After about 14 months of cutting it fine on the street outside my place Chino met his match with a car this morning.
Chino had one huge personality and was the best roommate I’ve ever had. I’m embarrassed at how cut up about his death I am but I’m not embarrassed to admit I loved him something fierce.
I’m going to miss him.
D is for Do
Well, yesterday came and went without a post. Pfff. To be frank I’m too sleep deprived to care.
If you were the new tenant upstairs you could be forgiven for thinking I had a newborn at the breast given the number of times I’ve been getting woken up by wailing and crying in the middle of the night. The attention seeking behaviour however, belongs to the cat. And hear (see?) me out before you accuse me of being too soft…
I have louvre windows in my bedroom, an unusual choice perhaps, but as they are immediately next to the stairs that are the exit and egress for the upstairs units, the windows needed to be space conscious… They’re old, crappy steel framed panels that are rusted to all billy-o. I took advantage of this decrepitude (ace word, that) in the early summer and wedged the top pane open to allow some fresh air to circulate… I really do prefer to sleep with a window open.
I have also begun to leave them open during the day to give the cat access to the house as I do not have a cat door and I also figured that should a burglar have a go louvres would be harder to break into than the other solid pane window I used to leave open for him.
Anyway the cat has got a bit used to going in and out the windows and at night time while I sleep he feels as though he should be allowed to get outside through the narrow opening left by the open pane regardless of the time of day or the fact that he’s NEVER been allowed outside at night…
The thing is, he won’t fit through the gap and while he shows particular intelligence in attaining the top window by climbing up the louvres paw over paw he hasn’t figured out that no matter how often he attempts it he WILL NOT be able to get himself out. Neither has he got the message that no amount of attempting this feat has made me yield and open the window… (the phrase dumbass springs to mind).
Last night he tried it 4 times. If he could try it quietly I would sleep through… but the glass moves noisily in its frames and the cat bleats (as it were) in frustration and as you know, orientals are not the most meek of miaou-ers…
Now, gentle reader, you may make such a rational suggestion as ‘just shut the cat out of your bedroom at night’ to which I reply… I try this repeatedly… I get up, shut the door, wedge 1, 2 and sometimes even 3 shoes under the door… and the little bugger is so persistent he leaps at the door handle until the door unlatches and he pokes at the shoes and throws himself at the door until he gets enough of a gap thorough which he can wedge himself and he happily says hello. This is not a quiet business…
And then the process starts all over again.
You may then suggest that some behavioural modification ought to be undertaken… and I concur; the outworking of which has seen me go to bed with a water sprayer nestled on the window ledge which I discharge in his direction (and which he hates) whenever he tries it on. Again, he is so determined that this really only inhibits him briefly and he will watch me, waiting to see if I’m going to move towards the bottle and sometimes, even while I’m spraying the living daylights out of him, he’ll still give it a good go…
SO – and this is where the D is for Do comes in…
Today I decided enough was enough and that I was going to have to forego sleeping with the window cracked so I went to restore the window to its natural state -however, the window frame had got used to its new place and would not return to it’s former full upright position…
Oh BOTHER!
Now, if I were a soft, girly girl I might have despaired or prevailed upon VB man to apply some brute strength to my problem… But I’m a strong capable farmer’s daughter who doesn’t let a bit of dirt or brute force get in the way of her and a good night’s sleep.
So I hauled tools and after some dogged determination of my own involving 2 sets of pliers, a screwdriver a hammer and a few liberal doses of WD40 my louvre windows are now restored to their normal state.
And if the cat tries it on he’s bloody sleeping in the cat carrier tonight and I’m wearing earplugs so I can’t hear him squeal.
Beady
There are few things that one may find fascinating about kitchen appliances. Surely. Even those fancy ass fridges with the internet on ’em.
Not fascinating.
However, cats apparently are fascinated by things other that those which captivate me. I know this because his nibs spent most of this afternoon and evening staring at the stove.
I’m not kidding. I mean, as I write it’s 12.30am (yes innernet, I am addicted to you) and it’s only in the last little while that the fascination has abated… I got home from church at 9.30pm that’s 3 hours… who’d have thought he’d have such a long attention span?
I was fascinated by his fascination so I opened and closed the oven doors, pulled out all the utensils therein and found nothing of interest to me… but I figured that there must have been a roach or an errant lizard that he’d let get away indoors on one of the occasions where he’d been left with the run of the in and the outside of the flat last week.
Of course, if you’re a cat owner yourself you’ll realise that the fascinating thing about the stove was noteworthy and that patience such as Chino exhibited today is for far more interesting a prey than a common and garden variety lizard or roach.
This prey was warm blooded – mammalian – and no, it wasn’t a mouse.
Mice are so last week.
Blow me down if as I was sitting here on my sofa tweaking my latest site two little beady eyes and half a dozen whiskers didn’t appear, attached to a rodent doing a tightrope walk along the little shelf rails in the grill.
What the rat couldn’t see (yes, a bloody rat) was that sitting on the bench to his left, looking into the top of the grill through the stove top was ‘Chinois the Dogged’ who was waiting him out.
The first time the rat had appeared I didn’t see it but got the gist of events because the cat went nuts shoving is forepaw down between the elements. Beady the Rat having made good his escape didn’t poke his nose out for another half an hour or so… I guess he didn’t count on the cat’s determination…
The 2nd time I he came out I saw it, but the cat must have made a noise (or I did) that scared the little bugger back down the stove so I caught no more than a glimpse… By this time I was actively encouraging the cat to sit on the bench… not usual behaviour…
Finally, persistence paid off… Beady emerged the 3rd and final time at around midnight. This time Chino was prepared and he knocked the rat onto the floor leaped from the great height of the benchtop and followed the rodent under the fridge, knocking its footplate off in the process…
Happily Beady wasn’t quick enough off the mark and Chi got his jaws around him and brought him out into the light complete with Beady struggling for dear life…
I sure hope you’re not squeamish or one of those ‘animal loving’ ‘live and let live’ kind of readers… if so look away now… or skip a paragraph…
Chi wasn’t letting me near the rat. He growled and carried on and took the bloody thing into my bedroom. I personally wasn’t taking any chances on him letting it go to get a better grip and having the blighter take off under my bed so I took my own turn at the rat and at an opportune moment I hit it over the head with my monopod…
Heh.. take that you little varmint…
Then, when the cat was distracted I picked it up by the tail and threw it into the bathroom where Chino proceeded to chase it down and attend to it like it was a tickle me Elmo or some such Top 10 Christmas Gift. (The bathroom’s where all the live prey goes… I figure it’s easier to clean up entrails off tiles..)
Happily, entrails are not currently an issue… the cat doesn’t seem to have figured out that rats are edible.
Happy Birthday Little Fella
Happy Birthday Little Fella
Originally uploaded by deeleea
Who’d have thought a year could go so fast… admittedly he was 6 weeks old when I got him (crikey, that means Christmas isn’t so far away…) so I haven’t had him a year, but today is his Birthday. He’s still great company, even if today it was me who got the presents… 2 massive roaches and a skink…
Gross.