stock

We only went to Perth for 36 hours but for some reason our various vegetables in the fridge let themselves go as a consequence and we came back to slimy asparagus and yellow broccoli. So I am making stock with the addition of potatoes with the shoots cut off and some of that massively expensive garlic. When I put it in the pot I thought, god, I might just as easily go out and spoon crap out of the compost bin, but in fact it has been cooking gaily away for an hour or so now and it smells excellent.

Yesterday was overheated but today is a nice cool (if still a bit muggy) day and I think it will be OK. As the dogs are outside I am the focus of attention by cats. Asha is sitting to my right looking perturbedly at Bela who is approaching me from the left. Bela is like a dinosaur, huge and impractical, and when he sits on the floor it's like a small 4WD has been left there. Asha is a trifle overweight due to the fact that she sleeps almost the entire day well into the night, usually in the bed like some kind of hypochondriac duchess, but her nervousness has stopped her from descending entirely into obesity. Asha sees herself as part of a pack of three: Mia, me and Bela. Anyone else is an enemy. Bela has no time for her at all, though they will sometimes sniff each other's faces, but it is as likely to end in him cuffing her with his claws as anything else. She also doesn't really trust her humans either, and considers anything they do to be potentially life-threatening and vicious, so she is always running away, and in that really irritating way of getting underfoot while doing it.

I am going to take Charlie and Barry on a walk to Glenroy, to take a swag of books back to the library there. That will be my main activity of the day I feel.

menageremainder

Every thousand years two beagles and a small, neurotic grey cat line up in perfect formation. This was that moment.

be grateful

While listening to one of the funniest Just a Minutes for a long time I put an eraser on Asha's back three or four times with comic responses from her each time - confusion, unable to locate it visually, then inability to realise that gravity would rid her of the burden if she only tipped a little way one way or the other. The payoff was she finally grabbed it between bared teeth and dropped it on the floor. Just be grateful I did not video this and put it on YouTube and get 7 000 000 hits.

cats past

In my illness I had a long conversation with Asha about previous cats I have owned or part-owned. There have been about twelve. Almost none of them lived to old age under my custodianship, though since about half of them disappeared (I got used to this as a child) I can't say for sure that they did not live long lives. I have had about 12 cats, starting with Patch who was my mother's cat when I was born, up till the present Bela and Asha, yan and yin or more like, Satan and a nice cat. I was a cat person until I became a dog person about 15 years ago. Sorry cats. No wonder Asha wanted to escape my blabbing.

i can haz life of turgid monotony? And pancake?

Cu-ute! Asha has a hardline routine these days. She hides in the back part of the house most of the time, of course, and does not even necessarily emerge from wherever it is she is cowering when Mia or I show up. Presumably she meditates in the way cats do (they seemingly find it easy to completely empty their minds). She sleeps most of the daytime and then in the evening when the dogs come in, she's hiding from the dogs. However like me the morning is her best time. She particularly likes being hand fed scraps eg bits of breakfast pancake as seen here (she won't eat this stuff off the floor for some reason). She also lists as her likes: climbing the curtains, grabbing things off the walls, and being bitten on the lower back by that shit Bela.

scary picture

1990s Metallica video scary, anyway.

in bed together

terrible picture of new cat

Well, the new cat in the house is a hit with everyone except Bela, who just hisses at her. She is unbelievably friendly and keen to spend time with people, and she is a very attractive personality as well as looking rather nice too. Pictures of course do not do her justice, but a kitten is hard to photograph at the best of times, which I suppose is why most of the posed ones in cutesy photos are actually stuffed.

Her name is either Asha or Asher, depending on whether it's spelt the first or second way.

My cold has taken up permanent residence in me and refuses to go. I tried to say I choose what diseases I harbour and the circumstances in which they come but apparently I have many undefended boundaries. Bummer.