Birthday Boy

It was Oreo's first birthday yesterday, time passes so quickly, it is hard to believe that the timid little kitten has morphed into a great big cat who seems to think that the world revolves around him. The picture shows him sitting in the bathroom sink, he is not about to take a bath (he hates getting wet) he was moth hunting! He didn't have a birthday cake, he likes cake, in fact he likes every kind of food imaginable, but we spoiled him with one of his favourite treats, a crab stick. We don't know when Dave's birthday is so we will have to celebrate his 'finding day' instead. He will not care as long as he has plenty to eat, one day is much like another to him. For a cat with a serious shortage of teeth he does remarkably well and he can eat just as quickly as Oreo!

I thought it was the longest day yesterday, but apparently due complicating factors such as leap year it was actually the previous day. It always makes me feel a little bit sad, I love the long days and light evenings and now it will be a gradual decline towards winter. I think May and June are my favourite months. The Mock Orange (Philadelphus) is in flower in my front garden, it is one of my favourites and it really cheers me up. I love roses too and we have some lovely roses near the front door, they seem to thrive on neglect but as far as I am concerned that makes them even more special.

Peace and Quiet - or perhaps not!

I had loads of work to do yesterday, it involved checking information and dealing with unfamiliar subjects so I needed peace and quiet to get on with it. As you can imagine I find it impossible to get much work done when Robbie is around because he is very distracting. Even when he is trying to be good he can't last more than ten minutes without one of his famous 'did you know .......' monologues. Even when he is not talking to me he talks to himself and that is just as distracting. Yesterday Robbie was safely despatched to work and Sam and Laura had been delivered to school so I hoped for a nice quiet morning to get on with my work but thanks to Oreo (our cat) it turned into the most chaotic sort of day.

Oreo is less than a year old and still quite playful, but usually he doesn't cause too much disruption. I had just settled in front of my computer when there was a clatter in the hall and I discovered a rather sheepish Oreo wearing a new stile in feline bridal attire - my net curtain from the hall window! Liberated from his apparel he scampered up stairs while I replaced the curtain. I settled back to my work, but Oreo, who had been doing a spot of bird watching from the hall window had found a better vantage point at the window at the top of the stairs. It gave him a brilliant view of the flat roof of the utility room and the little puddle where the starlings like to take a bath. Unfortunately for Oreo it involved perching on top of a large plant pot containing an equally large christmas cactus, which I would imagine proved rather a ticklish problem. Before many minutes had passed we had a feline Humpty Dumpty, Oreo and the plant came tumbling down making a horrible mess and ruining a pile of clean laundry that was waiting to be put away.

Finally I settled back to work, and Oreo kept a low profile. He amused himself by stalking his favourite quarry - elastic hair bands! It is comical to watch him chasing and sliding on the laminate floor and such an insignificant little thing can hold his attention for ages. After that he and Dave (the other cat) played a very energetic game of chase and managed to sound like a whole heard of elephants racing up and down the stairs. Eventually peace reigned when they both found a patch of sunshine on the hall carpet, the ideal spot for a cat nap. Oreo was soon up and about again, he decided to investigate the hearth and chimney, but finding that he couldn't get up the chimney he examined the vase standing on the hearth instead. The inevitable happened, his head got stuck and a vase with a cat in it rushed around the lounge in a panic, amazingly both survived unscathed. Even more amazingly I managed to finish all my work.

Leaving Home? 29.11.07

Oreo went to visit the vet this morning for his check up to ensure that he is in good health and that the bits that he is soon to part with are properly developed. He was not amused at having his nether region poked and prodded, but when the vet took his temperature I thought his eyes were going to pop out. He was rather subdued on the way home, but as soon as I mentioned food his traumatic morning was suddenly forgotten. After his meal he wandered off to curl up with a good book, judging by the title he may be planning to leave home. The deed is scheduled for next Thursday, perhaps he understood that there was worse to come but I suspect it was the word starve that troubled him most!

Bad Planning 28.11.07

Well, once again it seems I can't win! Sam occasionally tells me off for embarrassing him by writing about him on the blog, but Emily was grumbling at the weekend because I haven't written about her for ages! Hopefully today's entry will put that right.

Emily seems to have settled into university life fairly happily, she is working very hard and always seems to have a deadline to meet. Her English course demands a lot of reading, she has always been an avid reader but I think she finds it hard to muster much enthusiasm about one or two of the set books. When I saw her at the weekend she was struggling with 'Mrs Dalloway' and she gave me a very complicated explanation about the style of writing and why she finds it hard to get into. It made me very grateful that I am free to read whatever I like these days. I'm a bit like Sam in some ways because I often prefer to read non fiction books, but I enjoy crime fiction of various kinds, Kathy Reichs is my favourite these days.

Emily is doing French as her second subject, and that requires a lot of reading too. Some of the French reading material looks really grim, but I'm probably being unfair, I hated French when I was at school but it was a compulsory subject up to 'O' Level so I just had to grin and bear it. I don't know where Emily got her flair for languages from, but it certainly wasn't me!

We are lucky because we see Emily most weekends. I think she misses Oreo more than the rest of us, but it is always nice to see her and to catch up with her news. On the subject of missing things, Oreo will be missing his manhood very soon, I rang the vet today to make an appointment for the 'deed to be done'. He will be six months old on 20th December but it doesn't seem long since he first came to live with us, he was such a cute little kitten. 20th December is also Sam's birthday (a bit of bad planning on my part!) and he will be a teenager at last. He has been telling me that he is almost a teenager for so long that is has almost become his theme tune. I have always felt sorry for Sam because his birthday and Christmas are so close together, but we try to make it special for him. I feel a bit sorry for myself too, because I have 5 family birthdays very close to Christmas, including Sam's and Emily's, it is a very expensive time of year!

Neighbourhood Watch 17.10.07

I couldn't resist posting these pictures of Oreo taking his turn on the neighbourhood watch rota!

Nose, Rudolph, Christmas, 12.10.07

The man from Tesco delivered the 'European Cat Food Mountain' yesterday and I now have a huge pile of boxes and an ever hungry cat in the kitchen. The one factor that Robbie missed was that Oreo seems to see it as a challenge, he is quite certain he could manage to eat it all in one day, so he is constantly meowing to ask us to open it! If that cat was human he would probably eat even more than Robbie! Oreo has set up his own branch of Neighbourhood Watch. He spends a large part of each day perched on the back of the sofa looking out of the window to make sure that nobody walks on his pavement without his permission.

Robbie sent me a really random email yesterday, it contained all sorts of fascinating (and useless) facts including that elephants cannot jump, polar bears are all left handed, a duck's quack has no echo, a cockroach can live for 9 days without it's head, a starfish has no brain, the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue and a pig's orgasm lasts for thirty minutes. I can easily be convinced that the tongue is the strongest muscle (especially in Robbie's case). I had always thought the heart was the strongest muscle but perhaps that is a collection of muscles. I suspect all these 'facts' were written by a man, after all can you imagine a woman chopping of the head of a cockroach to see how long it survives? As for the pig's orgasm, did anyone actually ask the sow? There again if she has to put up with a dozen or more piglets she ought to get some pleasure out of the deal! Left handed polar bears, whatever did they observe polar bears doing to work that one out!

I made sure that Robbie got to bed safely last night, but I regretted my effort when he decided to read to me from NME, I don't like music (certainly not the weird stuff he likes) and at almost 1am I was even less interested! Just occasionally I wish Robbie was a little more 'normal'.

Shopaholic. 10.10.07

We certainly have an exciting life! This evening was a little more tranquil than yesterday and Robbie had time to show me the full glory of his new bag. He brought it into the lounge to show me the concealed handle and the various height positions, he then demonstrated how easily it can be carried with the shoulder strap, but the best was yet to come. He plunged the room into darkness to demonstrate the light that is clipped to the inside of the bag, and thanks to a retractable lead the light can be directed into any of the many pockets. Finally he showed me the drink holder and as always he provided intricate details. I was starting to think that there is only so much enthusiasm that one person (even Robbie) can express about a briefcase without attracting unwanted attention from men in white coats! I was wrong, when he suddenly discovered a concealed pencil case in the bag, I thought he was going to burst with excitement. I shouldn't moan, at least he seems to have accepted the need for a briefcase on wheels.

I hardly had time to recover from all that excitement before the main entertainment of the evening began. I told Robbie about a BOGOF offer on cat food at Tesco and I had also found a code to get £10 off the order for home delivery. Robbie loves to shop, even for cat food and we are now expecting a delivery of 20 boxes of Oreo's favourite food between 9pm and 11pm tomorrow night! I was coping well up to that point, and even joked about him needing to build an extension, but when he announced that he intended to order another 20 boxes tomorrow I started to panic. After the first order Oreo will have 160 pouches of food, we couldn't possibly store any more! I don't think there can possibly be anyone else quite like Robbie

Cat in the Box 05.10.07

Sam bought some new school shoes yesterday and as soon as Oreo found the box he claimed it as his new den. I couldn't resist taking a few photos, he looked so cute.

A Bundle of Energy 03.10.07

Oreo was a pain yesterday evening, I'm sure a monkey would be easier to cope with than a naughty kitten. He still seemed to have a grudge against the iron and he managed to jump up at the bit of flex visible over the work top, he caught it and pulled the iron down almost on top of him. He survived unscathed, but smelling a little sweeter as he was sprinkled with ironing water as the iron fell. The iron wasn't so lucky, it is a write off!

Having fought the iron and won he stalked off in search of more mischief. He must be missing Emily because he had obviously sneaked up to her room and he crept back into the lounge with his prey. It was grey and about the size of a hamster, I was startled at first, but when he started to play with it I realised it was a small Eeyore soft toy from Emily's vast Eeyore collection. Laura took it away from him and he scampered off in disgust to return minutes later with more treasure, the tail of a larger Eeyore. I will not dwell on the reasons why Eeyore has a detachable tail! More stern words from Laura and he left the room minus the tail but looking defiant. When he returned he was carrying a pink fluffy bear, clearly he thought this was a good game, but it was easily solved -we shut Emily's door. Finally he was exhausted by all this activity and he settled down for a rest.

Sweet and Innocent! 02.10.07

Emily left the following message about her first couple of days at university.

I registered with my department today and my supplementary subject got sorted as well so :D i am doing french as long as all is well. i got my safety bus pass today, and i have signed up for the english society and the concert band - it's one of those things where you go along and see if you like it and then join so :) i might need my flute though in this case! I've ordered my bus pass and just need to pick it up on friday. it's okay in the meantime though because the bus day saver is only three pounds - i used it today! :) i love you all and miss youuuuu!!! i hope my baby oreo is okay too!

Oreo is ok, but he nearly drove me mad earlier on. He had a very energetic few hours and when he had given up on tormenting the dog he started on me. He ran up my leg to steal my breakfast, kept stealing the washing as I sorted it into different loads, jumped right into the kitchen swing bin and kept hanging on to the iron lead while I was ironing. In the end I shut him out of the room and he kept jumping up at the door handle trying to get back in. He is a determined little devil. Finally he settled down and by the time I took these photos he look all sweet and innocent!

Being Followed 25.09.2007

Oreo has been having problems with his tail today, he has chased it, caught it and even tried to kill it, but it managed to get away every time and it just keeps on following him! He decided he was getting bored with kitten sized crunchies so he decided to tackle a whole ginger nut biscuit - watch out Robbie, you have competition. I hope you like the photos.

Things That Go Bump in the Night 25.09.2007

I awoke in the early hours of the morning to hear strange slightly hollow bumping noises. I listened intently and was sure we must have intruders, the noise seemed to be coming from the vicinity of the stairs. 'Sleeping Beauty' was comatose so I wasn't going to get much help from him. I crept to the bedroom door and listened, I thought I was mistaken but the noise seemed to be coming from the bathroom at the top of the stairs. I couldn't hear voices or footsteps, just a random bumping and clattering. I decided to investigate, after all there is nothing in our bathroom to attract 'Burglar Bill'. I crept towards the bathroom, the door was open and the noise was definitely coming from inside. We always leave the light on so I looked for signs of movement or shadows and I saw nothing. Finally I summoned up the courage to walk into the bathroom. I found the kitten bounding around in the bath chasing a moth! Having unmasked the 'intruder' I liberated the moth and chased the kitten back downstairs to his bed. I returned to bed where Robbie was still sleeping soundly completely oblivious of the 'drama'.

Saying the Wrong Thing 12.09.07

You may be wondering how our kitten Oreo is getting on. I know it is a stupid name but the children insist on keeping the name and if Robbie had a say in it he would probably want to name him Royal Scots Grey after his favourite train!! Poor little thing. I have started to call he kitten Archie because he spent his first few days arching his back and spitting at Megan (the dog) whenever she got too close. Meg has stopped trying to round him up and only shows interest in him at mealtimes when she does her best to eat his food as well as her own, she also seems to find that water from the cat's water bowl tastes much better! I fell over the kitten yesterday and I am covered in bruises as it was a confined space and I fell on some shopping bags containing large books - the kitten is fine.

Robbie is trying very hard to stay in my good books. He fell into a 'heffalump trap' at the weekend, we were discussing my birthday which looms large on the horizon and I said that he had married an old woman - he 'accidentally' agreed with me! I wasn't overjoyed.

The phone worked for less than 12 hours and it has now failed again. I can't write any more about it due to the boundaries of good taste!

Meet Oreo 05.09.07

Meet the newest member of the family, he arrived today - much to Meg's disgust. He is called Oreo (which the children tell me is a black and white cookie) he already had his name before we got him, needless to say he is black and white. He is 12 weeks old and is fairly laid back until he sees Meg, then he swears and arches his back. Robbie didn't want him, he is worried that we will all love the cat more than him! Actually he is brilliant with animals and I am sure he will love the kitten as much as everyone else does.