Marley & Me

My husband and I went to see Marley and Me over the weekend. I’ve read the book and the film isn’t too bad a representation of it – very entertaining. But everyone knows what happens to all great dogs in the end. It was only after having spent 20 mins in the ladies clearing my face up from crying so much that I realised, for the first time, I wasn’t the only one crying at the end of a film.

We had the dogs sleeping in our room that night.

Snoozefest

Spring is here! Birds are singing, sun is shining and everyone is frickin’ well sleeping! Don’t they know hibernating is NOT during springtime?!?

Feline Misdemeanours

Fred has always had a strict daily routine…sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, sleep, drink, sleep …you get the picture. But today for some reason he has had ants in pants – I suspect this was something to do with the Cat In The Kitchen episode. He spent about 20 minutes up, down and around me whilst I’ve been trying to work. He’s been furtive around the furniture and creeping round corners. He seemed unusually alert today with a passing interest in the fireplace. Fine, I thought, I’m too busy to be watching your every move.

Big mistake.

It would be remiss of me not to point out at this stage that the weather has been AWFUL today. You know, lots of wind and rain and misery. Our house being a jaunty wee miner’s cottage takes this kind of elemental beating with as little grace as possible, moaning and groaning and griping, creaking and rattling and generally making the kind of melodramatic fuss normally associated with a natural disaster. The fireplace in particular does a fabulous impression of a chimney pot coming loose and rattling about like it’s about to come hurtling down the shaft.

It would also be remiss not to point out that our sofa is a pale shade of grey. (Remiss in the sense of you, the reader, not fully grasping the implications of the next five minutes of Fred’s activity without this little piece of info)

Well there I was, creating a 2D representation of fabulous architecture, when I heard the scrabble of claws and the slightly hollow tin sound of knocked over candles followed shortly by the frantic flurry associated with a cat scarpering because he KNOWS he’s in deep sh*t.

I ran into the living room to hurl abuse at Smudge (it is always Smudge) to see Fred covered in soot, cowering under the sofa. Then I noticed the sofa. My nice, pale grey sofa now sporting the kind of pattern only seen on pet blankets, courtesy of Fred and his sooty paws.

I was not impressed and I continue to be unimpressed since, now that Fred is covered in splotches of grey much like Smudge, I am having difficulty telling them apart.

Needless to say, Smudge thinks this is brilliant.

Cat In The Kitchen

I thought this particular story would be a good one to kick off with. It occurred just two nights ago and involves all members of The Menagerie (well, bar Frog) including myself and my husband.

My husband and I had settled into a cosy evening with a DVD (“Changeling” very good, dissatisfying ending – yes, yes, I know it’s based on a true story). The dogs were at our feet and the cats on our laps and everyone was having a lovely lazy time…until something very strange happened.

The cat flap in the kitchen rattled.

This is not unusual in a house where cats live but seeing as the resident cats were actually on our laps, this was highly unusual. Freddie and Smudge seemed to concur with this as they both sprang up, trying to look mean and rumbling growls in their throats ( which I might add was nothing short of pathetic when it came to Freddie cos he growls like a kitten). Then they both shot off into the kitchen shortly followed by myself and my husband.

There in the kitchen, proud as you like, was a big collarless tabby, tucking in to the boys’ bowl of biscuit like it owned the place. Well, Smudge and Freddie did the only things such self respecting housecats would do…Freddie fired himself out his own cat flap like a bat out of hell whilst Smudge did a sideways dance for the tabby’s entertainment.

Obviously as the official house owners we were not going to dance around the subject and promptly engaged in the most embarrassing attempt at shooing the cat out of our house as we could muster - which generally involved the crazy creature hissing and spitting at us, doing Spiderman impressions up our doorframes and curtains and crapping all over the place as we chased its psycho cat butt out of our territory. It point blank REFUSED to go out the cat flap, despite my own personal encouraging tactic of using the sweeping brush to try and push it.

When we had reached an impasse and the smell of cat poo was beginning to grate on my nerves, I turned to my husband and said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Get the dogs in hon!”

He let our two big black boxer crosses in and they ran straight up to that cat and….sniffed it. Oh yes, and wagged their tails a little. Brilliant.

An hour later, with the cat poo cleaned up and the kitchen put to rights again, I approached the cat. I had taped oven gloves to my hands in preparation for the scratch-fest I would no doubt be subjected to when I lifted this tabby coated ball of hell’s worst. I approached it slowly, the cat watching me with hooded eyes and flicking tail. I reached out slowly to grab it when, completely of its own accord, Psycho Cat stood up, stretched, then slunk out the cat flap...


Fabulous.

Into The Unknown

You’ll forgive me for my stuttering start at this…I am a blogging newbie so be gentle! I have decided to embark on some light banter about the menagerie I keep squashed into a little two bedroom miner’s cottage in Waterside by Kirkintilloch in Scotland. Specifically, this consists of two cats, two dogs and a visiting frog. There was a third cat but sadly he moved to live with his Nanny Jan in Edinburgh (my mother-in-law) due to a bit of a contretemps with the neighbours…but I’ll talk about that another time.

Let me introduce the gang... :-)

Smudge

Make no mistake, this cat is a mischievous nightmare! He is ballsy, arrogant, fearless and talks back. No amount of shooing with the brush or clapping hands or water-pistol action shakes this guy’s cool. I have driven my car right up to him as he lounges in the middle of the drive, perfectly still, flicking his tail and looking at me through the windscreen as if to say, “What? You want me to move?!”

Freddie

Freddie is the antithesis to Smudge. He’s ridiculously timid. The closest thing Freddie gets to a strut around his territory is a dash out the cat flap to the nearest bush for a moment’s quality time with the newspaper (if you get my drift – we don’t do kitty litter unless there are fireworks). He’s the kind of cat that will curl on your lap 23 out of 24 hours a day, he loves a tummy rub and mews like a girl. But he’s pretty and knows how to use it.

Molly

Molly is a two year old golden lab / boxer cross…obvious, eh? Black as the ace of spades, this girl thinks she’s a border collie. She’s as manic as the boxer her dad was but as lovable as her golden lab mum. She’s a smart cookie and lets you know when it’s time for the toilet and when it’s time for bed. There is nothing this girl likes more than to be out and about, preferably teaching the local rabbits and deer a lesson in herding etiquette.

Jess

If Molly thinks she’s a border collie, her littermate Jess thinks she’s a couch potato. If Jess could spend her day on the sofa with a bowl of pedigree chum’s finest and the remote control, she would convince herself that she’d just died and gone to heaven. Jess is the kind of dog who looks like she needs a coffee before her morning walk. When Molly is practically bouncing off the ceiling, Jess leans sleepily against the door frame and yawns as if to say, “Are you kidding me? It’s 6am!!”

Frog

Frog is an irregular visitor to our front doorstep. I’m not sure whether he has a confused version of the fairy tale but he seems to enjoy popping around for my girls’ kisses. (why Jess likes to give him a sniff and a lick I have no idea…) The picture doesn’t do him justice…he’s massive.

All the posts to follow will be based on the thrills, spills, trials, tribulations and general misdemeanors of this unruly pack of characters. I already have several stories to tell but seeing as it has taken me an unforgivable amount of time to upload my first post, I will leave them for now...

...but not for too long!