One cat just leads to another - Ernest Hemingway

According to my husband I have some sort of 'weird magnet' that makes me an interesting target for assorted 'odd bods'. He does have a point even when I visit new places I seem to attract the 'square pegs' of this world. Last autumn I visited the Severn Valley Railway for the first time, as I stood in Kidderminster  Station chatting to Robbie a little man (he was considerably shorter than me) entered the station area from the platform and marched straight up to me, shook my hand and launched in to a long explanation of why steam trains are better than diesels. Suddenly he stopped talking about trains, informed me that he had important things to do and marched off in the direction of the refreshment room. Robbie thought it was very amusing that the man singled me out when he had a whole crowd of people to choose from. 


I had a similar odd experience earlier this week. I gave my daughter a lift to work, on the other side of town. Her office is located in an area that was once a village but it got swallowed up by the town many years ago. I dropped her off, turned the car around and I was just about to pull away when a middle aged man approached the car and knocked on my window. He didn't look like a mad axe man so I opened the window a little and he asked me if I would like to take him to town. I was rather shocked, I am not in the habit of picking up strange men especially before 9am! I told him that I was not going to town, he said "never mind, I didn't really want to go to town anyway". It may not be a village any more but clearly they have at least one contender for the position of village idiot! 


I don't know why I have such a well developed 'weird magnet' perhaps it is because I find people interesting. A friendly smile costs nothing and makes everyone feel better, very often you find that people who seem a bit odd at first are very interesting when you get to know them. The trouble is I seem to attract the waifs and strays of the animal kingdom too. Looking back through the blog I am reminded that we have had a parade of uninvited guests over the years. A toad once came through the cat flap to visit us. On two separate occasions birds have fallen down the chimney - and lived to tell the tale because I went to to considerable trouble to rescue them. One was a collared dove and the other was a huge and rather stupid pigeon. Then there was Dave the cat, he turned up ill and exhausted and set up home in one of our recycling boxes - he is still here! Now there is 'Bernard' the cat who kept coming in and hiding in the utility room, she is still here too.


The problem is that I don't have infinite resources. When Dave found us a few years ago we were strictly a one cat family, but he was so poorly and so much in need of someone to care about him that before I knew what had happened we had become a two cat family. I had no idea how much time effort and money it would take to restore him to health. He is now very much part of the family, in fact he thinks that he runs the house. He and Oreo are good friends and we love them, but they are expensive to to maintain and looking after them is time consuming. Bernard is really sweet and she is becoming less timid but we really can't cope with a third cat. I can't turn her out and all my efforts to find her original owner have proved fruitless, so we really have to find a new home for her.
According to the vet she is about 3 and in good health. She is very clean, we haven't had a single accident since she moved in. She is timid but she enjoys attention, she just needs gain trust in the people around her. She is scared of other cats and she tends to hiss if they go too near her, but she is not vicious, she just keeps out of their way. Please contact me if you know anyone who can offer her a loving home.

Magnetic Attraction

Tuesday mornings are never wonderful, there is still too much of the week left, but this week Tuesday started badly and got worse. Sam reluctantly got up and got ready for school, he had the television watching Everybody Loves Raymond, I don't love Raymond, he gets on my nerves so I didn't look at the television, I was busy getting on with my usual morning routine. When I finally glanced at the television I saw a broad green line running right across the screen. Sam crumbled under interrogation and admitted that he had rolled a large magnetic ball baring across the screen. When asked why he said it just sort of happened when he was wondering if the ball would make a narrow line or a broad one! This is not his first encounter with television screens and magnets and I was seriously annoyed, but my response was nothing in comparison to Robbie's - it was a case of light the blue touch paper and retreat! The television has recovered now but it may take Sam a little longer to forget the incident.

The rest of my day was marred by doing battle with an incompetent insurance company and an even more incompetent phone company, difficulty booking the car in for an MOT, unwelcome political canvassers and worse of all a moron claiming to be from Southern Electric who I found in my garden who addressed me as 'darling'. I assured him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't his darling and there was absolutely no chance in this world that I ever would be! He then tried to insist that I was one of their customer - I am not their customer and if that scruffy, gum chewing yob represents their idea of customer service, I never will be!

After a day like that I hope Wednesday will be better!

Magnet Man Survives - This Time! 14.02.07

I was relieved to see that the TV had recovered overnight and we no longer had multicolour patches all over the screen. Magnet man is not allowed to bring the magnet into the same room as the TV, but I am rather anxious about the potential damage to other equipment around the house.

We have had a number of disorganised mornings recently, so I was pleasantly surprised when Sam was ready for school on time looking fairly presentable. He headed off to the car and while I picked up my laptop and various other bits and pieces. As I opened the car door to put my bags in I glanced down and noticed Sam's feet. He was wearing full school uniform, passably clean shoes - and powder blue socks!! That boy must have a death wish, his school is very strict about uniform. I had to dash back into the house to get him some black socks so that he could change in the car. I'm not sure if I will ever understand how the male mind works!

Help He's Driving Me Mad!

Not a very good end to the day. Sam had one of the sort of mishaps that could only possibly happen to him. He 'accidentally' dragged a magnet across the TV screen and damaged the picture quality. Thankfully Robbie was out at the time so Sam survived! I found an interesting site with some thoughts about curing the problem. Are there any experts out there who can offer advice?

http://www.woil.ws/fixmonitor/

Robbie was in the car when I picked Emily up this evening. We saw a 'plain clothes' police car with blue lights in the front. That set Robbie off, out of the blue (so to speak!) he asked if I remembered Kojak. The simple answer was no, nothing more than the name and the lollipop anyway. Suddenly Robbie opened the car window and slammed his hand on the roof of the car, in an effort to recreate the sensation of Kojak slamming the blue light on top of the car at the start of a car chase. He repeated the process including the GBH to the car roof for Starsky and Hutch and the Sweeney. By this time my nerves were in tatters, but just to make completely sure that I would be a jibbering wreck he serenaded me with police siren noises in various American accents. If only I could afford an ejector seat!!