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!

What do you do with a filthy dirty cat who comes in and washes your kitchen floor for you?

No I don’t know either.

What a week we’ve had.  By Wednesday we’d abandoned all efforts to keep the kitchen floor dry.  It wasn’t his fault of course, the rain that we’ve had since last Sunday.

As I write this the sun is shining, which may give the garrden some respite.  It wasn’t just the wet that the cats brought in but the mud.

I’ve read a couple of books this week, both of which have had cats as characters.  Both cats as well as being characters in the book were characters.

Full of stubborness and guile.  One to avoid being put on a diet, the other simply to stay alive.

I suppose we all believe that our cats know what we’re saying to them.  And that we know what they’re replying.  Well neither Humphrey nor I needed interpreters this week.

I can’t remember which day it was, because the weather hasn’t helped me distinguish between the days, but one day Humphrey spent the day moving from one piece of furniture to another and adding a layer of dust.  Didn’t have the heart to turf him out but they won’t sit where you’ve put the covers will they?

At the moment he is downstairs sitting on a chair, fortunately minus any upholstery to dirty, having spent the night out in the border.  Bless.

We all know about cats loving the smell of the plant nepeta.  But till this week I had no idea that cats could also be addicted to…

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I haven’t updated you on Humphrey for a couple of weeks because of technical problems on the blog – don’t ask!

However it’s been fairly quiet.  No visits to the vet(keeping fingers crossed as I write) and no dead bodies on the doorstep.

The most fun we’ve had with him is trying to avoid him when he comes in wet from the garden.  Being long haired, the moment he gets wet he becomes a danger zone.  The number of times he washes the kitchen floor for us with his paws and leaves muddy prints on our feet as he clambers over us to reach the food!

Despite our best efforts to keep him in one rainy, or do I mean storm like night, he would stay out.  When he came in the following morning he brought in half the garden with him.  He had leaves sticking to his fur, soil on the underside of him.  I spent five minutes trying to clean him off before I could feed him.

Not that he appreciated my efforts of course.  But I worry sometimes about him licking all the dirt and it making him sick.  He can be sick all by himself without any help from the garden!

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

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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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.