Sorry this is rather late in the day.  I try to write this update after breakfast then I can forget about it.

But I had such a busy week that my breakfast was delayed by my late rising and everything else then was shunted together.

Humphrey meantime has been in and out, in and out, in and out.  Demanding food on every in stroke and then collapsing in the comfy chair in the living room.  Poor soul what a hard life.

Between them the two cats had cleared a tin by the time we had lunch at 2pm so it’s obviously going to be a 2 tin day as opposed to a dozen tissue movie.

I certainly thought he was luckier than me yesterday when  I was in and out all day getting wet not food on every out stroke.  I loathe winter days like that.

still coming in to a deep thoated purr of welcome was some compensation.

So busy week, cats okay, Christmas shopping now done and cards written so we’re all okay.

What a beautiful morning.  Of course I haven’t ventured further than the back door yet but

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Rewind of the firework thread last week because

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We’re now back to normal – that is minus 5 year old and Humphrey has finally stopped peering round the door into the kitchen before he dares to enter.

He’s enjoying himself at the moment in the garden leaping and attacking piles of leaves that are piling up.  The merest breath of wind is enough to pretend that there’s a mouse or a bird hiding under them which he just has to attack.  His favourite trick is to leap on a carefully gathered pile and scatter it into as many other heaps as possible.

Even in the depths of winter and thank goodness we haven’t reached that yet, he likes to be out.  We have a rosemary bush on the edge of our raised herb bed near the kitchen door.  Sometimes it will be pouring down  and he’ll take up his position below the bush.  He looks miserable, he’s undoubtedly wet with the water running off the edge of the bush and yet he won’t come in.

No matter how many times we open the door and try to coax him inside he sits there.  Of course I feel guilty that he’s out in the wet but no matter.

Cats are independent.  And contrary.  And stubborn.

That’s why I love them.

Humphrey’s had a very stressful week.  Firstly he had strangers feeding him for a few days while I was away and then

he’s had to put up with a very helpful five year old trying to feed him every time he walks through the kitchen door.  Now liking food the way he does you’d think that he’d really enjoy that.  The problem is that as well as being helpful, the five year old has a lot of energy.

Which means that she jumps around and sings and dances – while she’s feeding him.

Enough to put a shy retiring cat like him off his food!

Well not quite.  But he certainly is very cautious as you open the door to him.  It’s like he has a radar scanning device for the tornado that is around.

Never mind.  By the time of my next update, she’ll have departed and he’ll be able to go back to our full attention.  And you never know – he might miss her.

I was reading this week about angels.  Now I don’t know if you believe you have guardian angels around you but most of us have occasions where things might have happened but didn’t.  Where cars didn’t hit us, we were looked after when travelling or some such event.

I hadn’t realised that there is in fact an archangel called Raphael, and one of his roles is in looking after lost pets.  Sometimes when Humphrey goes awol for hours without any warning, I’m prone to picturing him lying there hurt.

So now if he does go missing I can ask Raphael to look after him.

It’s not knowing that worries me.  Because if I did know he was hurt then I could do something to help him.  I suppose I don’t want to end up feeling guilty that I didn’t look after him properly.  When my previous cat Sam was hit by a car, bless him he managed to make it back to the garden and I found him there under the hedge.

Terrible day worrying about him.

Anyway this week was calm, and sunny and peaceful cat wise!

It’s been quiet on the dead body front this last couple of weeks.  I should have known it wouldn’t last!  And it hasn’t.  Yesterday morning…

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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.

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!