming cat. Again.

67 365 Lunchtime in the City

Tuesday: Working in London…Such a British moment…the sun came out…out came the Brits and perched on every available step and bench, or just leant up against the wall and drank in the warmth. Taken at the Royal Exchange.

68 365 Love gift from The Wife.

Wednesday: Not doing this gorgeous gift any justice. A wonderful PROPER polaroid, of beachhuts in Southwold…framed and looking just perfect in my writing room. For now. I will have to move it, it’s very bright and sunny in there and it will destroy the polaroid. Thank you Wife! x

69 365 Snapping the snapper

Thursday: Yet ANOTHER of my love gifts from The Wife. This is one of my very best favourites, even though I regularly injure my children with it as it’s heavy and has a habit of smacking them in the face when I’m doing their coats up. I love it so much I dropped it down the loo. Strange, but true.

70 365 Hello sunshine

Friday: Friday + sunshine + daffodils…you do the maths…

71 365 Hello baby

Cute little hat, complete with teddy ears…a gift for my friend’s new baby girl. I love making baby hats, quick and easy to make. This one was made, parcelled up and mailed within 24 hours of the baby being born. She doesn’t even have a name yet! But she has a cute, handmade hat and that’s much more important. Welcome Baby Girl! x

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18 365 Somewhere out there…

Posted under Photo A Day 2011

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18 365 Somewhere out there...

…are mice and shrews and voles and birds and bats and bunnies and weasels and other scurrying crittures and I want to go out there and chase them and catch them and bring them inside as a love gift for you.

…instead I am shut in this house, drowning in the Sea of Green Carpet, blinded by the Sunshine Yellow Curtains. I have been inside for 2 weeks now. When are you going to let me out? I am bored. Did you not notice my protest vomit on the Sea of Green Carpet today? You don’t have to be the sharpest pencil in the box to work out my coded message…LET…ME…OUT!

..somewhere out there…I am watching…I am waiting…I am biding my time…I will have my revenge…

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15 365 Paying Respects

Posted under Photo A Day 2011

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15 365 Paying respects

I’m really living dangerously with this year’s 365. I took ONE photo today. Just one, not the usual 200 or so ;-)

So this is what I have. A beautiful siamese cat paying his respects at the local war memorial. I liked the lines, and squares and octogans, the constrast of the red poppies against the black granite. And the presence of one very incongruous cat who, not seen alas, was wearing a very handsome red collar.

Alternative caption for this shot ‘Memories’…from the musical Cats…geddit?

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Restless

Posted under Witterings

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3 365 Resentful

Presenting Miss Phoebe, now safely ensconced in our new house awaiting our arrival on Thursday. She’s not looking too happy about it, that much I will admit. She’s terribly terribly shy and won’t be touched or handled. Getting her in a box to transport her is impossible, so we trapped her in her ‘igloo’ cat bed and then taped a big piece of plastic over the opening. Poor soul! Fortunately it’s a 30 second car journey but it wasn’t at all dignified.

She was perched on the window sill of my writing room this morning when I went over to check on her and playmate Parker (who DOES go in a box). She was still there at lunchtime when we went back. But the presence of boisterous Megaboys was too much for her so she’s retreated upstairs, under a bed, right in the corner…looking daggers at anyone who dares even look at her.

Restless…we’re all restless. The boys keep asking how many ‘sleeps’ it is until we move. We have a lot of ‘stuff’ in the new place, and everything in the old place has been sorted/cleaned/tidied/culled and is all ready to be packed on Wednesday. Two more sleeps of our current home looking homely and then, heart sinks, one sleep with everything in boxes apart from 4 plates, 4 forks, 4 knives and all that. I can so vividly remember the last night in our house in London and how utterly depressing it was to ‘camp’ in ones own home.

And then it will be Thursday and finally…finally…we will move up the hill to our new home and, no doubt, will live in chaos for a good while during The Great Unpack.

Restless…I’m restless with this old life, restless for the new. The New Year has amplified it, because I’m so eager to fly at it and grab it round the neck. I’ve got so many plans and so much energy and enthusiasm for it all, but right now I’m all about packing boxes and lists and bills and changes of address. I’m restless to get through this turgid time of just ‘processing’ our lives rather than living them.

It’s rare that I wish time away, but I’m pretty keen to fast forward a couple of weeks and get this dull, spirit draining time done and behind me.

Restless.

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What I saw on my bike today…gates ravaged by time

Posted under iphone photography, What I saw today

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photo.JPG

…but, then, aren’t we all? Ravaged by time I mean. Happens to the best of us….

I also saw a willy waver of the worst kind…an Audi Q7 driver speeeeeeding past me on a newly laid road. Speed limit is 20mph while the chippings are still on the surface, but apparently there is some kind of international law which allows Q7s to ignore both the law and common sense and overtake cyclists at great speed and on a blind corner, chucking up chippings in to my face. Two words: Grudge Book. If I’d been a bit more confident on the bike I’d have shaken my fist at him in manner of Old Man Rage. Instead I enjoyed watching him nearly smash in to an oncoming car. Ha. ‘Blind corner’…the clue is in the title?

Later I saw a pedestrian (rare round here) who didn’t return my cheery ‘good evening!’ so I grudged him too. And two ladies out jogging with matching black labradors. Very Chelsea I thought.

And then I saw a cat. In a field. Having a lie down and purring.

photo.JPG

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Feline woes

Posted under Witterings

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I am really going off Parker. I’ve moaned before about his killing tendencies but he’s really stepped up his campaign of terror in recent days. We found a trail of bird feathers and poo (nice) around the house when we got back from our Christmas trip a few days ago. No amount of hunting revealed a carcass anywhere so, with little conviction if truth be told, we assumed Parker had kindly slung his prey outside again once he was done with it. Oh…how…wrong…

This morning I put my foot in to my wellington boot and was very puzzled by the obstacle at the bottom…kind of round and soft and OH MY GOD FEATHERY.  MrSpud was immediately summoned as he is In Charge of horrible things. Alas he confirmed the worst. There was a dead bird in my boot, and a mountain of the poor creature’s poo too.

It’s hard to know what to be more upset about. Dead creatures in my boots, the foot to dead creature contact or the folly that led me to believe buying expensive leather lined (and thus really hard to clean) wellies was a good idea.

I’m sure I heard that damn cat laughing at me, Mutley style as I attempted not to simultaneously scream and vomit. I’m considering getting a dog out of spite. That’ll learn him.

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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Posted under People I love, Witterings

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This is my 100th blog post, yay me! I started blogging on  6 June 2009. Two months and a little bit, 16,445 views and 100 posts later and I’m still here, driveling on. Does a little dance, then stops. Doing little dances in the virtual world where anyone could be looking just isn’t right…behave, you’re a grown woman with responsibilities ‘n’ everyfink.

Probably this should be something really insightful and reflective. But it’s just going to be a load of shambolic wittering again, sorry about that. It’s just the way it goes around here, OK?

Today was a day of ‘fixing’ stuff!

Fix 1: I stuffed Parker (pictured above) in to a box and took him to the vet to have his annual innoculations. Fix 1 – my cat.

Fix 2: I zipped to  yoga and bent and inverted myself in unimaginable ways. Thankfully no one passed wind this week. Not even me…Fix 2: my inner peace.

Fix 3: I sped off to the osteopath, having admitted defeat to the terrible lower back pain that has plagued me off and on for years. ‘What’s the matter with your neck?’ was her opening gambit. Turns out the lower back pain has been diverting my attention from the fact that my neck is totally frozen. Doh. Anyway, it also turns out my pelvis is twisted – most likely as a result of childbirth nearly 4 years ago. Fix 3: my broken back.

Fix 4: Exhausted by physically assertive osteo, I limped off to the garage to get the VERY wobbly wheels on the car sorted. They needed balancing, and were in a terrible state. Fix 4: my dangerously wobbly wheels.

Quite a productive day, I think you’ll agree? Other tasks achieved (apart from the usual eating, breathing, looking after small boys, fake laughing at MrSpud’s ‘jokes’ etc)  included making 6 pathetic looking gifts for Blog Camp 1.5 this weekend and a trip to the fancy wine store to buy enough wine to drunk them so they don’t notice my embarrasing ‘offerings’.

But here’s where it gets interesting, yes, gather round…let’s look at the cost of today’s ‘fixes’ (no, not ‘those’ sort of fixes). In reverse order:

Fix 4: My dangerously wobbly wheels – £18.80

Fix 3: My inner peace – c£20.00 (hard to work out, part of excessively expensive and horribly underused family gym membership)

Fix 3: My broken back – £32.00

Fix 4: My cat – £78.00

There is somethng chronically wrong with the above list. The fix that could potentially be very dangerous (wobbly wheels) was the cheapest, whilst my cat ‘fix’ was astonishingly expensive…eye wateringly so in fact. Thank God our other cat is a total recluse and can’t be handled. Sheesh, if she was ‘normal’ our vet bill for innoculations/flea/worming stuff would be about £150 ($250). Scream.

But it’s a far cry from a few years back when MrSpud and I shelled out £2,000 ($3,300) on an operation for a previous cat. That was our entire holiday budget for that year, so we stayed home. The cat died 6 weeks later. Hmmm. But actually I never resented a penny of that money and nor did MrSpud. We didn’t have children in those days and our cats were our ‘babies’. Nothing was too good for our cats, and especially not for Basil.

Basil (RIP) had been my Mum’s cat and I inherited him when she died. He was a huge character of a cat, shrugging off the many challenges life threw at him including being shot with an air rifle between the eyes. Alas cancer got him in the end, despite the £2,000 operation to tackle the tumour. Me and MrSpud grieved and sobbed and howled for that cat, and I don’t think any cat will ever measure up to him. He was big, black and ugly…my Mum and Dad got him from the Cats Protection League. When they went to choose him my Mum was instantly drawn to him but the man showing them round said, ‘Oh don’t bother about him, he’s as ugly as sin and throws his food around, no-one ever wants him’. And that was it, my mother was smitten.

Parker is Basil’s ‘replacement’. It was a big pair of boots to fill, but he’s done it quite well. He wasn’t the lap cat I wanted, and his passion for hunting birds/voles/mice is very unwelcome. But in the main he’s cool and we all love him.

But £78.00 for a couple of jabs and tablets? Compared with £18.80 for a safe car? Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

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Killer Cat

Posted under Witterings

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I’m beginning to hate one of our cats, Parker. He’s always been a delight, friendly, full of character, a bit quirky, so tolerant of the boys and very handsome to look at. He has amazingly long whiskers and, as a result, MrSpud calls him our ‘wizarding cat’. Truly they are a MAGNIFICENT set of whiskers! He’s quite stupid and can’t balance too well, thus ensuring many comedy moments as we watch him tumble off the fence/sofa/chair yet again. And likes to drink water from our glasses, the birdbath, the paddling pool etc rather than his water bowl. So far, so lovely.

Parker - with killing on his mind

Parker - with killing on his mind

We moved to the country from London at the start of the year. Until then he’d been an utter wuss, never leaving the confines of our small city garden. To be honest, I’d assumed he’d hardly leave the garden once we moved here. Wrong. He’s like a cat possessed! He’s out nearly all day, in the garden, down the fields, up the fields, across the courtyard. He has become an adventuring cat. Alas he’s become a killing cat too.

Parker - thinking about sleep

Parker - thinking about sleep

Mice, voles, birds….alive, dead, partly dead, flapping…regardless he brings them in. MrSpud has become adept at creating ‘runs’ for the live ones to make a dash for the great outdoors. Slightly stunned ones are captured in Tupperware boxes and dispatched outside – the ones which aren’t going to make it are ‘done for’ with a cricket bat. Sob. Flappy birds are horrendous. Once he brought in a newborn baby vole, so new it was translucent.  Very, very upsetting.

Parker -without killing on his mind

Parker - without killing on his mind for a change

This week Parker stepped up his campaign of horror by sneaking in with a vole without me knowing. The first thing I knew was the sound of a tambourine from the play room. Most odd as I was alone in the house. He’d dropped it in the toy box, poor thing was running around and tapping out a jig. So outside with the toybox, and out with the Dettol yet again to clean the toys.

Parker - thinking about the lack of dusting that goes on around here

Parker - thinking about the lack of dusting that goes on around here

How can I stop this? I know it’s his instinct but it’s awful , and it’s almost daily. Worst time is the morning so I’ve taken to blocking the cat flap. He had a collar with a bell for a while, but it didn’t make any difference. Every time I hear the cat flap ‘bang’ my heart sinks, as I’m convinced Dr Death has popped back in with his latest offering.

He’s so stupid that when he gets a live one he has NO idea what to do with it – he doesn’t kill it, he just looks at it. What can I do? Boot camp for cat killers? I’ve become so cross with him that I encourage the neighbour’s dogs in to the garden to give him a fright, just to give him a taste of his own medicine.

Rare shot of our other cat who is desperately shy. And non killing…we might not be able to get near her, but at least she doesn’t kill stuff. Also my first, ever shot taken on manual!

Little Miss Shy - Phoebe

Little Miss Shy - Phoebe

So, any thoughts on cat killers? Help me please!

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