Just me

The Brit media is cranking out new reports of the wild cat of Woodchester savaging a deer but I have enough problems of my own with the wild moggies residing in my own home.
Since discovering her hunting gene, Norman has taken it upon herself to perfect her skills on anything and everything, but mostly birds.

I always thought Seymour was a good hunter but even he seems a little bemused by Norman’s efforts.

On Saturday morning, I was awoken by the unmistakable sound of two cats leaping around the bedroom in pursuit of some sort of prey. I sat up, dreading what I was going to find.

All of  a sudden there was an loud chirp and a wee birdie, minus several tail feathers, ran under the bed. With Norman in hot pursuit.

Seymour, however, encountered a slight obstacle in his morning hunt: his big furry bum wouldn’t fit under the bed. He was left with just his head under there, his back end sticking out at an odd angle and his stumpy wee tail wagging like that of an excited puppy.

My long-suffering but well-insured husband joined in the fray about then, spotting the bird tucked in beside the valance and grabbing it before Norman could pluck any more of its feathers.

She was unimpressed. She squawked at him, then followed him down the hallway as he took the bird outside. After locking the cat door he checked out the poor little critter, which stunned all involved by giving another chirp then flying away. Its tail looked a tad lopsided but all-in-all, it seemed fine.

However, Norman is still peeved.  And she became even more peeved when the bird she appeared with later was also removed from her clutches. And yesterday there were three birds over the course of the day. Today, just the two so far.

Our house is now in a permanent state of feathery-ness, I’m constantly checking my shoes and under my pillow, paranoid about what offerings she might decide to hide (she likes to hide her toys under my pillow, so you never know) and every time we hear the cat door ping, we all tense up in expectation of having to wrestle some poor, bedraggled creature from the jaws of death. Well, Norman.

Tomorrow, I’m buying her a collar. With a bell. And maybe a flashing light. And a siren.

 

 

 

The annual Allison family Christmas gathering/BBQ/circus went off without a hitch and just a wee spot of sunburn. And one mosquito bite.

It was hot enough on Christmas Day but even hotter on Boxing Day at our little home away from home, aka Club Mat(aura).

The fan was working overtime trying to cool things down and one of the worst things about using a generator for power is when you turn the thing off there’s no fan.

I suspect our clumsy possum friend who fell off the roof last summer was back because there was something banging around on the roof through the night. Either that or the rat we sometimes see swimming across the river got some hobnail boots for Christmas.

Spent the weekend at our little shack on the river, our first weekend there for the summer.

We had some friends come out to stay on Saturday night and have made some important discoveries:

• I’m not the only person who plays “I spy” in the dark
• The Eclipse mints labelled “Intense” are just that and should be approached with caution (and vodka)
• I appear to have lost my cards mojo and am now a pretty crappy player of cards. However, I am also, apparently, a good teacher

… you are the pigeon.

Some days you are the statue.

And some days (most days?) it feels like you’ve been the statue for way too long and the pigeons are getting organised.

An update on Norman the mighty hunter: this morning I found a very proud Norman with the head of a bird. Dead, obviously.

She had left it in the doorway of my office, a disembodied head with. And again, there was a trail of feathers that seemed far too huge to be from one little bird.

Thanks Norm.

Norman the Newbie-ish Cat spent much of the winter perfecting her hunting techniques, honing her skills on wetas, snails, moths, leaves and socks.

She has found, through a process of trial and error, that leaving dead wetas in the shoes isn’t always appreciated by the owner of said shoes.

And that if you make excited chirpy noises while hiding in the back of the couch with your collection of 17 stolen socks, you are very likely to be caught.

And that if you insist of licking a snail it will disappear inside its shell. And, still on the snails, if you insist on flicking them around the kitchen floor they will invariably end up getting stuck under the dishwasher, which means a human/staff member will be required to retrieve the snail.

She also has daily wrestling/stalking sessions with her toy mouse, throwing it in the air and pouncing on it before it hits the ground, pulling up the edge of the mat and shoving it under there so she can act all surprised when spotting it and leaping on it later and doing powerslides in the en suite bathroom as she chases her now-bedraggled little green mouse.

We always know when it’s Norman playing because her mouse still has the bell on its tail. Well, it still has a tail, in fact. Seymour has removed the tail from each and every one of his toys. It’s the first thing our ginger ninja does when he gets a new toy: I can see his point of view … he doesn’t have a tail, and until the arrival of Norman, no one else in the house had one, either.

So very early the other morning, when I heard the sound of the cat leaping around with a bell-less toy, I assumed it was Seymour with his toy mouse.

That was until I got out of bed. There was a trail of feathers around the bed that continued into my walk-in wardrobe. Nervously, I inspected the wardrobe and was relieved to see no sign of a dead bird. I then followed the trail of feathers out of the bedroom door, down the hallway and into the lounge.

Yes indeed, there had been a dead bird. My son told me he had just found it and had disposed of the body (it was a starling, so not a native).

At this point we were thinking it was Seymour that had done the deed but weren’t entirely sure. That was until Norman suddenly bounced into the room, with an array of feathers stuck to her face.

So, our Norm has caught her first birdie. Let’s hope she doesn’t catch too many more.

I suppose it should have come as no surprise: she has put in plenty of hours watching bird videos on YouTube.

PS: She did look incredibly proud of herself for doing starling population control. I’m sure she was smiling.

 

That was way too scary but I suppose it was a game of two halves and rugby was the winner on the day. Well, actually, we were the winners.
I’ve just finished work and while I’m pleased the Rugby World Cup specialist pages are over and done with for four more years (take the George Gregan, you bald little pillock) I’m even more pleased our boys in black got the job done.
Put that in your croissants and smoke it, you Richie McCaw-threatening morons.