Why we called him Hobo

What with one thing and another it's been well over a year since I posted a cat update. The last time a photo of our lad appeared on here, we didn't even have him yet.

When he arrived we decided to call him Harley, but even as we were making that decision my little voice was insisting it would be better to wait awhile and let his name suggest itself to us without our help. And, as always with messages from the little voice, it was bang on. It turned out he wasn't a Harley at all.

Not half an hour after he arrived, he'd chewed through the telephone cable. Luckily it was the power supply rather than the signal cable, so easily mended (and subsequently wound around the base of a table lamp to keep it out of temptation's way). We had to keep him away from any similar damage - under desks where PC cables abound, and behind the TV being the main sources of "fun" - for at least six months before he was old enough to get bored with cables and seek out other entertainment.

But right from the off, he showed a definite preference for sitting in bins (when he wasn't pulling their contents out), and for sleeping in cardboard boxes, plastic carrier bags, or rolled up newspapers. So we had to call him Hobo.

Here he is in a favourite sleeping place - the cardboard box under my desk where we dump old envelopes, junk mail and other papers on their way to the recycling. Whenever it's less than half full he likes to curl up in there where it's safe, warm and fairly quiet. He's never far away from people and follows us from room to room even though he's not all that keen on being cuddled or stroked. Maybe he'll grow into that, but he's very sociable even so.

In the year we've had him he's learned to stop jumping on the fish, walking on my keyboard (he had a knack of hitting EXACTLY the right key combination to shut down my PC), or parading across the table while we're eating, but he'll still chance a quick strop on the bedhead if he thinks we're asleep, and since we moved into the new lounge he's been very keen to try and find a way up onto the mantelpiece. And he's grown too big to sleep comfortably on my lap :0(

He's still generally as cute as a cute thing though, so just this morning we've been talking about the possibility of getting him a companion. Watch this space.

100TWC - Day 99: Friendship

This post has a lot of tags. It started off with more but I blew Blogger's limit. I didn't even know there was a limit! See, friendship touches so many areas of my life that Blogger can't cope. I'm half expecting it to seize up in the middle of this post. Let's see how we get on...

With the last post of my 100-day (aka 100-theme) writing challenge in sight, friendship has been much on my mind. I've had some really nice comments and feedback on here, but what's been even better, and more surprising, is the feedback I've had in real life. Whenever I've met up with friends at least one of them has commented on each occasion how much they've been enjoying the writing. I've been enjoying it too, of course, in fact that's one of the things I'll be including in the "lessons learned" follow-up post I'll be writing over the weekend. But it's one thing to gain enjoyment from something yourself, and totally another thing to find out that you've been giving enjoyment to others. Writing can be a solitary experience (all writers say this, at least those who speak/write/email to me) with -- often -- not much in the way of validation or appreciation, so it's really cool to hear the opinions of readers, which posts they liked best and why, etc.

I'd also be really interested to hear which ones folk thought didn't work out so well. To see how this matches my own feelings, for one thing, but also because it's all part of the learning experience. Just doing this stuff has helped me improve enormously, but really good feedback that mentions the bad as well as the good, is also a huge help.

I appear to have drifted off topic somewhat, so to drag it back to friendship: I've been lucky. When I talk about the times we have with mates -- the trips to the Lakes, weekends away, meals out (and in) -- the single most common response is how unusual it is for a bunch of guys to have kept a communal friendship going for so long. I'm not sure how rare it is in the great scheme of things, but those who comment on it seem to think it's pretty rare. Much more common for women to have a "girly group of friends"; less so for guys to have a "blokey group", apparently.

I've known for many years that social groups depend on key individuals to hold them together. I had an old colleagues network at one time -- around two dozen people who all used to work together in the same part of the organisation until one dark day a reorganisation came along and scattered us all across the company. Some left for other jobs, some took the opportunity for early retirement, most split up into three or four units, separated by geography, department and skill set. For several years after the split, we would get together two or three times a year (Christmas, obviously, and then one or two other meals or social events like bowling, walking, pub crawls). These were all marvellous events, well attended and very popular, but they all had a single individual -- the same guy in every case -- as the instigator. And then one day he stopped doing it. And none of us have ever met up again since that day.

The small group of friends I always refer to as my "Nottingham" mates (even though only two of them live there now) have strength in depth when it comes to organising get-togethers. It's not driven by just one of us. Once a few weeks, or a months, have gone by since our last meet, one or other of us will get in touch to set something else up. Often we don't need to do this, as we arrange it in advance at the previous one. It's a source of infinite variety, pleasure, amusement and fun to Nikki and I to be able to be part of this, as I'm sure anyone who is lucky enough to have their own strong ties of friendship will understand. Friends, they say, are the family you choose, and I would tag that with "lines I wish I'd written" if there was any space left in the tag list :0)

As I've discovered (and blogged about before), friends come at you from all parts of life, and another group that I've been blessed to reconnect with -- a few years back now -- has been the curry crew. We may only meet once a month, but I find myself looking forward to those evenings immensely. The conversation always flows, it's always stimulating and amusing, and the food is only the icing on the cake (if curry can be said to be any kind of icing).

I have a small number of friends that fall into another different category. All of the aforementioned might be classed as "regular" friends, and if such a term fits then this small number I'm talking about now might correspondingly be referred to as "irregular" friends. People who, over the years, have meandered in and out of my life seemingly at random, but who whenever we meet will pick up the threads of friendship (and even conversation!) and knit them back into something recognisable within a few hours. I met one such person outside a hotel once, a few years back. Having not seen him for more than five years, suddenly there he was, leaving a hotel at which I had arrived to meet someone else. We only had chance for twenty minutes frantic catching up and exchanging of current contact details, but it rekindled some long-buried memories and the spark of yet another friendship stretching back to the mid 1970s. We originally met at university and the names of other uni friends crop up regularly in the strangest places. Naturally the Internet is the perfect medium for this and over the years I've had the occasional email from old friends who've read this blog, or seen my profile on LinkedIn, or Friends Reunited, or found my website through Google.

There is a downside to this though. The reality of how easy it is to lose touch with people was brought home to me when I attended a school reunion about 15 years ago. It was such a strange experience I vowed never to attend one again (although I was tempted a couple of years back when they held a 25th -- or was it 30th? -- reunion). Not only the experience -- spending 3 or 4 hours in a function room with 50 people who at one time I saw on a daily basis but who, with one exception, I hadn't seen for 15 years -- but the aftermath. The impact of the realisation that I had completely lost touch with all of them, even those I'd thought of as close friends, really hit me surprisingly hard. I guess it just shows that friends are more than simply people you spend time with. Just as it's easy to be lonely in a crowded room, rubbing shoulders with a bunch of people every day for six years doesn't necessarily make them your friends. It knocked me for six a bit, did that.

Cat man do.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, our cat man promised to send loads more pictures of New Kitteh (name still being debated) between my first visit and the day he's ready to come home. Four weeks later and there hadn't been much evidence of promise fulfilment on the photo front. OK, no evidence. A prompting email provoked a blurry shot taken with a phone along with the promise of more pix "when I get home", a couple of days more nothing and then a brief whinge that emails "weren't getting through."

However eventually, this arrived:

and I think it's true to say he's even cuter now that he was when I first saw him.

Anyway, since we're fetching him home the day after tomorrow, it's suddenly become quite urgent to tidy up all the non-kitten-friendly parts of the house (i.e. ALL of it) and make sure all those tools, boxes, bags, screws, nails, pots of paint, piles of wall plugs, etc, etc, are either put away, thrown away, or behind a closed door.

Good job I finished all the wrapping yesterday!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Yeah. Early exposure to Christmas has spilled out of the malls and department stores and infected commercial radio. Friday night we're listening to Smooth FM and here comes Bing bending our ears with his 1951 Christmas number, and it's still only November 26th.

It' s felt like a quiet couple of weeks but although at the time nothing seemed worthy of blogging, or I couldn't muster up the enthusiasm, looking back there's been quite a bit going on.

The big news is that Nikki decided she wanted livestock again this Christmas, after having plumped for tropical fish last year, so a week ago last Friday I took off for Yorkshire and left a deposit (in the nicest possible way) on this little guy.

He's about six weeks old here, and won't be ready to come "home" until a couple of days before Christmas, but we've been promised more photos between now and then, and the hunt is now on for a name. It's been a while since we last owned a cat, so his impending arrival prompted a trip to Pets At Home to stock up on supplies (a bed, scratching post, bowls, etc).

On the kitchen front, the news is that there's no news. No recurrence of the leak problem, granite guys haven't said when they'll be coming to fit that last short bit of upstand, electricians haven't said when they'll be coming to fix the intermittent fault on the lighting transformer. Only the flooring guy has come up smelling of roses, having said he'd pop round to add beading to those few places where we thought we were going to replace the skirting board but later decided it wouldn't look right, he DID pop round, exactly when he said he would, beaded as necessary and refused all payment. Top bloke.

The cat burglar

1.18am, and I become vaguely aware of a house alarm blaring away in the distance.

Nikki: "Is that our alarm?"
I listen more carefully, in my sleep-befuddled state.
Me: "Don't think so. It *is* close though."
I get out of bed and plod over to the window. When I pull back the curtain I can see our alarm box flashing its blue light angrily.
Me: "Fuck! It IS ours!"
As I open the bedroom door and the internal alarm becomes clearly audible, several thoughts crowd my still-not-fully-awake mind.
Should I go back and get my baseball bat?
Should I turn the alarm off BEFORE I check downstairs, alerting any intruder to the fact there's someone awake?
Has someone noticed the appliances being delivered and decided it's a good time to go on the rob, while they're all still in boxes?
I quickly decide plenty of light and an aggressive demeanour is the best approach to scare the intruder away. I cancel the alarm, turn the lights on and start downstairs.
Halfway down, I hear a noise in the kitchen. Bloody hell. How have they got in without making a noise?
I reach the hall, turn all the downstairs lights on and march boldly into the kitchen with a no-nonsense face on and the most don't-mess-with-me posture I can muster. I come face to face with the intruder.

A young tortie-and-white kitten, cowering at the other end of the kitchen.

She utters a frightened miaow and scuttles under the nearest cupboard unit.

Then I remember the fitters have just the day before completed coring out a 15cm hole in the wall for the ducting. A hole that presumably, from the outside, looks like a cat flap.

I retrieve the keys for the patio door, prop the kitchen door in the doorway to prevent the kitten escaping into the rest of the house, open the outside door and persuade her to go and burgle someone else, by which time Nikki has come down to check that I'm alright. With around 16 gallons of adrenaline pumping around inside me, I decide going back to bed isn't an option, so we set the coffee maker going and settle down in the lounge for some (very) early morning telly.

Leaving the kitchen door open

Efforts to rehome Mimi continued this week.

We "inherited" her with the house ("we're moving so far away, she wouldn't enjoy the journey, she wouldn't settle in the new place, is there any chance you could keep her?" which translates as "we already have two other cats that we're much more fond of, and we've even palmed one of those off onto a neighbour. This one's a bit stand-offish and we can't be arsed.") and although she's very pretty, and has grown more confident and (almost) affectionate as we've given her a bit of attention, being shut in the kitchen and the only cat in the house is a bit of a lonely life, we don't get a lot out of it either, and it makes going away awkward.

So I've been phoning shelters, trying to find a place for her, but they're all full up. I really wasn't comfortable with the alternative. Having an animal killed for any reason other than they're in pain or have a terminal illness doesn't sit well with my philosophy, so the weeks dragged by as the shelters continued to have no free places, or I forgot to phone them because I didn't want to consider the consequences of them being full.

Are you one of those people that think things happen for a reason? I am. In this case my procrastination paid off. Yesterday, in the office, making another round of calls to the shelters, I was overheard by the colleague who sits opposite me. To cut a long story short, one of their cats had recently died, and he thought his wife might be keen to replace her. A couple of quick text messages later, the deal was set and I agreed to take Mimi over in the evening provided she was home when I got in and I could wrangle her into a carrying case.

We dropped her off in Mossley at 6.30 yesterday evening, and reaction from the family was very positive. Apparently Mimi has almost identical markings to their other cat, another lucky coincidence that proves this is what was meant to happen.

And on returning home, for almost the first time in two years, we could leave the kitchen door open.

Aspiring writer seeks new tale

I've been searching for a handle on my new novel. Hang on. New novel? No. On the idea I've had for my next novel. The one I'm going to write next. Yes, I've finished one already. All bar the shouting. Where shouting equals dealing with the comments of reviewers, maybe a little bit of rework and a final polish. And then more shouting at all the letters of rejection I'll undoubtedly receive from agents and/or publishers. All part of the game, I'm sure. I take a philosophical view. The writing is not about the publishing. It's about the writing. About having a tale to tell, and telling it. Whether anyone reads it is neither here nor there. That's the tale I tell myself, when I'm not telling myself one of the other tales.

So having finished one tale, I've been on a hunt for more tale. A new tale. And I think this is where writers get their reputation for being hard to live with. Because it's been occupying me. Pre-occupying me, even. When I'm cooking, I'm plotting. When I'm eating, I'm plotting. When I'm watching telly, I'm plotting. What was that you said dear? Sorry, what? Didn't quite catch that. Oh yes, pre-occupied all right. Especially when driving.

I can't quite put my finger on when I first crossed the line between having to think about driving, and arriving home having no conscious memory of the journey. It was probably thirty years ago. At least. Autopilot is one thing I do really well. I think I may also have mentioned my least favourite journey. The one where I come home from returning my daughters to their home(s). Their home that is not with me. The loneliest journey. The one that is the furthest away in time from the next time I see them. And therefore, in many ways, the most perfect journey for plotting a new tale (JB: silver linings a speciality).

I've considered several options for book #2 (as it will certainly be known for a while, before revelling in a working title and then, some way down track, being gifted with a real title. Apparently it is at least possible a publisher (at the point where the shouting ceases) will, even later, require a final change of title, but that's a subject for another day), but none of them really felt right. Yesterday, sometime during The Loneliest Journey, I hit upon something that felt right. Not only right, it gave me chills. Scarily right. Challengingly right. It will be a stretch, but like a cat, I enjoy stretching.

Breathe easy

...and breathe a sigh of relief too. The painting is finished!

The brasses are back on all the windows, the telephone point box is fitted, all the lights are screwed back up to the ceiling, the woodburning stove has been cleaned off and the floors are all swept. I even hoisted the pressure washer upstairs and hosed down the conservatory roof.

The only jobs remaining are those that can be done after the carpet is fitted and I'll be booking that tomorrow. Then maybe, finally, after all these months, we can take the computers off the dining room table and get back to being civilised!

Today also marks the end (almost) of our cat-sitting for some friends down the road. They've been in Portugal for two weeks and we've been over there twice a day to feed their mog Magic and give her her thyroid pills. She's a sweet little thing and always greets us at the door with a trill and a purr. I'd hate to have to give pills to someone else's cat if they weren't as placid as Magic, but she really is as good as gold.

Off the wall

First day of holidays today and after a leisurely breakfast we set off to walk the walls of Chester. First time I did this was in 1977 so it felt a little weird to be repeating the exercise 30 years on with Nikki and my daughters.

It was a beautiful sunny day, made all the more special on account of us not having had many sunny days this summer. After parking close to Northgate Arena we mounted the walls at North Gate and proceeded in an anti-clockwise direction at a gentle stroll, stopping frequently to take photos.

It's only a couple of years ago that I did this same walk with some friends from Canada, but that didn't prevent me taking many of the same photos over again. Sunlight makes everything so much more vibrant, and when I'd walked the walls in 2005 the day had been overcast. Today everything was bright and colourful, including our spirits.

One of the nicest parts of the walk is the part along the River Dee, and today we were graced with a number of interesting sights. We stopped for an ice-cream at the quayside and sat for a while watching the seagulls fighting over scraps of bread, the pleasure boats and pedallos coming and going along the river, and a lone canoeist training for some unknown white water event or timed race.

Ice-creams finished we headed north again along the eastern side of the wall, past the cathedral whose gardens were resplendent in the late midday sun and back to North Gate at the perfect time to enter the Chester & North Wales cat show, which had only minutes before opened its doors to the public.

Today was the first time I had ventured inside a cat show in almost ten years; an event which at one time was an almost monthly occurrence. Several of you will know just how big a bellyful I'd had of cat showing back then and I would not have set foot in that arena but for the fact that Nikki fancied the chance to see a variety of breeds, and the girls were quite keen to have a quick look too.

Ten years had not changed the smell; the first impression to assail the senses on entering the hall. Mainly cat pee (there would inevitably be a number of entire male cats in the hall) but overlaid with fur, sweat, the metal of the pens and the pungent aroma of the disinfectant used by the judges as they move from pen to pen. Neither had ten years changed the attitude of the judges. Although after all that time I recognised only two, every one of them had that demeanour of superior officiousness that I always despised. These petty pinch-faced individuals lording it over the common masses in their tiny kingdom represent everything mad about the "cat fancy" to me.

There were some beautiful cats in the hall. Probably, Nikki and I agreed, about half a dozen we could happily have brought home out of a selection of perhaps 4- or 500. As for the rest - the brittle, bat-eared orientals; the pug-faced persians and the fluffy, cutesy, bland semi-longhairs - you can keep them. And I hope it's at least another ten years before I have to endure that smell again.

Bob's not your uncle

Our cat Mimi, who we "inherited" with the house, has been exhibiting a grossly enhanced appetite of late. Since she's an "outdoor" cat I immediately suspected a worm infestation, and bought some worm treatments from the supermarket. Bob Martin's to be precise. Two varieties: some stuff for tapeworms that you squirt on the back of the cat's neck (don't ask me how that works - you're the one on the Internet) and a separate and more traditional treatment for roundworm - granules to mix with the food.

I've had cats for over thirty years and I've never had much success with the "mix with the food" variety. Companies that make this stuff never learn. Cats have a much more sensitive sense of smell than we do. You sprinkle these grey granules over the food, mix it well in, cat walks up, takes one sniff and steps back smartly as if to say "I'm not going anywhere near THAT!", turns round and walks away.

In my experience it matters not how long you leave the stuff down, the animal would rather starve than deign to eat any of it. However in our case, it's dried food, so it remains to be seen which of us has the stronger will...

Still, small voice

Do you have a little voice? I don't mean "do you speak quietly?" but rather: does your mind offer you quiet, gentle, sometimes almost imperceptible suggestions whose effect would be to keep you out of trouble if you heeded them?

I say "mind" for want of a better term, and because my little voice does indeed go on inside my head, but you could just as well call it your conscience, or experience, subconscious, or (as I prefer) Spirit guide.

It's a very easy voice to ignore. Often it presents itself as only a fleeting thought. You have to be quick to catch it, and it's all too easy to miss it altogether, or dismiss its message by thinking "oh, it'll be alright" or by telling yourself not to be so silly. I'd like to say I've learned to trust my voice, but too often all I've learned is the ability to look back and think: "I should have listened to my voice." Like the time I was taking some unwanted clutter to the charity shop. Only a few items - some bagged, some not - but among them three carving knives, two of which were the serrated "Kitchen Devil" type. As I struggled to pick everything up in one go to avoid making two trips between shop and car, my voice told me quite clearly: "If you pick those knives up like that, one of them will slip and cut your finger." Nah, I thought, I'll be fine. So I picked all three knives up in one hand, and one of them slipped and cut my finger.

I'm not claiming precognition of any kind; maybe it was "common sense" or experience, but I thought it would happen, and it did. Like I said, it's easy to miss. You have to maintain a state of awareness to tell the difference between regular thoughts and the little voice.

But yesterday, I didn't need any special state of awareness. My little voice yelled at me. Yesterday, we cooked the turkey crown we didn't have at Christmas. And because we wanted to enjoy thin slices of succulent breast today, we left it out on the cooker to cool before carving. "The cat can't get to it up there," said Nikki, "and anyway, she wouldn't be interested."

"Oh yes she can," screamed my little voice, "and she would!"

But I was very comfortably ensconced on the sofa with both my lovely daughters. We were watching episodes of Heroes back-to-back and even though I'd seen them all before, I didn't feel like moving. So I ignored my voice and, engrossed in the action, forgot all about the turkey.

Twenty minutes later an almighty crash from the kitchen disturbed our viewing. Footprints on the front of the cooker marked where our cat Mimi had stretched up to reach the turkey. Footprints on the draining board revealed where she had discovered an alternative route. The upturned roasting tin, lying by the bin and bleeding turkey fat all over the floor, indicated that she had jumped from draining board to cooker and knocked it off. And the turkey crown, one side chewed half away, didn't need a detective to determine that some time had elapsed between the jumping and the knocking off.

This is the cat who eats only biscuits and tinned tuna. Who turns her nose up at chicken, fish, and roast beef. We didn't know she loved turkey. But my little voice did. I am honestly getting better at listening to it. But I ain't there yet.