Grooming habits of peoples

Friends, yesterday was another one of those days which makes me
wonder how peoples survived for as long as they have, and progressed
as much as they have, with their absolutely crazy waste of resources.
Let me discuss further, but first, I must warn that what follows is
not to be encouraged in any of your peoples. It's not pretty, and it
certainly isn't smart.

It has to do with water, you know, the stuff you need to drink to
stay alive? Ask any self-respecting cat to list the uses of water and
he'll say, "Uses? But there's only one, well, perhaps two if drowning
your prey in it could be classified as a use," and he'd be right. Ask
a people, however, and I think you'd find that you got a vastly
different answer. Take yesterday, for example.

It all started with the human picking up Millie apparently just for
a cuddle. My kitten, as much as I love her, has moments where she's
almost as dumb as a people, because when the human started to walk
towards the bathroom, Millie just carried on purring and brrrrrping to
her instead of putting up a token struggle to be let free. I
scarpered. I'm not stupid, and I knew what was coming.

Enter the first waste of water, the waste on grooming. I've had
this bathing thing done to me many times in preparation for shows, and
while it does strip the dirt out of my coat, so does a good tongue
washing, and the latter conserves resources much better. As if
throwing tons of water down the plug-hole isn't bad enough, she adds
smelly horrible shampoos to it which mean that, even if it could be
rescued by some miracle, it's no longer drinkable.

I know that peoples tongues are vastly inferior to ours, but they
still produce saliva, and they can still reach to wash parts of their
body. Ok, so they're not as flexible as us, nor would they be so well
cleaned, but surely this small sacrifice is worth it when it means the
conservation of water?

I usually try and educate her when she's giving me a bath. I talk
her through all the good reasons to save water, why we shouldn't just
get rid of it when it's a life saver. She just tells me to stop
shouting and says things like "Anyone would think I'm killing you
instead of just washing you with all that chattering". That lady never
listens to sense, even when it is shouted at her. I've heard her
intimate in the past that my shouting begins when the water is turned
off, and quietens immediately when I've got the warm water flowing on
me again. I've heard her intimate that this is because I'm being a
"stroppy madam," and because I want the hot water back. What lies she
tells! Let me tell you what's going on. I shout when the water is
turned off firstly with joy that she's seen sense, then with
increasing desperation as she makes moves to turn the water back on. I
scream at her to think before acting, to consider the poor alleycats
who have no water. I give up when the shower comes back on because I
sink into despair at my human's utter ignorance and inability to see
logic.

Then there's the matter of litterboxes. Now, we've already
discussed peoples litterbox habbits last year, how they foul up a
whole bowl of water by doing their unmentionables in it, and how wrong
I thought that was. But friends, they even wash out the propper
litterboxes in water. They actually fill a dirty box to the brim with
water, then wash out all the bits. Then my human fills it again, adds
horrible smelly stuff to it and scrubs. Then it gets emptied and
filled a third time so that the last of the smelly stuff is washed
away.

Now, in my book, filling a litterbox with water at all is a shame
and disgrace. Just change the litter every now and again, and that's
all it needs. But to fill a box three times is just down right
terrible. Considering that we have 4 boxes in our house, that's a lot
of water gone. Even one box full of the stuff would keep me and the
kitten drinking for weeks. Multiply it by 12 and the tragedy of it is
that much worse.

I've tried to educate the human, I really have, but after seeing
her behaviour yesterday, I think I'm going to have to give up on her
totally unless any of you out there have any good tips for stopping
this attrocity. If you do, I'd love to hear from you. Unlike certain
others I could mention, I actually care about conservation. When you
consider that our county is currently experiencing drout, the
repurcussions of her actions are clear. In fact, I wouldn't be at all
surprised if it turned out that she was the sole reason for the drout
in the first place! Come on, friends, help me out here. Surely your
peoples aren't as thoughtless as this one?

Now, today's a special day that only comes once every four years.
My human says that today is the day that ladies can ask their man
friends to marry them. While I won't be so forward as to propose
marriage (I'm not a ladycat who likes to be tied down... More of a
free spirit if you catch my meaning), if you're a mancat and
interested, then believe me, I'd be pleased to hear from you. Too
pleased according to my human who says she hasn't had a propper
night's sleep since Friday with all my shouting. Lots of you live all
the way across the pond though, so a ladycat's gotta shout really loud
to get your attention, doesn't she!

Smoochies to you all.

Tia

Abandonment, Salvation... and a toy!

Hi there, friends. I'll steal this opportunity to write to you all while the house is nice and peaceful. How can it be with a kitten in it, I hear you ask. Well, she's asleep after tiring herself out by running after our new toy, but more on that in a minute.

It feels like ages since we last talked, but I tend to let the kitten do her thing on here as she has so much to say and share with you all. She's so enthusiastic about the new things she's learning and all the places she's exploring that I think it's nice for her to be able to share. I tend to grab the quieter moments when I can write to you all because that suits me a whole lot better.

The human abandoned us last week, cruelly left us to fend for ourselves in the terrible elements. It got down to -18 degrees C over here, and she just didn't care! There's no point sending the RSPCA to our rescue, friends, cuz she'll just mutter something about "but they were indoors and the heating was on", and of course, because the RSPCA have only the brains of peoples which aren't great at the best of times, they'll believe her that we were at least warm. But friends, -18! That was horrendous! And trying to find your own foods in that weather is awful. Even the mousies hide! Again, don't send the RSPCA. She'd tell them that Dogman was here and fed us all the time, but there wasn't the variety, friends. my human rotates our foods for different flavours, and sometimes she mashes it and sometimes she leaves it in chunks. Sometimes she adds water, sometimes a crumbled treat on the top. Dogman? He just opened a packet, tipped it into a bowl and set it down. Why did I ever like him?

The human had the decency to come back just as we were both at death's door. The kitten was so distressed that she ran up to greet her straight away, meowing and purring and climbing on her in an obvious attempt to communicate to the dim thing, "Thank cod you're home. It was awful here without you, and look at how skinny I am! Ignore the tummy, please. It's bloated because I, um, didn't eat anything just a few minutes ago." I, on the other hand, was just too weak to move. I stayed in my near dead state cuddled into the only thick, fluffy blanket I could find, eyes closed, on my back, paws over my head (everybody knows you go belly up when you're about to die), and death rattling. My human says this was a snore, but everybody knows ladycats don't snore, and anyway, why would I be snoring when I was nearly dead? I roused myself as soon as I heard the rattle of the foods bowl, but that was instinct, pure self preservation. The rubbing round her feet and the miaowing wasn't my doing. it was my basic brain kicking in to tell me this was the best way of getting foods. The purring was just the icing on the cake, as was the human cuddling that followed shortly afterward.

I had recovered sufficiently by Saturday to consider attending a cat show, just to shmooze with my adoring public. I'm glad I did! As usual, I pretended to be a grump first thing in the morning (well, can't make it too easy, can I?) but this soon settled when I realised that I wasn't penned next to any stinky boys. Well, I did have one next to me, but he was a sweety really, and wasn't interested in doing anything that a ladycat doesn't talk about with me. Anyway, he was a brown tabby and white, and I know I can't do the unmentionable with a bicolour anyway, as my babies wouldn't be registerable. So I didn't get in a strop with him like I did with the very handsome colourpoint mancat at the last show. By the time the afternoon came, I was giving head bumpies to some of the peoples that came to cuddle me. One ladypeople held me so long that I even gave her a kiss, but only one, and only cuz she was so nice and she gave me kissies and said to my human and me over and over again what a pretty girlie I was and how she loved me. Of course, she said the same about the kitten, but that's understandable. She is my kitten, after all.

My human was all over the place, talking to peoples, putting on those funny white clothes which mean she'll be helping one of the judges with cats (stewarding, she calls it), cuddling other cats. I did permit this as it reminds her just how yummy I am. She did fall in love with a curly Selkirk Rex though, and said that one day we might have one of those too as they're so scrummy, but I just sighed and said nothing. She goes through these phases every now and again, and we always come out the other side minus the new cat, so I'm not too worried.

Soon the results came in, and I've never seen my human so happy in a long time. The kitten had got first prize in her open class, the most important one, and had even managed to take Best of Breed! Not only that, but she then went on to win another class which had a cash prize! I, on the other hand, scored big. I got my second challenge certificate and came first in my open. This means that I need only one more CC and I can then call myself a GCCF champion. How grand is that! I got third in a side class which I was also pleased about. In celebration, I instructed the human to go and spend Millie's winnings on a new toy for us. I thought that the kitten was too young to be expected to spend her moneys wisely as she was muttering something about giving it to the human so that we'd all have won something on the day, so I felt it better to take charge before that crazy notion got too far. My kitten's too nice, sometimes.

So off the human went, and came back with a toy called Under Cover Mouse from Panic Mouse. We got to play with it when we got home, and it's so exciting that I even overcame my initial nervousness that I have of all things new, and played with it without the human having to show me that it was all right and wasn't going to bite me. It's a circular bit of material which covers an electronic pretend mousie who zips around underneath it with only his tail poking out the edge. You gotta catch it under the cover and pin it, but whenever you do, he changes direction and runs away again. He's impossible to kill propperly! No matter what you do to him, he stays alive! For any cat who attacks feets and things under covers, this is such a good toy! Get 'em quick though, cuz they aren't making them for too much longer.

I finished up my day by yelling in the horrible PTU all the way home (well, it's the principle of the thing), then curling up for a good wash and a nap. I'm very pleased with myself and my kitten. We had a super day!

Well, until next time, friends. If you can't be good, be very, very bad... It's much more fun anyway.

Of Bugs and Parrots

Hihihihihihihihi all my somebody friends! It's me again! And I got lots to tell you. Well, it's not really lots unless I can think of lotsa things to say, but I can't tell you another things I thinked on Thursday cuz it isn't Thursday today, so that would be silly! Anyway, I thinked that I would just tell you some things anyway. Is that all right?

So, the first thing is that my human has a change of work hunting place today. She says this is normal, that in her job contract, whatever that is, she has to change the place she day hunts in every three months so that she does the same day hunting, but just in a different place. And I thinked that was pretty silly, cuz if you hunt in the same place for three whole months which is the same as forever, then there'll be no mousies or balls or money papers left to hunt cuz you'd have catched them all. Then I thinked that perhaps the human wasn't a very good hunter which is why it might take her that long to catch all the things before she changes the place. And then I thinked, but what if the mousies and the balls and things that she hunts are just like the mousies and the balls in my house place? Cuz I've been hunting them for over seven months now, which is like more than two forevers, and they still come alive again even after I've deadded them propper. As soon as I walk away and come back again, they need deadded all over again! And it's hard work! My little bug, for example. The human says it's a Neakofly but it's not. It's a bug. But it's always alive. Even when I catch it and pick it up in my mouth and run away with it and say wrow, cuz you can't say weeeeow when you have a bug in your mouth cuz then it falls out and runs away and you gotta chase it and chase it and chase it till you catch it again and then pretend that you meant to let it drop all along anyway and that it was part of the game. The bug is really alive, cuz it crawled into the human's jacket pocket last night when it had had enough of me catching it. It went in there to hide from me, and then it stayed real still and real quiet. And me and the human forgetted all about it till this morning when the human got to her day hunting place and she put her hand in her jacket pocket to get her name badge which is like the secret thing you need to break into the day hunting place where all the coolest things are to hunt. And out jumped the bug and his string that he's attached to, and he tried to run away from her, and all the other mighty day hunters said hahahahahahaha when they see'd the bug. They were probly laughing at my human who couldn't even catch a bug that she'd already catched in her pocket! She says they said words like "crazy cat lady," and "Next she'll smuggle a kitten in in that pocket," and other stuffs like that, but she just said hahahahaha too and telled them she was comfortable with being a nutter as long as it involved snuggly kittens, and sparkly balls and stinky goodness and mousies. Well, she didn't say them last things, but I woulda said that if I was her, cuz they're the bestest things ever.

I got a new nickname too that I forgotted to tell you about. Dogman and the human and even the somebody that comes to take the human away in the big growly monster called car every morning which takes her to her day hunting call me this. They call me Parrot. Why? Cuz my favouritest place in the whole world, maybe even in more than the whole world is on somebody peoples' shoulders, but only on somebody peoples that I like! Oh, it's so coooooool up there! And whenever a somebody picks me up, I climbclimbclimbclimb all the way up them and then onto their shoulders and then I go round the back of their neck and put my front paws and my head on their other shoulder and then I peep out with my face next to theirs, and I say purpurpurpur cuz I'm so happy up there, and if they talk to me or sometimes even if they're not talking to me but talking to a somebody, i say weeeeow and reeeeow and rrroooow to them till they talk to me some too. I like talking!

And if the somebodies don't pick me up, I talk and talk and talk and talk and then I shout right by their feets. And if that doesn't work, I jump and climb all the way up. And if they're bending over, I jump onto their backs and then climbclimbclimb to their shoulders. And I even climbed up Dogman's arm once! The human is a horrid big meanie, cuz she tells all the somebodies not to let me do that. She says it's Ok now cuz I'm a cute little girlcat, but when I turn into a boring old fatty ladycat like mummycat, then I can't do it no more cuz I'll be too heavy and it'll hurt the somebodies. So every time I jump on her back, she straightens up real quick so I fall off her and onto the soft carpet. And even though she's usually on her knees so I don't fall far, and the carpet's soft so I don't really get hurt, I cry and cry like a lost little babycat, but it doesn't work on the human. She does let me on her shoulders, but she has to say it's Ok first before I jump, and if she says no, I gotta listen and not jump, cuz if I do, then I'll just fall off again. But it doesn't work on Dogman. I maked him bleed by accident the other day cuz I put my claws in his skin to climb. And he was upset and said ouch ouch, ooooow! a lot, but when I got to his shoulder I put my claws back in again. And the human said, "See?That's why you need to stop her doing it!" And so the next time when I jumped on him, he maked me fall off just like the nasty human. And I cried and cried and cried like a little hurted babycat, and he picked me up real fast and snuggled me and said "Oh, Millie! Are you all right? Did I hurt you? C'mere and have a cuddle. And as soon as he picked me up, I climbclimbclimbed all the way to his shoulder, and then I said purpurpur, and he couldn't tell me off cuz I hadn't jumped on him or nothing and it's Ok to climb, just not to jump. And so now, he doesn't make me fall off any more, even though the human tells him off for it all the time. Silly Dogman! He's being trained already! And if you wanna see a picture of me being a parrot, you can Look at it here, I think!

I think that's all I thinked of for today. Oh, sept one thing. My human is going away for a little while next week. She says that one of her family is coming across in the big bird that eats peoples and then spits them out again called aeroplane, and she's coming all the way from Ireland and she wants to go see a place called London, so the human's gonna go with her there for a while. And she says that Dogman's niece will come and stay with us and feed us and cuddle us. And Dogman's niece feeled me when I was still just a wriggle in mummycat's tummy (if you actually believe that story), and then she came to see me when I was a teeny, tiny babycat before I even had my eyes open, and she's come and tickled me sometimes too, so I think I'll like her. And then the human will come back on Thursday night with her cousin. And I don't know if I'll like her cuz I don't know her, but she has a girlcat of her own, so maybe she'll be Ok. And then I get to show off at a show on Saturday! Isn't that all exciting!

Now I really can't think of no more. Byebye!