Saturday Stuff

Well, friends, there isn't really much to tell around here. It's been pretty quiet at casa de Tia... And human, I suppose. It turns out that Dogman just wants to be with his family and have some space this weekend, so although the human's been with him on the phone a lot, she's still up here in the house, feeding me and brushing me and snuggling me as she should. One thing she shouldn't be doing is bathing me though, and unfortunately, that's what happened to me this morning.




She said she thought it was about time I had a bath, that my coat was getting a bit greasy. The nerve of some humans! I mean, do I mention that her clothes smell nastily of detergent and stuff? Do I make a remark about how her tongue is hopelessly inept at cleaning her? Do I reference the fact that a body without fur looks disgusting? No! And yet, she has the tenacity to remark in an off-hand way that I am greasy. Well, if she had as much fur as I do to clean, perhaps she would be too!





So, in the bath I went. I could say a lot about how much I hate that blasted tub, but instead, let's focus on the positives, or rather, the positive. The human uses a baby shampoo on my fur. This has two good points. Firstly it makes my furrs beautiful and soft, and secondly, it doesn't leave too much of an icky smell behind it. The human says it makes me feel beautiful and shiny too, and that it won't irritate my skin.





Speaking of skin irritation, I'm back to scratching again. The human read somewhere that sometimes mites can migrate onto a cat's body. often they itch, but when lab cultures are taken, nothing shows up. She was questioning a while back whether I had ear mites, so now that she's seen me raking at my chin until I'm breaking skin, she's treating me with the nastiest smelling powder I ever did sniff! It hasta go on my skin to kill the horrid mites, but I tell you, I don't like it one bit! If that doesn't clear up my scratching, the human says that the water fountain will have to go. Before, when I was scratching my neck, the human was using plastic bowls for my foods and water. She got rid of them at the same time she put Soft Claws on me, so she's not sure if the bowls and plastic were the cause of the scratching, or whether the fact that it was allowed to heal that saw me all right again. you see, I had to bend forward to eat, which means that my neck might have rubbed the bowl. It's not all that uncommon for a cat to be alergic to plastic. I had a new water fountain that was bought months ago but that we couldn't use thanks to Mr Bug and my human worrying that he'd decide to live in the pump after jumping out of our mouths and into the water, but she gave me it after Dogface went, and ever since then, I've been scratching like mad. This one's a high fountain, so it would actuallly only be my chin touching it when I drink, and that's the only place I'm scratching.





Now, about Soft Claws. Pixal and Samba, we haven't forgotten the fact that you won and that we're sposed to mail you out a package of Soft Claws. There's a problem though. The company aren't being forthcoming with your prize. See, every time someone won, we had to tell the sponsoring company and they would supply the correct size and colour. We wrote to them when you won, but they haven't gotten back in contact with us since. We are still trying though. So sorry about the delay in you getting your prize! The human says some awful words when she looks at her email only to see that they have ignored another one. I can't repeat them. They aren't polite.





Hmmm, let's see, what else? Oh, the singing cat card arrived, except that it doesn't sing. The HGG told us it did, but she got it a little wrong. It's Ok. I'm not cross with her. She's old and has got some memory problems, so it's not uncommon that that happens. However, she still remembers me and how beautiful I am. She actually asked for all the human's photographs of me to be printed and brought at Christmas for her to look at, and I made sure the human bought her a Friends of the CB calendar too so that she could have fun looking at all of you in there, and me of course. Her eyesight's going, so she can't read so good any more, and that's something she used to do a lot. Now she likes looking at pictures a lot more, so the calendar was perfect. She loved it. She told the human all about the different pictures, and one of the blessings of her not having such a good memory is that, next time she picks it up, she always thinks she sees one or two new pictures that she hasn't ever noticed before. She asks the human about me all the time, and although she often forgets my name, she still remembers how much she liked me when she came to see the human way back before I started writing. I was super nice to her. I came and sat on her knee and cuddled her, and I didn't bite or scratch her once, even though when she picked me up it was a little uncomfortable. her left hand isn't so good any more cuz she had something called a stroke. That means that she doesn't hold onto me so good with that one, but has to hold extra tight with the right to stop me from falling back down when she picks me up. I got squirmy, and would try and ask the human to help the HGG instead of her struggling to do it herself, so for the most part it worked well. The HGG is quite squishy too, so makes for a great place to lie. The human thinks the HGG would do well to have a cat of her own for company, but the HGG worries about cleaning litterboxes. It's a pity really, as a quiet, older cat would make such a good companion for her.





But I was talking about cat cards, wasn't I? This one didn't sing, but it said meow and purred. I wasn't interested in the slightest. I knew it wasn't a real cat in there. It sounded way too fake! So, to all of you who were worrying, you can stop now. I have a way better reaction than the card when you rub my tummy. Sure, it might involve claws and teeth if I so decide, but it's still way better.





The human got the first of my vet bills sent back to her last week, and although the insurance covered some of it, there's still a lot left to pay. Hmmmm, wonder if we should go on the run? Nah, forget it, running sounds too much like hard work! Unless it's to chase a ping pong ball. In fact, is that one I see over there? I must go and investigate. It might take me some time...