Look What The Cat Dragged In

It’s been a while since we’ve had a good story out of the cat. But little Sniffles did himself (if no one else) proud on Sunday. Helen and I are lounging watching TV and then suddenly there is the sound of louder and different sounding whining from the cat who has come in through the open back door into the kitchen. Helen goes to see what all the whining is about only to emit her own little funny squeak when she gets into the kitchen. As, there in the middle of the floor is a freshly delivered dead mouse. And a puffed-up cat with a smug look on its face as if to say, “look what I’ve done”. 

To be honest we had though his catching days were long gone. It must be over three years since the belly flop incident where he leapt on a mouse but then couldn’t find where it had gone as he had landed on it and it was hidden under his belly. He sat there for five minutes looking around for where the mouse might have escaped to, and not until Charlie came out and started sniffing all around Sniffles did, he get up and move. At which point the mouse scuttled through the fence and into next door.

Sniffles has spent a lot of time laying underneath the tree where the bird feeders are, or further down the garden looking at the tree, but it has seemed to be more in a wistful longing than any reasonable attempt to catch any of the birds. But, now into his teens he must have been fed up of us mocking his catching ability and so we were treated to an episode of look what the cat dragged in. It wasn’t really the mouse per se that caused Helen’s squeak, it was more a surprise to find it there.

Obviously, having killed the said mouse and after bringing it inside to show off his hunting expertise, Sniffles wasn’t interested in eating the thing, only with getting his bowl filled with meals he hadn’t caught. And leaving us to give the recently deceased mouse a paper towel coffin burial in the bin. And content with his renewed prowess Sniffles decided to come and settle down on the sofa for the evening.

Only to go back into food hunting mode when my dinner arrived. From being asleep to having his nose in my plate of food took less than a second. To paraphrase Sol from Snatch, “Don’t worry about Sniffles, he can move when he has to.”

A Bad Case Of The Sniffles

Sniffles is alive, we’re just not quite sure how. He’s never been sane, but his odd behaviour is becoming more bizarre by the week. And he knows how to cause maximum inconvenience.

He hasn’t managed to get onto the kitchen table for ages, but once the jigsaw case is upon the table, and the jigsaw had been started, then as if by magic, there he is. On the jigsaw case at every opportunity using it as a bed. The pouffe in the living room no longer good enough for him.

The damn fool cat had also taken to scaring me to death at regular intervals with his complete lack of road sense. In the last week alone, he has appeared from nowhere and run out in front of the car as I’m driving along the close. I’ve had to slam the brakes on to avoid running him over as he then just flops into the middle of the road and proceeds to wash himself.

Thinking of this, I have been calculating it out. If he does this twice a week to me, and there are at least forty other cars on the close, plus the seemingly never-ending swarm of delivery drivers, then it would mean he runs the danger of being squished by a vehicle on the close somewhere in the region of a hundred times a week.

He has been limping recently and only gingerly using his rear right paw and leg, and it does look to be at a funny angle (count = 1). Even if the vets have said there is nothing wrong with him (yet they gave us painkillers for him anyway), it does seem highly likely that the little shit has managed to get hit by one of the vehicles he has run in front of.

Plus, he has the brain the size of a pea. He will lounge around inside all day, pretending he wants some food, only to watch us put food in his bowl and then still sit there looking at the bowl or wandering off in the opposite direction. Yet if you slide him over to the bowl, he will eat it. And then he’ll decide that when we are off to bed it’s time to go outside. In the dark, in the cold, in the rain, he just has to go out at that time. I’m sure it’s only so he can miaow the house down at three or four in the morning to be let back in. Always with lots of leaves stuck to him that he can then deposit around the house.

Granted this is a step up on bringing a wet muddy bike through the house a few minutes after I’ve hoovered.

Hello 2021

It was back to work this morning, and it was a bit of a culture shock after twelve days off. Especially since I’ve moved to a four-day week and it means an 8am start. At least with the lockdown it did mean I didn’t have to travel to my new office location in Portslade (they can call the office Hove all they like, it’s next to Portslade train station ffs). It was a dull cold morning and not fully light as I was setting up, and it was dark by the time I logged off.

Since I last did a usual update, I’ve had my last day in Atlantic House, a day earlier than planned, a bit of a retrospective is below

The last working day for me before Christmas was worked from home, as Helen needed the car to take Charlie to the vets for a scan / blood test. It was a strange and sad day as Charlie didn’t make it home.

It didn’t take long for the local cheeky fox to work out there was no dog in residence, as when loading the car, the fox kept poking its nose in the house between my trips to the car.

We were travelling north to spend Christmas at my mum’s in Morecambe, but were looking to leave at a reasonable time to then stop at Stafford overnight on the way up. With the events of the day we were later than intended and ended up having dinner at home before setting off. It was ridiculously windy and rainy as we drove up, and it was after eleven by the time we got to the hotel for the night.

At least the weather Christmas Eve was better and brighter as we did the second part of the journey. We had left a tier 2 Crawley for a Christmas bubble in tier 3, but found out before going that we would be returning to tier 4 Crawley.

Christmas at my mum’s was a lot more relaxing than expected. We got out a couple of times for walks, once sneaking over the border into Cumbria to Arnside, and once to the end of the world at Sutherland Point.

The journey back started in bright sunshine, but it became overcast as we travelled south. From just after Lancaster down to Birmingham the whole of the surrounding countryside had at least a thin layer of snow on it, and in places the fast lane had a thick layer of dirty grey slush in it. Oxfordshire was a different matter, the whole county appeared to be an inland sea, there was no defining where the banks of the River Cherwell was the three times the motorway passed over it.

We got back to Crawley about the same time as the darkness. We’d no sooner parked up than Sniffles ran and hid under the car. The fox was back now unchecked by a local dog and had to be chased off twice before Sniffles could get into the house.

A house that was leaking, a slow steady drip in the kitchen ceiling. Inspecting the bathroom gave no indication where the water was coming from. It was a late night as we tried to figure out where the water was coming from while Helen rang the insurance company, and we tried to work out how to turn the water off. By the time the plumber turned up the next morning the leak had stopped. The plumber confidently told us it was coming from a gap in the sealant around the bath and shower.

Therefore after 36 hours of not using the shower it was a surprise to get up the following morning to find the drip had reappeared. Home Sense sent a second plumber out, who diagnosed the leak was actually coming from the toilet and running along boards to get to the point above the leak. He fixed that and its been drip free since then, and we’ve redone the sealant around the bath just in case.

New Year’s Eve saw us having a few quiet drinks and a takeaway curry, and then at a quarter to midnight we were out on the front to have a socially distanced gathering of neighbours. However, I suddenly had an urgent need for the toilet and was sat there as the new year came in and all the fireworks around the town started going off. It was quite literally a case of same s#&*, different year.

As a final insult from 2020, the vibrations of the very load Bluetooth speaker we’d acquired recently forced Helen’s iPad off its surface and onto a concrete step, smashing the screen.

Some fizz, some shots and a lot of chat saw it become a late night, and no sign of anyone surfacing until the afternoon of New Year’s Day. It also appeared that we had used every glass in the house, and most of the plates and cutlery as I washed up. We had takeaway pizza that night, which we ate from the box, so I was confused and dismayed as to how on earth so much washing up there was Saturday morning.

The decorations all came down and were boxed away, although as I type this and look up, I can see a remnant hung over a lamp that we missed.

The new year has come in and I’m not sure that I have any real resolutions. I had thought about trying to be a bit less miserable and more engaged at work, but that lasted about two minutes in to a half eight call this morning. I suppose I should try and do some more proper writing this year, go back and do the novels that are works in progress, rather than only ever writing blog posts.

Away from that, what I really want for 2021 is for Dave to finally get a new sponsor for their primetime programming and so we never have to see another of their three dreadfully repetitive Dacia adverts. They’ve changed their sponsor on all their other segments, but the ones for the main time we watch live TV are enough to drive anyone insane after at least two years of them. I can guarantee they have put me off of ever buying a Dacia car in my lifetime.

I’ve bought a month of Now TV’s Sky Sports pass, as it’s NFL playoff season, and there is no RedZone now. It does coincide with Spurs being in a cup semi-final tonight, so may brave watching a match under the footballing antichrist. However, despite playing opposition from the Championship, I fully expect us to do what we always do nowadays and lose a domestic cup semi-final. At least my mate Jimbo Up North would be happy.

Meanwhile, Sniffles is a confused cat. He doesn’t understand why there is no dog around, and he can’t quite get a grip on the fact his feeding bowl is now on the floor instead of up on the side. For the last two years he has looked up at the worktop mournfully pretending he can’t jump up there to get his food. Since the food has been on the floor he has on a daily basis managed to jump up to the side by himself. Today he managed it three times, each time to jump back down when he saw food going in his bowl on the floor. This is after I heard him whining outside. I opened to backdoor to let him in, but there was no sign of him, just a wail coming from under the cover of the garden furniture. He had gotten under it to keep himself dry, but hadn’t managed to work out how to get back out until I lifted a corner of it up and let some light in. He had been whining to come and sleep in our room, but now the dog has gone he’s always whining and pawing at Nathan’s door instead, despite the other two bedroom doors being open. Contrary little sod.

Another Four Day Weekend

Yes, we had managed to tag a day’s holiday to the Bank Holiday weekend again and to avoid confusion at least they had left this one as a Monday. But before four days off, Thursday had to be survived.

I started on Squirrel watch, one of my favourite, first thing in the morning as I come around, activities. I could see the squirrel on the end fence half a dozen gardens away to my left. Happily racing along the similar fence panels all the gardens share, only to come to an abrupt halt as it reaches our garden. It was already a foot lower than anyone else’s before the storms came. Now there is a gap where the gate was, as it lies on its side, only there to prevent Charlie from escaping, and the rest of the fence leans precariously against the shed. As the squirrel stops it turns its head and looks at our house as if to say “for crying out loud mend your bloody fence”. The pause is only temporary and the squirrel easily jumps the gap and carries on upon its journey. I laugh to myself, just wait until the little sod gets to the house three doors down to the right, the one with plastic orange netting as its fence. Let’s see how you go with that you judgemental little rodent.

I’m not sure what I was doing to be away from my screen for more than ten minutes, but the screensaver came up. One of the messages on it was about practising social distancing, and do you? Well I can say that I see plenty of people practising this social distancing malarkey, and I can state without a shadow of a doubt, that they need to practice it a hell of a lot more as none of them are any bleeding good at it.

I did the shopping Thursday evening, Sainsbury’s had a long queue, but it is so much saner in there than as Asda, a nice calm shopping trip all told, and only took an hour. However, when you buy a loaf of wholemeal bread, this isn’t exactly the kind of hole you are expecting in the bread.

Someone asked about the garden and whether I was green fingered. After stopping laughing I pointed out that the only way I was going to get green fingers was if I picked my nose.

Every time someone mentions the word “furlough” I can’t help but think of the word furlong instead. And then I think that wouldn’t be a bad thing to relate to social distancing. If everyone stayed a furlong away from everyone else it would be great. It would be amusing to try and watch people trying to work out exactly how far two hundred and twenty yards was though.

The back fence had been doing fine for a couple of months since the February storms. However with it being quite windy on Friday, they went again. In doing so it broke the restraining plank at the bottom, and then took to falling over every time someone breathed on it too heavily. After four times of propping it back up on Friday and Saturday morning it got to the point of sod it, just send Charlie out into the back garden with an armed guard to prevent him from escaping into the park.

Friday saw us take a picnic and get out of the parish for an afternoon. Full details are on the previous blog post

Saturday was a little bit changeable weather wise. The wind blew the fence over again, bright sunshine, thunder and lightning, rivers running down the street and ponds in the back garden, and then marble sized hailstones setting off car alarms up and down the street. All that in an hour as I welded myself to the sofa. We had a second attempt at one of these online quizzes hosted on zoom. But, as with the first attempt, we weren’t really impressed, and not sure we’ll be doing another one.

A nice relaxing start to Sunday was shattered; first by the neighbours hammering and sawing away at something (not our fence unfortunately), and then by a phone call from my mum. Not for anything important, only to ask for help with half a dozen crossword clues. Seriously, who rings someone up to ask them for answers to crossword clues at ten in the morning on a Sunday?

With it being a Bank Holiday weekend, what else is there to do apart from going to a garden centre, now that they’re open again. And not just one, not two, but three of the bloody places. The first had quite a queue snaking around the car park, which I waited in only to get into the shop to find they only had 8ft long arm thick poles, which weren’t really what I needed to prop the fence up. I came out to find Helen waiting in the car for me, which was a nice surprise, seeing as it was now turning ridiculously hot. We went to garden centre two, who had no wooden poles at all. Which meant it was off to location three, where we should have gone in the first place; Dove’s Barn always has what is needed in stock, and lots of random plants for Helen to pick up as well.

Despite the previous day’s flash floods the ground is still bulletproof, but there are six stakes hammered into the ground to prop the fence up, and it is now safe to let the dog back out unsupervised. We’ll see how long this lasts for.

Meanwhile the cat is being a P.I.T.A. Every time there needs to be a new pack of butter, the butter dish is washed up, and the new pack is placed by the side of the toaster still covered so we can use it until the butter dish is clean and dry. This is on the next part of work surface to where the cat has his bowl. But, he’s not interested in his cat food, oh no, as soon as our backs are turned, he’s there trying to open the wrapping to the butter to lick the hell out of it. Every single time. It wouldn’t be so bad if he ate the cat food, but he just eats the jelly and leaves the meat bits. We probably end up having to throw away more meat than he eats. We could give it to the doggy dustbin Charlie, but it doesn’t necessarily agree with his stomach.

Speaking of the doggy dustbin, although he was done at an early age, Charlie still likes to have a good session. To prevent him ripping carpets up, and destroying pillows and cushions, we got him a massive teddy bear from one of the charity shops. It works a treat; he takes out all his urges on the teddy bear. He is on bear two, and to be fair, we’re not sure how he keeps getting the stuffing out of the bear, but all that is left is this. When the charity shops reopen, bear number three is the first thing on the shopping list.

On Monday I was only nipping out to take a few photos of some road signs. I thought I would go out whilst it was still in the morning, which would leave the rest of the day for relaxation. Of course, I got carried away. I ended up taking photos of forty-seven road signs across five different themes, three pubs and five churches over the course of three hours and eight miles of walking. Even my fat-bit got excited, damn near shaking my arm off to celebrate me walking ten thousand steps in a day for the first time since returning from the US. But, as I sorted the pictures out the following night I found I’d managed to miss some streets, despite ticking them off on the list I had, so I only had one complete set – artists.

And it was hot, which meant that three hours in the sun lead to a lobster faced Kev. We didn’t need to use the grill to do the halloumi; just put them on my forehead for twenty seconds and they were done. Then they were able to slide down my face and straight into my mouth. The after effects of the sun exposure meant that there was a role reversal in the house on Tuesday. Helen is in shorts and t-shirt, and I’m shivering despite being in jeans, t-shirt and hoodie, with the hood up.

Tuesday – eeurgh. It doesn’t matter how many days you have off, whether it is a standard two day weekend, a four day weekend, or three weeks, when you come back to work it feels like running into a brick wall as fast as you can. You bounce back, fall on the floor and feel broken. I logged on at 8:30 only to find I’d missed a meeting at 8:00 that was only requested on Friday. I refer back to previous blogs – sociopaths. Everywhere. By 11:14 I had officially lost the will to live and I’m sure I could hear my bed calling from five feet above where I sat looking distraught in front of my monitor. I’d love to be able to go a single work day without having to deal with some kind of annual leave scheme / time account / quota drama. Just one day. Not much to ask for surely.

I’m not saying the day got to me, but, when I went to go to nip up to the shop, I went into the cupboard to get myself a bag. We have a bag of bags hanging on the back of the cupboard door. I put my hand in the bag and pulled something out and went to leave the house. Only to realise I was holding a coat hanger. I’d gone into the wrong bag hanging on the back of the door. Attempt two was more successful.

Wednesday morning I was rudely awakened at Jumbo Jet time (7:47) by the sound of a chainsaw in the park at the back of the house. I calmed down once I realised it was the council trimming the hedges around the kids play area, and not some random lunatic wrecking what is left of the fence.