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!

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.

Autumn has arrived here in Somerset all of a sudden; the evenings are drawing in, and there’s a lovely nip in the air.

This seasonal change is confirmed by the Tribe; Mustrum is often indoors when I get up, cats are sharing the bed with us, more food is being eaten at home as the neighbours’ doors are shut.

And the final sign last night was Henry chasing his tail in the kitchen; to be more precise, he chases the shadow of his tail.  He did this a lot when he was a kitten, and then stopped – we assumed he’d grown out of it, but I think it was just because the light wasn’t on in the kitchen when we were cooking supper.  And now it is, and he is again, which is just ace – he’s a joy to watch :)

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

Ron and Henry

Originally uploaded by ramtops

Pete thinks that EnRon look like the Kray twins in this photo. And they are very good to their mother …

We have a fish pond, and a stream at the bottom of the garden.  It is thus somewhat of a rite of passage for cats in this household that they at some point come home very wet indeed.  With Bada, we had to hose her down with jugfuls of warm water at 1 a.m.  Iggy and Mustrum have often come in very moist, where clearly one of their full and frank exchanges of views has taken them into the stream. Here’s Drumknott in a fairly soggy state.

Henry is very interested in the fish in the pond, but he is also obsessed with chasing insects, and dances across the garden in pursuit; I said to Pete the other day that he would probably end up in the pond.  And so it was this morning.

He didn’t seem remotely bothered, and Ron helped him clean up. The fish, however, were huddled at the bottom of their pond, and seemed unimpressed.

However, I fear this may be inevitable, as they are sproinging round the garden chasing anything that flies.  Or buzzes.

Henry likes porridge!

We bought a cheap little camera in town yesterday, a Pentax M50, to keep downstairs – this is the first video, which didn’t come out too bad at all.

Henry likes to chase the shadow of his tail – he does this a lot, for a very long time usually.  Except, it seems, when there’s a camera about.  But there’s some nice footage of Mustrum, who is a very fine cat indeed, and some of Iggy too.

The “red or green” question, incidentally, was to do with what colour of chilli was wanted for the tomato sauce for supper.