A Cat Story

I thought I'd bring an old story out of the archives to entertain one and all...

So, my grandmother is now in a nursing home, but prior to this, I used to see her fairly often, taking her shopping and having lunch together, doing the odd chore, that sort of thing.

Now, my gran always had pets, for as long as I can remember.  In the her last years at home she had a cat and a dog, Lucy the cat, and B-For the dog (full name would be "B-For Beautiful").  As you can see in the image below, of five different flavours of cat food, my gran was very considerate of the desires of her pets - as long as they didn't want to be out of her sight for any length of time, if Lucy tried to go out for more than a few minutes my gran would be out in the garden, doing her best to round up the errant feline.  I remember my gran had a gate at the side of the house which was generously tied up with string and old dog leads in an attempt to stop the cat from going through it, which would have been more effective if the gate hadn't had cat-sized gaps in it.

But I digress.

Sadly, pets do become ill over time, and Lucy was getting on in years.  For a couple of weeks when I had been visiting my gran was telling me that Lucy was acting out of character more and more.  This went on for about two weeks, and things came to a head one Sunday when I walked in the door and my gran told me, weeping, that Lucy would have to go to the vets, and be put down - Lucy just wasn't herself any more.

Now, allow me to enlighten you with some detail of Lucy's personality.

All Lucy wanted in life was to be left alone, and if she couldn't be left alone, then she would settle for killing me.

Lucy liked to hide under the Welsh dresser in the corner of the living room, or behind the sofa at the other side of the room.  If you wanted to get Lucy out of these places, you couldn't call her out.  You couldn't encourage her out with snacks.  You couldn't gently stroke her and draw her out.

You had to grab her and pull her out, while she employed her claws to try to keep her in her hiding place.  I recall on more than one occasion donning a coat and leather gardening gloves in order to pull the Welsh dresser away from the wall, then throwing a towel over the cat so that hopefully enough its claws would be hooked into the fluffy towel instead of being locked in a death grip around the bones in my wrists.  Whatever I tried, nothing ever worked, Lucy would always somehow find a bit of unprotected skin to shred.

So, I wasn't looking forward to getting Lucy out and taking her to the vets, although I will admit that a small part of me wasn't entirely unhappy that this potentially could be the last time that my arms would be oozing blood out of a variety of claw tears.  It seemed a bit extreme however to have a cat put down just because it was acting a bit strange, so I planned to take Lucy to the vet, find out what (if anything) was wrong, and take her back.

I cleared the various bits of furniture away from the sofa, where Lucy was hiding, and bent down to take a look.

Four glittering cats eyes looked back at me.

 "There's another bloody cat behind there!" I said. My grandmother expressed the view that I must be mistaken, until I got both cats out and she was forced to accept that there were indeed two cats.  Whilst they did look similar, I could easily work out which wasn't Lucy, because that was the one that wasn't trying to rip my face off.
 I concluded that the other cat must have wandered in at some time (possibly when I had the front door open to bring in shopping or something), attracted by the large and interesting variety of cat food on offer, been shut inside, and because my gran tightly controlled animal access and egress to the property, was unable to escape again.  It was entirely possible that Lucy was acting strange because there was another cat in the house, or perhaps my gran, who doesn't have the best eyesight, was encountering the captured cat around the house and thought it was Lucy.

 You'll be pleased to know that after the rogue extra cat was released Lucy lived on for some time, back in her normal character, slicing me periodically.

Colin says hi

This is Colin.

Colin is a British shorthair cat, and he's decided to have his say ahead of the big debate next Saturday, UK versus the US of A, about who has the better political system.

But Colin's a cat.  So come back on Saturday to read my blog (and while you're at it go see Tim's US-based one as well) and decide.

A cat post

So, today I made this video:

It's extremely bad, but I've made it because the guys behind Exploding Kittens have set a number of challenges to the community that, if achieved, will boost the rewards given to the supporters of their Kickstarter, and as I am one of them, I'm (as usual) up for looking silly if there's a possible reward behind it.  And my other half greatly enjoyed writing on my head.

This got me into thinking about doing a cat-related post.  Here's some cat facts:

Apparently cats are less stressed when sitting in a box.  I quite like sitting in boxes too.

A group of cats is called a clowder.  I can't help but think of clam chowder whenever I hear this (and I've never had clam chowder)

Cats have the skillset to use a toilet. (I assume for toilet-related purposes and not for drinking out of)

A cats brain is more like a human brain than a dogs brain.  That explains why they're so annoying.

Cats can be allergic to humans.  Which serves them right.

And here's a picture of a cat.  Thanks to George Hodan for kindly putting this into the public domain.  You're awesome.

#ExplodingKittens #update9

Thank you

Firstly, thanks to everyone that took part in #HOTDRINKDAY on Sunday, regardless of whether you supported tea or coffee, it's much appreciated, it was great fun to do and I hope to take part in more debates of equal seriousness in the future.

And most importantly tea won.  http://poll.pollcode.com/16115227_result?v

I'm continuing to struggle on without a computer as mine is under repair - I'm very much hoping to hear something in the next day or two about what the problem is, in the meantime I'm using my partners PC while she's at a school meeting, typing as quickly as I can to attempt to finish this post before our temporary cat stands on the keybardso;dfjpwaejiof.,vdv;

Ahem.

Fingers crossed I'll be back in a day or two - with a working computer!

The calm before the storm - 1 day to go!

I've been quiet on the blog for a few days, mainly due to the fact that my computer is currently out of action - Tuesday night it refused to power up, and even after fitting a new power supply it refuses to show any sign of life, so it's been taken to a repair shop - fingers crossed it'll be back up and running sometime next week.  In the meantime I'm on the laptop.

The other reason that I haven't been doing my social media thing on an evening is that we now (temporarily) have a cat in the house.

Action shot of James in motion.

We're looking after James at the moment, and to try to ease him into his stay with us I've been staying downstairs watching TV to give him some company.  It's a hard life.

Nevertheless, it is about 25 hours away from the great TEA VS COFFEE debate going live - if you've not been following what's been happening, all this week we've been leading up to two epic blog posts, one of which will be going up right here on the Blog of Thog (in support of tea) and one supporting coffee, on Life, Explained.  The posts will be live 3pm UK time, or 10am Ohio time (or different times in you aren't in either of those time zones), so make sure you visit us tomorrow and say hi, show your support for your favoured hot drink.

And that isn't all you can do.  Do you have a view on which hot drink you prefer?  Do you prefer a different hot drink to tea or coffee?  Do you not like any?  Well, make sure you do a blogpost or a video about it tomorrow, do let us know (and use the hashtag #HOTDRINKDAY ), we'd love to hear from you.

If you don't fancy blogging or doing anything that active, do at the very least vote here for your favourite drink, at the moment tea is absolutely thrashing coffee but there's plenty of time for that to be turned around (or even for coffee to be overtaken by hot chocolate, now that would be very amusing indeed!)

Meme stardom here I come!

I can't help but notice how popular "memes" are at the moment.  I've spent some time analysing the key points of the most popular memes, and here are some home made ones - please do feel free to share (and tell people where you got them from!)

And here's one for everyone from Hull:

Speaking of Hull, I went out with my dad yesterday down Princes Ave in Hull.  Due to the weather, we spent the vast majority of Friday afternoon in Pave, and very much enjoyed it.

Me and a pint of Hoegaarden, with fruit in!  Very odd but it did enhance the flavour.

Dad in a philosophical pose.  This was later in the afternoon, when we'd been to another pub, and then due to the rain decided to return to Pave rather than attempt a march to Newland Avenue.

Dad very much enjoyed the Yorkshire Lager on sale, whilst I did my usual trick of trying a different drink every time - I think my favourite was possibly the Schneider-Weiss on tap, very nice indeed.

While I'm blogging I must flag up that Christmas is swiftly coming upon us, and if you want any chance of ordering rather cool stuff for presents (either for family/friends or for yourself) I can't help but recommend getting a catalogue from Raven - obviously I'm biased but my parents business does sell all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff.  They're mail order to the UK and Ireland, send them a message on Facebook with your name and address to get a catalogue, and I do believe that you get a voucher for a free gift with your first order too!  I'd also recommend liking them on Facebook because their status updates are always very interesting, usually a bit of history about what happened on this date, or otherwise it's pictures of food.

Which is always good!

Congratulations Andy Murray on Wimbledon!

Finally!

After so many years, Great Britain has once again won Wimbledon - roughly an hour ago, the World Number Two, Andy Murray, beat the Number One Novak Djokovic in straight sets.  I must admit that I'm not the biggest tennis fan but it's great to see a british winner of Wimbledon at last!  Well done Andy!

What news do I have?  Firstly, I have another guest post up, this time published by Mary Sentoza, a writer and blogger in Canada.  I've enjoyed her works for a while and she's very gratifyingly put up a little piece I've written on the mistakes I've made in my writing adventures!  Do check out her work at http://authorsmuse.weebly.com/ and http://www.marysentoza.com/

My parents have been fixing my grans "magic gate" as they call it.  It's magic because apparently, if you close this gate, it stops the cat from leaving the garden.  Yes, just closing this gate stops the cat climbing over fences, walking through hedges, or even just squeezing between the bars of the gate itself.  My mum writes the story far better than me at http://ravenmagical.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/working-weekend.html

Obviously - it's really hot today.  REALLY HOT.  I don't really operate well in extremes of temperature, and would be quite happy to spend the rest of the day in a slightly chilly room, with no sunlight.  But hey, at least we had a barbecue and now have an excess of cooked meat.  And this is after my delicacy at breakfast, as you can see here...

Mmmm...  ??

It's chicken, vegetarian chilli, and some cheesy pasta thing, warmed up in the microwave and then cooked up with about a third of a pint of beef gravy.  I ate it.  That's pretty much all I can say about it.

The Cat Is Alive!

My gran's cat is alive and well.

To clarify, my gran rang me yesterday morning very upset as the cat was acting extremely strangely and very unwell, with the likelihood being that it would have to be taken to the vet's and put to sleep.  Now the cat is not a young cat and hasn't been very well for a while, so we knew this day would come, but of course it's still extremely upsetting as it is the only pet my gran has now, and she has had pets pretty much all of her life so not having one would be difficult for her (she's now 81 and not up to having another pet after this one).

I was out all day yesterday (hey Alex, Mark, Phil and Dave if you're reading) so I couldn't take the cat, but I arranged to ring my gran back at lunchtime, and when I rang the cat was no better so things were not looking good.

So it was not in a terribly cheerful mood I arrived at my gran's this morning, prepared to extract the cat from wherever it was hiding (it is extremely nervous and hides when I'm around, probably because every time I go near it I take it to the vet).

However, the cat had completely recovered! Good news.

I should have known really.  We had the same situation about four months ago, when the cat was behaving very oddly again, and I went to collect the cat, to again take it to the vets.  The cat had hidden under a dresser in one corner of the room, so I pulled the dresser away from the wall, only for the cat to get around me and go behind the sofa.

I looked behind the sofa.

I saw a cat.

And a second one behind it.

Piecing information together we worked out that about four days beforehand a second cat had entered the house, and rather than leaving again which my gran had assumed it had taken up residence behind her sofa. So, when her cat was behaving oddly it was due to the intruder on its territory.  We extracted the rogue cat and sent it on its way.

So, all good news on the animal front.

I'm trying to decide whether to return to World of Warcraft - I still have a lot of friends on there (hey Guild Ravenswing!) and of course the Mists of Pandaria expansion is released on the 25th of September which a lot of people are very excited about - who doesn't want to be a very deadly, and cuddly, panda?

Apart from that, I wanted to flag up a set of websites that always entertain me, the Not Always group, namely:

• notalwaysright.com
• notalwaysworking.com
• notalwaysrelated.com
• notalwaysromantic.com

These sites get real funny stories submitted for your reading pleasure.  The first one, notalwaysright.com was the first site and covers all those customer service stories of people trying to deal with difficult customers.  For anyone who has worked on the customer service side you'll relate to some of the stories!  One of the top stories is Lost In Translation - a story which makes me glad I can't speak a second language!  Over time I've pretty much read every story on there.

And if you have a minute spare, why not watch a video of a man gobbling at turkeys too!

One last thing, I've been enjoying the Jeff Lewis 5 Minute Comedy Hour on YouTube - I mentioned it the other day but it's worth repeating as it really is funny.  Jeff Lewis, who plays Vork in The Guild (again, go and watch it, very very funny indeed) delivers some excellent comedy in 5 minute chunks.

I'm pretty tired tonight so going to leave the blog there - oh, I did have a slight panic earlier, when I noticed my website address is http://thoggy.blogspot.co.uk/ - the other day I ordered a load of cheap promotional materials (postcards, business cards and labels) with thoggy.blogspot.com on them.  I've just checked and they both end up in the same place, relief is mine!