Entries Tagged 'Humphrey' ↓

I’m sure you’ve seen cats with thick tails when they’re under threat. Well we had an outbreak… Continue reading →

All is peaceful on the cat front this morning… at the moment!

We were late back in last night as we’d been out to two more concerts at the Lichfield Festival.  So we had two very hungry cats who hadn’t been fed for longer than they cared to think about.  Since both of them had been sick in the house the night before we felt justified in leaving them in the garden on a calm and sunny morning.

Humphrey had come in for his evening meal on Friday looking the biggest scruff.  Wet from the rain, dirty from the soil in the garden and wild eyed  (well not really the last one but it seemed to go with the rest of the description).  I honestly don’t know how he becomes so dirty.  It’s almost as if he’s been digging to find Australia because he has dirt everywhere.

Next time he comes in like that I think I’ll take a photo and upload it so you can see I’m not exaggerating.

We couldn’t escape cats even at last night’s concert because the final encore item was titled ‘I’m a cat and my name’s Eddie).  A moral tale about how we humans waste days working when we could be enjoying ourselves in the sun.

Great trio of singers, Liane Carroll, Sarah Cowan and Jacquie Dankworth; wonderful harmonies and in the encore better miaows and mews than our cats can manage.

So I go downstairs this morning and I’m desperate for a cup of tea to wake myself up.  The first thing I do is almost fall over Humphrey as he lies in wait for me in the living room.  It’s a bit like having insistent children around you with cats who want feeding.

You know, you sort them out first to shut them up then you can get on!  Before I can even put the kettle on he’s weaving around my feet, and his miaow has that pitch that just…

While I’m dumping food into his dish and telling him not to gobble it down, Portia is trying to leap through a locked door by standing on the washing machine and hurling herself at it.  Said door is double glazed so I can see this black shape on tip toes or should that be tip-paws pushing against the door.

Of course there isn’t any fish ready for her so I have to take the chicken out of the microwave where my sister has left it to defrost overnight, make sure it’s somewhere neither cat can reach while my back is turned, and find some fish – new bag so I now have to locate the scissors to open it…

And I still haven’t managed to fill the kettle for the tea.

Fish cooking, Humphrey now desperate to get into the garden, trying to open two doors at once for him to go outside and Portia into the kitchen from the utility room.  Her fish is cooked but too hot to give her so it’s break a piece off, hold it under cold running water until the temperature’s right.

Finally she’s sorted, I pick up the kettle – but no- now Humphrey is back in for seconds.  See to him then… at last at long last I fill the kettle.

Silence reigns for a few minutes while the kettle boils, I prepare my cereal and manage to sit down in the dining room with cereal, tea and the paper.  Peace and quiet until…

Oh no – the choking and retching noise that tells me a cat is about to be sick.  Walk into the kitchen in time to see Humphrey bring up all his breakfast!

But I do love him really.

Well what a kerfuffle on Wednesday evening.

I’d just gone upstairs to fetch something and out of my bedroom window I could see these magpies flying across and back.  And the noise!  Screeching and squawking fit to wake any sleeper.  Then I looked down and saw…

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Because it was such a wet night yesterday, Humphrey decided to put chasing small furry things on hold and grace us with his presence.  He sat curled up on my lap while I watched Dr Who.

He’s not as cuddly as the cat I used to have, called Sam, who would happily sit draped around my shoulders if I’d let him.  But in his own way Humphrey’s a loving cat.  I suppose he now comes into the category of senior cats because he must be about 9 or 10.  Not quite sure since he was a stray.

Given that Sam was 19 when we had him put to sleep, we could have Humphrey for another 10 years.  I don’t know how you’ve felt as an animal owner but I was in pieces when Sam died.  I’d had him since he was 4 months old and he’d moved house with me 4 times, been parked with friends when I had nowhere for him to be with me and generally he was the most tolerant cat.

When we moved here, I put him in his basket in the old house and he curled up and went to sleep and didn’t wake up till I was ready to let him out after the removers had departed.  The other cat Portia wailed all day, at the top of her voice distracting all of us!

There’ll never be another cat for me like Sam but I do love Humphrey for his funny ways and his independent spirit.  After Sam died I made a scrapbook full of photos and quotes.  One of my favourite ones is this:

“Cats could have ruled the universe but couldn’t be bothered.” Paul Gray.

I think they do very well as it is without the bothering.

What’s he been up to this week?

I was sitting peacefully having a cup of tea in our dining room with the back door open when

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You know how they used to read the oracle in ancient Rome by reading the innards of an animal sacrificed to the gods?  Well I felt this week as if I was trying to read the oracle because of…

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If you’d seen me yesterday morning as I sat on the kitchen floor trying to coax Humphrey to eat…  But let me go back 12 hours.

We were about to eat our evening meal when Humphrey arrived. I assumed he would be hungry because I hadn’t seen him most of the day and he’d turned up his nose at the food I offered.  As I walked past him I looked down and noticed some red on his left back paw.

Thinking he’d walked into something in the garden I started to check it out and discovered that not only did he have red on his paw, but also dripping down from his bottom!  Blood.  Oh no – what this time.

Meals left on the table to go cold while we tried to clean him up and find out what had happened.  Most unhappy to have his bottom wiped where we found bloody stuff on his bottom.  Not entirely sure even now what he’d done but we kept him in overnight.  Very fussy again about eating all day yesterday though he was persuaded to have some fish.

Towards the afternoon he seemed more himself and this morning back to normal.  I guess it must have been another spat with an intruder though we hadn’t heard any fighting.

There’s never a dull moment.

What is it about wind and cats?

I mentioned last week about how jumpy Humphrey can be but that’s nothing to how he is when it’s windy!

This morning he’s racing round the garden like the demon cat is after him and jumping up in the air as leaves swirl about.  What a mad puss!  I don’t know if he can be regarded as a reliable weather forecaster but he does fidget ahead of windy weather.

Well if I’m honest he fidgets a lot of the time so I guess that’s giving his fidgeting an importance it doesn’t have.  But if he fidgets with the weather why doesn’t he fidget when other cats are in the garden.  Or attempting to come into the kitchen,  which one did several times last week in the evenings.

We like to sit with the back door open in the evening if it’s warm.  Lately it’s become hazardous because the open door is a magnet (food not babe I think) to any passing cat.  Which means that if it’s going dark in the kitchen and we see a shadowy, cat shaped shadow, we’re never convinced if it’s one of ours or not.

Gives us good exercise, getting up to check I suppose.  The nearest Humphrey comes to helping us out is sitting on the doormat and going to sleep there.  They say that snoring can break up a marriage because of the noise and irritation.  Humphrey can snore with his eyes open.  Honestly he can.  I’ve seen him sit there looking at me and then comes the snore.

If owners get to look like their dogs, do cat owners suffer the same fate?  Or is it more a case of cats being drawn to owners because of… Honestly I don’t snore with my eyes open.

It’s funny how cats react sometimes isn’t it?

We acquired Humphrey as a stray about 7 years ago.  So we don’t know what happened to him to make him leave home and live rough.

He had been looked after because he wasn’t too thin, or unkempt when he started coming into our garden.  But he was and still is a very jumpy cat.  All kinds of things spook him like the rubbish lorry, vacuum cleaners and washing machines which are common things for cats to hate.  But he jumps at someone walking close to him and if you speak a little sharply to him he cowers.

I hope that he wasn’t hurt physically as a kitten but it makes me wonder.

Just an aside – not about Humphrey but our other cat Portia.  She used to fear the vacuum and flee as soon as it was switched on.  Now she’s deaf she sits there as calmly as anything even if it’s next to her.

Last night Humphrey came in because it was cooler and sat on my lap.  He usually has a cuddle for about 5 minutes then because he’s a big cat he moves to sit next to me so he can stretch out.  Last night he curled up like a hot water bottle.  A very large one!