Suzanne was kind enough to enquire after Lily, and I realised I had been remiss in not updating her fans. She is pretty much restored to full health now, thank you, but first she shared her cold with Henry and Ron.

Being rude mechanicals rather than pedigrees, they shook it off within the week, whereas she suffered for the best part of a fortnight, but all three of them are back to what passes for normal now.

Henry developed a nasty scabby rash along his spine, which I assumed was a flea allergy, so I washed and sprayed all their blankets and so forth, and thought I’d take him to the vet yesterday when his cold had cleared up. And lo and behold! – he appears to be a self-healing cat because, somehow, the rash was pretty much all gone overnight. What a fine chap he is.

Hopefully we’ve now seen the back of this infection, whatever it is, because the household budget can’t take the strain of feeding the whole lot on fresh roast chickie!

I think they were protesting our culpability at letting it rain outside at this point. That and the utterly inadequate and, what’s more, inedible supplies of food downstairs.

We have a large bedroom here, with two tall, south facing windows, so the sun streams in there during the day (when it shines at all, of course).  We set a chair that is very like, but is not, an Ikea Poang by one of the windows – it’s a nice quiet place if one of us wants to read or listen to music. And we assumed that the Tribe would love the chair, and bask in it during the sunlit afternoons.

But no – they never went near it, not even when I put one of their cat rugs on it.

I try very hard not to dump stuff on the chair, but a few days ago I left my swimming bag on there. And the next morning, when I got up, I most definitely didn’t see Iggy and Lily on the chair. No sirree Bob. Nor, at various times, have we seen Ron on the chair, or Mustrum (curiously, Henry has really not been seen on it). Iggy and Lily are on it now, in fact – they have spent every night on there since the bag arrived.

We can only assume that they’re now using it because it’s no longer clearly *meant* for them – ornery creatures, cats.

We are due to go to Leeds this afternoon – we have tickets for a Show of Hands gig (yay!), and are also going into Ikea to pick up a few bits (yay! meatballs!).

However, we did wonder last night whether we might have to cancel …  Ron wasn’t too well – he was doing an odd thing with his mouth, clicking his teeth and shaking his head; we think he had something caught in his throat. He hurtled through to the food bowl and ravened when we put fresh meat down, though, so I tried not to worry. And this morning, he seems heaps better.

It set me thinking though. We’ve had to cancel a fair few Outs due to cats:

• In Feb 2000, Iggy had a nasty respiratory illness, causing us to not go to see Yes in Cardiff
• in October 2003, we had a weekend in Cornwall booked for Pete’s birthday; Zool was killed by a car just a couple of days beforehand, and we didn’t have the heart to go
• again in Feb 2000, we lost Shrimp, and cancelled a dinner in London that we’d been looking forward to
• in October 2008, we were due to go and see Jeremy Hardy do a standup gig in Bristol – we came downstairs at 5 p.m. and realised that Aliss was dying, and stayed at home with her.

Odd how these memories stay with you …

We were away at the weekend – not for long, just a flying visit to Yorkshire to inspect our new home.  We left at 7 a.m. on Friday and were home by 5 p.m. on Saturday, and Rob the Catsitter popped in on Friday night so the beasts were not unattended.

But Henry really likes his  Blobs to stay where they’re put; as soon as I put my key in the lock on Saturday there he was, bounding down the stairs, squeaking away, and he’s been quite clingy ever since; watching out for us when we go out of the house and so forth.

Today he’s been sleeping on the bed, which he rarely does, but I think he wants to be upstairs to keep an eye on us.  Ron has today taken to sleeping on the laundry basket – a bit disconcerting when I tried to lift the lid to put some stuff in there (it’s under some shirts on a clothes rail).

Perhaps it’s just the autumnal weather, but I think they need a bit of reassurance, bless them.  Their house is being slowly dismantled round them, and they’re unsettled.

Iggy looking mournful

Originally uploaded by ramtops

Next door is having their extension refettled – this is an irritating process, given we work in the room just above where it’s being done, but no matter. Steve the builder is fascinated by the cats, and the other day when I went out, he said “that golden one’s caught a bird”.

This seemed unlikely, to be honest – Iggy has never been much of a one for hunting, and he’s a bit of a creaky old man these days, but Steve the builder was emphatic. And indeed, Iggy was under the patio table with an unfortunate ex-bird. Apparently he moved “very quickly”.

Having caught the bird, he didn’t seem quite sure what to do next. No matter, really, as the thieving Ron nicked it out from under Iggy’s paws, and had it away on his toes.

Not really the sort of behaviour we would wish for, you might think, and you’d be right. Ron scampered around the garden with it firmly clenched in his jaws for a bit, while we failed to retrieve it (as usual). Eventually he reappeared without it, so we assume it was scoffed.

He really is a dreadful beast.

Friday night, maybe midnight or thereabouts, we were woken by mad scrabbling on the landing. Investigation revealed Ron with a new toy: another mouse was moments away from its end.

There was a degree of oh-buggrit-we-want-to-sleep-clean-up-the-bits-in-the-morning and we subsided; until, that is, Ron brought his prize into the bedroom. No way I wanted to risk the rodent being deposited in several bits on (or worse, in) the bed, so up I got and chased the PoD downstairs to grab hold of him at the foot of the stairs. For a brief moment.

Ron does not like to be thwarted.

He emitted his bloodfreezing scream of fury and slipped away (I wasn’t going to try and hold on anyways), but the scream necessitated the opening of the Maw, and the Fangs Therein, and thus the now dead and still miraculously intact rodent was left behind for me to grab – quickly! – to enbag and, given the hour and my naked body, be hurled outside the front door for attention come the dreadful light of day.

This was not the end of the story, for on Saturday Mac went out onto the patio, and lying there, still in its (admittedly slightly punctured) baggie was the mouse. How it got from front to back, given our home is mid-terrace, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Oh, and I promised death after: that came at around 6am this morning. Mac got up to go bathroomward and discovered a cloud of feathers, an observant Henry, and a Ron, who was whacking the very ex blackbird in his jaws against the banister rails. That murdered sleep (as well as the bird) quite effectively for both of us. By the time I got to gathering up the remains, the part-chewed, feather-denuded bird was in Henry’s jaws in the kitchen, being whacked against the floor and the fridge as H. leaped and swivelled in the air. I added the Bits to the bagged mouse from before, still awaiting final disposal, and vacuumed up feathers from the kitchen, hallway, stairs and landing.

Ron and Henry, or maybe Ron and Reggie, or possibly Doug and Dinsdale: I expect they were good to their mum

We know that you like to go hunting at night – we don’t like it, but we understand.  And we understand that you want to bring your kills home, although you don’t bring them to us to show them off.

However, the chirps and other general noise that ensues is starting to get us down.  Pete didn’t appreciate getting up at midnight on Saturday night to rescue a mouse – OK, rescue is the wrong word, as it was entirely deceased, but you and your brother seemed to be having some sort of party to celebrate, so Pete had to remove the unfortunate rodent.  He put it in a plastic bag outside the front door, and thus we were quite taken aback to find it, still in its bag, outside the *back* door on Sunday morning.

We had a word with you, and I thought you understood that this sort of behaviour is not encouraged. You may thus see why, when I was woken at 6 this morning by more shouts and chirps and growls to find the landing covered in feathers, and you tossing the body of an ex-blackbird around the stairs, closely watched by Henry; he clearly wanted to play too.

Please – no more of this.  There can’t be much wildlife left to kill, and I fully expect you to be dragging a buffalo in any day …

signed
your devoted (and exhausted) Blobs

Drumknott

Originally uploaded by ramtops

Drumknott, our melanistic black Bengal, went missing in November 2003, and I still think I hear him shouting with his distinctive voice from time to time … He was a dreadful cat, with a black coat, and a black heart, and we loved him to bits. He was generally known as PoD (an acronym for Prince of Darkness*).

Roll forward five years or so, and we have the arrival of Ron, who is turning out to be PoD’s heir, although he hasn’t yet developed the distinctive sound effects, nor yet the wonky tooth of his predecessor; both Pete and I refer to hims as PoD from time to time.

Last night, Pete was cooking dinner while I was watching an old Grand Designs, and I heard an “eek!” from the kitchen. It took me a moment to parse it, but then I realised that Kevin McLeod had just referred to a 60ft Pod. He then brought Ron through to demonstrate.

Nightmares will ensure, I know they will.

* I suppose we could consider calling him Mandelson now.  But I think we won’t, thanks all the same.

We think Lilith dropped it, and Ron picked it up, and he wasn’t about to give it up .. we chased him round the house, even resorting to the squirty water thing, but the unfortunate bird remained clamped firmly in his jaws.  In the end, we shut him in the garden, and then had to watch through the patio doors as he consumed it with remarkable efficiency, leaving just a neat pile of feathers.  Not even a beak to be seen.  Impressive.