Human abuse - I dodge the missiles but it upsets my human

Dear George,
My name is Lucifer and I am a BIG cat. This is me held aloft by my human. As you can see, I am relaxed about being lifted up - he doesn't do it very often because I am so heavy. So is he, incidentally.
My grudge of the week is a neighbour. This woman hates me. She harasses me every time I visit her garden, a garden which is kept like a litter tray - nice loose soil between every plant. Naturally I use it. Unnnaturally, she hates that.
Normally she contents herself with shouting at me but lately she has started throwing things - small stones, loose soil, and once even a cup of tea.
She's not a very good shot. She'd never make the village cricket team as a bowler, so I dodge the missiles easily. But it is emotionally upsetting for my human. 
Is there anything I can do about this? I don't like to see my human so upset.
Lucifer.

Dear Lucifer,
It's one of the mysteries of human behaviour that they dig up the soil in just the correct way for a feline latrine. Then they complain when we take advantage of their toil. But, hey, while we can change human behaviour by training, we can't really alter their instincts. Digging is an instinct for many of them.
Some human behaviour counsellors would suggest you don't use her garden. This, I think, is conniving with abuse. So I suggest you purrsuade your own human to install a litter tray for use during the day and wait till darkness falls to use her garden. Not difficult in this weather. Use her garden extensively at night. Once you get used to the routine, you will rarely have to use the indoor tray.
Your human can then tell the abuser that he has installed a tray that you are using (he can even offer to show it) and invent a fictitious cat in the neighbourhood - "that scrawny ginger one from the flats" - that is responsible for the cat poo. "He does it in my garden too even though Lucifer chases him off whenever he sees him there."
Hey presto, you are now the good guy chasing of the serial pooper. Sometimes deception is the only way to deal with human abuse.
Yours
George.
 

I ate all the treats... so what? Humans are worse.

Dear George,
It looks like I misbehaved this past Thursday and everybody in the house was upset and had something to say! But…..I was celebrating American Thanksgiving! What’s wrong with this? Don’t we all should give “Thanks” regardless of the flag we wear?

What “crime” did I commit? I ate all food I found around plus I opened a small bag of treats and finished it.
And, after that? As you can see in the photo attached.
I couldn’t even move ….but it was a good celebration! Now, the other three cats are upset and won’t play with me. My humans? Ugh! They started worrying if this was “emotional eating”; am I depressed? am I anxious? am I bored? What doctor should they take me to?

What if I’ll become obese? Are they crazy? I am no Bridget Jones! I enjoyed the food and that’s all it happened! Do I suggest they see a shrink if they put on weight? No! Not my business if they want to be chubby. George, are all humans neurotic or just mine?
Yes, I ate all treats….now, what? You tell me as I’m confused about all this fuss!
Full and satisfied 
Vegas

Dear Vegas,

I once ate a full packet of specially malt flavoured vitamin pills for cats  - about 120, I think. My human got very upset indeed, rushed me to the vet, who stuck a thermometer up my bottom so I bit her. "He seems quite well to me," she said sourly.

Humans are such hypocrites. My own left me alone today (without any food), went out for a four hour lunch, and I heard her admitting she had eaten two portions of Mediterranean meze, followed by a large slab of beef with mashed potato, and a whole bowl of Eton mess (cream, berries and meringue). She gave me a measly envelope of cat food when she returned and sat burping in front of the TV.

When I do some creative foraging and come home with a rat, or a mouse, or pull the bread out of its bag and eat it, or finish up the rice pudding left on the kitchen surface, her reactions are hysterical and unkind. 
I am adding a photo of the rat. I was planning to chase it round the house for about an hour and a half, then eat it, she intervened and "rescued" it.

I was proud of that rat! Humans are the pits. 

Yours with sympathy,

George

Don't believe everything a human does.

Dear George,
I have just seen a human friend looking at a book entitled Tilly - the ugliest cat in the shelter. My eyes went very wide in horror. Who dreamt (nightmared) up this title?
There is no such thing as an ugly cat, although I do concur that those poor catty souls bred without fur by loathsome humans may qualify.  Cats on a scale of 1 to 100 are mostly 100, with a few coming in at a 94. That's it!
The kitten Tilly on the cover is a nice, smart, lovely mixture of patchwork colours. I did however see on the back of this book pictures that purported to be a grown-up Tilly which looked rather strange as this cat was long-haired. And some of the colour patches had swapped places.
And I heard the human reader muttering something about "bad production" and "brainless editors" because the "Tilly" on the cover has medium blue eyes while the grown-up "Tilly" has pale yellow eyes!
These two are not the same cat! Who designed this book? Who approved the proofs? Are they still taking money under the false pretence of doing a good accurate and truthful job? I think we shuld be told in the name of good journalism (current on-going trial of some occupants of The Street of Shame excepted).
Is this the world I have to live in?
Love to all nice people.
From Breezey (age 15 weeks).


Dear Breezey,
Humans are strange creatures with a lower nature than ours. Of course there are no ugly cats. Never have been. Never will be - despite the internet craze for a so called grumpy cat. We are graceful, elegant, beautiful creatures from birth to death. Unlike humans.
Yes, the photo is a lookalike not the real Tilly. You can see from these photos. Shocking duplicity! But we have to remember that humans cannot think like we do. They are without any moral sense (or any common sense) whatsoever.  
I am told that the publishers said that photos of the real Tilly were either "too pretty" or "too ugly." Some humans are never satisfied. But the story is true and Tilly's real photo is on the inside cover. 
Yours 
George.
PS You have a delightful nose.
PPS. See channel 4 at 20.00 this Saturday for documentary about our Wiltshire Walking World

I conquered the Key to ….the Board!

Dear George,

Here it’s me again… Maggie….this time reporting a big victory as I conquered the key to the board or “tastiera” (yes, I’m of Italian descent and that’s what we call this thing)!

As you recall, I am in a big competition with Ziggy to win over his daddy.

So here is what happened! The other day Ziggy was “searching” my main quarters while I was all alone upstairs watching his daddy working on something that looks more like a frying pan to me than anything else.  Anyway, when he went to have his dinner…I just jumped over the frying pan and all I heard was: “Oh! No! She’s on the keyboard (as you can see in the picture) and I’ll lose everything I saved. Where is that damn mouse? The cordless mouse?!”  Now, that doesn’t make any sense to me. If I had the key to the board…how could he lose anything? I was (literally) over and holding all his savings.

I was all over the tastiera!  And what a mouse without a tail has to do with this or with his savings?  George, honestly…I have nothing to do with that tailless mouse! I didn’t see it, didn’t eat it …didn’t find it! Do you think that ….maybe Ziggy ate it trying to set me up? And how on earth a tailless mouse could save his fortune? 

Very confused,

Maggie

Dear Maggie,
This mouse thing that humans have is very odd. Mine has got one too. It's got quite a large tail which Celia has tied in some way to the keyboard (tastiera?). To stop it running away probably - except that it is disabled by having no legs at all. Underneath it glows red? Blood perhaps?
Yet it doesn't smell of mouse at all. It smells unpleasantly of plastic. It's got no fur, no whiskers, no tasty crunchy little feet. It's hard all over and the red under its body isn't liquid and doesn't smell right either. Even the tail isn't right. I know a mouse tail doesn't have fur, but this is sort of smooth instead of scaly. And I can't eat it - though I have tried. Not crunchy just hard. Difficult to swallow, I would think.
Obviously your mouse is disabled too if it hasn't got a tail.Can't believe Ziggy would have stolen it - what true cat would bother with such a tasteless scentless hard object. I am sure your human is to blame - so he is blaming you instead. They do this all the time. Blame us for things we haven't done or if we did do them, it was a reasonable thing to do.
So, Maggie, forget the mouse. Instead concentrate on the keyboard. If you lie on top of it or walk over it, you can make nice little mouse tracks on the screen. I favour xxxxxx. Or zzzzzzz - which looks like a nice long sleep. But $$$$$$ is a challenge to the ambitious cat as you have to stand on the capital key while poking at the $ key.  If you get this wrong it comes out just as 444444 which is fairly boring.
It's best to start this when he is using the keyboard himself. Leads to amusing human frustration!
Cheers for online cats
George

Bird feeder modification - for once my human has an idea that works.

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Dear George,

I am sure that you will agree with the opinion that we cats hold our feathered friends very dearly. In fact as close and as dearly as we can, given the opportunity.

 Bearing that in mind I am sure that many of us feel a tinge of sadness during the Winter months, as we sit indoors in the warm while watching our birdie chums flapping about in the cold and the wet and, most sadly, with little food, other than that which is provided via feeding baskets which many of our human companions have the charity to hang out for them. Often high up. Out of reach. Of those who do not fly.

 I spend many an hour watching with interest and occasional amusement as the feathered ones hover around these feeding baskets, frequently clutching on to the enclosing mesh as they pluck a nut or seed through the gaps.

Not infrequently the grip on the valuable food is lost and it tumbles to the ground, where it may be scooped up by a large wandering pigeon, or perhaps lost on the ground, to be scavenged later by mice or rats or even a fox, all of whom soon recognise a depository for manna from heaven and are waiting in the wings.

 Noting that most of these feeding baskets are merely round tubes with an occasional stick on the side acting as an over-occupied perch, my human came upon a good idea (it sometimes happens) and made a use of some now-abandoned curved plastic discs that his kittens used to delight in playing with before they discovered the interest of just sitting still and pushing buttons. They called these things 'Frisbees'.

His bright idea was to fix one of these to the bottom of each feeder. Its wide dish meant that dropped food was not lost to the ground. It also provided a platform upon which the feathered ones could stand, rather than hover precariously,  and it also allowed small seed to be heaped upon it, seed which would otherwise just pour through the feeder mesh.

I attach a photograph of the device in position, which I filched off my human's computer Mac (strange name, as it never rains indoors…). I find that a computer mouse is frequently a cat's best friend.

The feeders usually have small holes in the bottom and I gather that it is a very simple matter to put a couple of holes through the plastic of these 'Frisbees' using a 'drill' or a knife point. My human first used large 'self-tapping screws' to hold the two together, but then changed to small 'nuts-and-bolts', which he considered to be a more durable method of attachment.

 So, George, there you have it. Us cats being kind to the birds, for without little birds in the Spring there will be no more big birds in the Summer. Which somewhat reduces the fun-time for us. Incidentally, the new device is so strong that even pigeons can alight briefly to snatch a beak full.  All's fair, etc.

Love to all and remember, we should all help each other to get by in this world.

 Milly

Dear Milly,
Steady on, Milly. This isn't a good idea at all. My bird table is there so that I can enjoy watching and occasionally catching the birds on it.
I see bird tables as birder bars (burger-birder, geddit?) for felines. I prefer the food on the ground. With luck I can nab a bird while it is feeding. What's good about this human idea? It ruins the fun.
Not too much enthusiasm for human ideas, please. They don't have many and most of them are poor (like measuring out cat food rather than ad lib feeding). 

Yours
George