Thursday, March 15, 2007

Get me out of here...... from prisoner, cell block G.


Help.....
I am imprisoned in a small cell somewhere in the Midlands. I was betrayed utterly by my so-called friend Celia. Judas I call her. I was having an enjoyable time hanging round the hedgerows, thinking of nabbing another rabbit or perhaps a pheasant or just a nice young rat, when she called me. She called me and I, trusting her completely, came. I walked into her arms. She picked me up, stuffed me in the cat box, and drove me off, with William in the other box.
At first I thought it was just the vet. Just the vet. Just the pain of being stabbed and the horror of the surgery. But it was much much worse. She thrust me into a prison cell. With my cellmate, William, we have been locked up behind bars. We are completely and utterly shattered by the betrayal. She just walked away.....
Me and William are considering various escape plans. Perhaps we could start building a Trojan mouse out of old cat biscuits - if we hadn't eaten them all.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Yet another example of mystifying human reactions.


Steffi-Next-Door, she who admires my mousing skills and wanted to borrow me as a rodent operative, has behaved outrageously. She has been away in holiday leaving the house empty except for my visits. I quite like going there for a look round, a snack if any food is down and a nap on her bed. She is normally happy about this and welcomes my visits. But this time, when she came back from holiday, I sauntered in only to find uproar. She was very emotional. Very. I had expected praise. It's not every day that a cat can kill a full grown pheasant. I thought she might like to share in my pleasure and may be even share a bit of the bird. (Well, perhaps not. Cats don't share). Anyway I thought at least she would admire my hunting skills and the way I had branched out from mice and small birds to large rabbits and equally large pheasants. She was the one who had kind things to say about my mousing. She admired it. My present of feathers was even better. Spectacular is what I would have called it.
Did she appreciate it? Heck, she did not. "Ohmigod! Look at this huge heap of feathers. I can't bear to clear it up," she wailed. I slunk off. Humans are completely unpredictable. Maybe it's a good thing Celia mowed their lawn while they were away. They seemed almost hostile for a moment.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Crufts Dog Show - would you breed from the judges?

I was going to be left alone at home (well with only Ronnie and William), deserted in favour of a lot of dogs. Celia was thinking of going to Crufts Dog show until some sort of flu made her decide to stay at home. Why dogs would appeal to her, I can't think. Noisy animals who are stupid enough to allow humans to tell them what to do - and then actually to do it. Dogs have no independance of mind, no persistence in the face of human stupidity and seem incapable of doing their own thing. They spend a lot of time at Crufts just sitting on a bench or locked up in a crate (to protect them from passing humans muttering "Good Boy" and interfering with them by patting their heads). Then there are hours being groomed. You see them posed on grooming stands while people fix their hair. It goes on for hours and hours. Then it is into a small ring, one or two circuits, then more standing around in a silly and unnatural position with legs stretched back. An elderly human male or female then starts running his or her hands all over them, right into the intimate bits. It's sexual harassment of a gross kind.
And, my dear, the people. Nothing for a beauty parade there. Have you seen the judges? Talk about hereditary faults - hip dysplasia, loss of hair, no tails, poor eyesight, false teeth, and completely dry noses. And you can see that some of them have cheated with plastic surgery - not just the women, either. All in all, judges are not the sort of humans you'd want to breed from and yet none of them are spayed or neutered. Any sensible dog would bite. Hard. But they don't - dogs are natural wimps.
How do I know all this? Well "Best in Show" is one of Celia's favourite movies. As for cat shows, I wouldn't let Celia even think about it. I'd indubitably win - black, glossy, long tailed, and of an athletic build. But I don't fancy hours of just sitting in a cage being looked at. My life is the life of a true cat - mousing, birding, having a crack at rabbits, hanging out, inspecting the garden pond, hovering at the door until Celia opens it instead of using the cat flap, and popping in for breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, supper and late supper. You wouldn't get me into a show cage.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Home improvements - a new morning alarm call device

For once, Celia has made a real home improvement for me. Normally I dislike any change whatsoever to my home territory. Thoughtless humans go in for quite unnecessary alterations sometimes involving the intrusion of hunky men with builders' bottoms, dust, grinding and hammering noises, and a radio set loudly to Radio 1. (My musical tastes are classical as you can see from my profile.) This particular home improvement involved only a short visit, a little bit of hammering, but no dust. The intruder hung up blinds in my bedroom, the one I generously allow Celia to share with me. Celia's aim seems to have been to cut out the morning light which conveniently wakes her up in late spring around the time that I think is suitable - somewhere near 6am most mornings. She hopes to drowse in bed for a further hour. Luckily, although the light is now much reduced, the intruder has thoughtfully installed a wake-up device which I easily mastered. It consists of three pieces of rope with a nice little plastic toggle on the end. When the blind is pulled down this hangs down to the windowsill where I can reach it. This morning I woke her without any difficulty at all at 6am by swinging the toggle and smashing it against the windowpane several times.
Neat, eh? More fun that scratching the bed and less trouble than sitting on her face.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Look at this - it's almost as big as I am


This was the day of days, the moment when my life reached the pinnacle of success and triumph. I caught a full grown adult rabbit. My first. It was so huge I couldn't get it through the cat flap - which is why the photograph is poor. Celia was in an inexplicable mood. Instead of welcoming me home as I dragged the dead body right down the farm track, she shuddered and ran indoors. So she would only take the photograph through the door. That's why it is bad quality. She let me down.
Indeed her emotional reaction was really perplexing. On the one hand she called to Ronnie, with a real note of pride, saying "Look what he's caught." Then she said: "That's good news for my vegetable patch." All well and good. Then came a series of remarks suggesting that she had had second thoughts. "At least, it's dead. I just couldn't bear it if I had to dispatch it." Then: "I wish he wouldn't kill everything."
The woman can't decide whether she's proud of me or upset by me. Talk about conflicting emotions. You see she wrote a book called "One Hundred Ways to a Happy Bunny" because she loves rabbits. Ånd she's connected with the Rabbit Welfare Fund. So she is actually as fond of bunnies as I am - only in a rather different way.
It all rather spoiled my triumph. Who'd keep humans as pets. They are so devastatingly irrational.

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org