370 days ago
We didn’t buy Big Bear, pictured below. He was given to us by someone looking after the hiuse one summer. We just came home to find him sitting at the kitchen table with some pots of porridge in front of him. These days he sleeps in the same room as Joshua and Jaya but the Mrs and myself have been quite keen to give him to a charity shop. But now he has been saved.
969 days ago
Suffice to say, as the doctor outlined exactly what the problem was this afternoon and then what the solution would be I felt really very uncomfortable indeed. Luckily…
972 days ago
That is to say allowing folks to swap pictures of cats. In this case it is Sian who has taken to sleeping in the cot with baby Jaya. The baby is now far larger than the cat who shows real maternal concern when Jaya starts to cry. I know, I await emails with alarming warnings about “elf ‘n ‘safety issues”
1168 days ago
That is to say that they are seizing control of the possessions of baby Jayarani. Today Quincey had taken her high chair as his own while Sian goes for her baby rocker as you can see below. To be fair, when Jayarani cries, Quincey is often the first to rush to her to nuzzle up to her with his mousey breath and comfort her.
1182 days ago
I cannot think what possessed a couple of swallows to nest under the eves of the porch. Both cats lie in wait and just now and again as one of the parents or, now flying offspring, swoop in to land, a feline leaps and takes one down. The porch is next to the kitchen where I am typing and have just heard and witnessed another kill for Quincey, the larger male cat. The noise of death and dying was not pleasant.
1215 days ago
Not Byron and Cam Hobhouse in Zitsa but cats Sian and Quincey back in Wales and snapped by a kind friend who went round to talk to them. No doubt someone in Holt will be dobbing them in on the village facebook group for non mask wearing and a failure to social distance. These cats are what i miss most about life back in Blighty which tells you a lot about how Airstrip One appears from abroad right now.
1344 days ago
This is a cupboard in the largest bedroom at the Welsh Hovel. The original fireplace to its right was covered up when we arrived but is now rediscovered. And what is behind that cupboard was at one time a window. But then along came Good King Billy and the Window Tax of 1696. So you can still see the window on the outside but it is bricked up and has been for 325 years. On the inside, there is thus a window-sized cupboard, an ideal place for a cat.
1401 days ago
The first call was mid-morning. On that occasion it was two young WPCs. If one was a filthy old man with a thing about uniforms it would have been a bit of a treat but my initial concern was that someone had read my writings about my crime family flouting daft lockdown laws on my birthday and snitched. Oh no. It was about the floods – the two young ladies just asked if there was anything they could do for me. Well since you mention it officers…
1415 days ago
Following on from the Life Imitates arts series at Christmas, the Mrs has tidied away all cardboard boxes, plastic bags and workers’ dust sheets, leaving sleeping spaces for our Northern cats, Sian and Quincey, severely restricted. But these Scousers are a resourceful lot…
1416 days ago
It was January 5 and a notice came up on Facebook. And so I remembered. It would have been the 20th Birthday of my morbidly obese three-legged cat Oakley. His Facebook page where devotees could watch him in action is still live even if he is not.
1425 days ago
Heck, Sian starred on Panorama so I know my two scouser rescue cats have a big fan club. So one last treat for the fans, following my Life Imitates art series this Christmas. The Mrs bought another duck for our second Christmas which will be shared with the younger generation today.
1427 days ago
So the Mrs thought about getting the cats a basket but I insisted that that was for soft Southerners and that our Northern cats, the scousers Quincey and Sian, needed and wanted only a cardboard box each as they said, in true Monty Python fashion: “when we were young we were poor but we were happy”. So she took away a cardboard box.
1429 days ago
So the Mrs thought about getting the cats a basket but I insisted that that was for soft Southerners and that our Northern cats, the scousers Quincey and Sian, needed and wanted only a cardboard box each as they said “when we were young we were poor but we were happy”. So she took away a cardboard box.
1433 days ago
We started this tale with my wife suggesting that we buy a cat basket for Sian & Quincey our rescue cats from the grim North, that is to say Liverpool. “Oh no” I objected on their behalf, “cat baskets are for soft southerners, when we were young we lived in cardboard boxes”. I put two out and the cats dreamed of sleeping in cardboard boxes. “In the old days in the North we were poor but we were happy” they said, as in the Monty Python sketch.
1435 days ago
Yesterday I explained to you the battle of the cardboard boxes here at the Welsh Hovel. I had put two out in the living room for the cats to sleep in. The Mrs insisted that the cats deserved a proper cat basket. I insisted that as fully fledged Northerners (from Liverpool), they thought cat baskets were for soft southern cats and, as per the famous Monty Python sketch, they were lucky if they had a cardboard box.
1435 days ago
On the lane down to the Welsh Hovel at the edge of what was once known as the jungle and will one day be a soccer pitch sized vegetable garden sits a holly tree. In the autumn it was full of red berries but I was resigned to the birds eating the lot.
1436 days ago
The Mrs thinks that when boxes are emptied of Christmas presents, they should be thrown away or just plausibly used for lighting the woodburning stove. Not that she has done that once. But the cats and I know what boxes are really for.
1520 days ago
I lie of course. How could I inflict such pain on Sian and Quincey (the two rescue cats who boss this house)? However, Oscar (top) and Winston (bottom) are daily visitors at the hovel. They live about 150 yards upstream and seem to escape, go for a swim in the river, and come and visit me once a day. The owners are terribly apologetic and say they are building a bigger fence but I rather hope they don’t as these are wonderful dogs and I enjoy their visit. And it is not as if my cats mind. Should they meet, Quincey arches his back and hisses and the dogs retreat pronto.
1555 days ago
Thanks to Google search engines this website will have a few new readers. Sorry you dirty bastards, I fear you may be disappointed by what follows. For starters the pussy below is English.
1828 days ago
The Mrs will almost certainly vote Labour as she always does, happy in the knowledge that a victory for Jeremy Corbyn will mean an immediate 5% pay rise for here and all other underpaid and overworked sociology lecturers. I have pointed out that after five years of following Venezuala style economic policies she will be eating our cats but that is one good reason not to vote Labour. Quincy and Sian are, out of pure self interest, rooting for Boris. There are numerous freasons not to vote Labour contained in its extremist and economically illiterate manifesto, but the over-riding reason why no-one with any conscience can risk Labour winning is anti-semitism.
1954 days ago
Sian, short tail female, is on top of Quincey (long tail, male). Amazingly they seem happy to sleep with their bodies so contorted in the, as yet unrenovated, dining room at the Welsh Hovel where I work at my laptop each day, when not sanding floors or hacking away at the jungle which will, one day, be an orchard or a vegetable garden.
2000 days ago
9 AM Wrexham, vets, booster jabs for cats Sian & Quincey. 7.45 AM Welsh Hovel, the Mrs lets Quincey escape from the confinement I had arranged prior to our trip to the cat doctor. Cue a few cross words from me and frantic searching for an errant cat.
2030 days ago
Eight days ago, two four year old rescue cats, Sian and Quincey arrived at our new house, the Welsh hovel. On Monday night it emerged that someone who shall not be embarrassed but is currently attending a sociology conference in Germany, had not closed an internal door properly. Both cats had escaped from the kitchen dining area which is entered via a porch and the main door to the house.
2037 days ago
Since the sad demise of my once morbidly obese three legged cat Oakley late last summer, my two year old son Joshua has not stopped talking about his friend who used to sleep by his cot, keeping watch every night. Our old house in Bristol is “Oakley’s House” and while you and I know that the old boy lies at rest next to the body of Kitosh and across the yard from that of his long time companion Tara who is under the rhubarb, Joshua and his mother and I have agreed that the three legged one has “gone to the jungle” where he is happy. But there is a gap in all of our lives anmd so yesterday we told Joshua we had a treat.
