The Mezzanine

my house needed to be felined

Wed, 12 Dec 2018 01:45:57 GMT

One day I will have my female cat called Minerva, dammit.

But for now, he's very cute, very purry, and his name is Felix because I am a total Latin nerd.

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report from the front

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:53:04 GMT

Elf is sick of being overlooked in favour of the baby. He just meowed me indignantly to the couch, where he proceeded to grab my hand with both paws and smugly purr all over me. Every time I try to move, this whole cycle starts all over again.

In other news, I'm enjoying a fun activity I call "parenting through peer pressure". It involves the kidlet sitting in his highchair with his plastic cutlery (no solids yet) while we eat dinner, and using his gumbrush while I use my toothbrush. The idea is that he thinks this is just What We Do, so that I can avoid having to introduce him to Scary New Things and instead just slide him effortlessly into our everyday lives. (Those of you who are parents, this is where you get to laugh hysterically at me using "effortlessly" in a sentence about parenting.)

So far, it's working well.

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Grrrr...

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 16:57:04 GMT

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your application for more bikkies. We are unable to oblige you at this time.

You will notice that your roaming space has been reduced from the whole living area to the close confinement of the laundry. This is due to a noise complaint filed by your nearest neighbour ("The Baby"). Please note that excessive noise during the nighttime hours is NOT acceptable, and will affect the sleep of The Baby. Your meowing, while cute, falls under this noise ordinance.

We hope you understand our actions at this time. The members of the Home Owners Association (HOA) would like to emphasise that, while we love your cute and fluffy self, we must consider the welfare of ALL tenants, and any further noise complaints by The Baby will likely lead to your permanent nighttime laundry confinement.

Sincerely,
The HOA

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GUILTY

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 20:17:12 GMT

Poor Elf, who was so good this morning, and waited patiently to ask for his breakfast until my alarm clock went off (he sits on my tummy clock-watching until it does), is still waiting for his breakfast...

He's getting more and more indignant. And mewing, in a worried fashion, about my total failure to give him food.

And I feel AWFUL. Even though I was told by the vet, very sternly, not to feed him this morning, so that he's got an empty stomach for his sedation-and-teeth-cleaning appointment, and even though I know that's a very good reason, I still am having to fight HARD not to sneakily feed him anyway, because my PRECIOUS BOY is HUNGRY, and asking so NICELY. I'm killing every ounce of trust he has in me, and I'm a HORRID MUMMY who doesn't CARE.

*feels DREADFUL*

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complaining cat

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:13:02 GMT

Elf is extremely hungry - and complaining bitterly at me - because he hasn't eaten anything since 10am.

I know he hasn't eaten since 10am, because that's when I filled up his bowl. And he hasn't touched it since.

Which means, basically, that he's meowing at full volume and trying desperately to get me to feed him bikkies, while standing in front of a bowl that is ABSOLUTELY FULL of the very bikkies he's asking for.

(Elf would, no doubt, maintain that they are, in fact, totally different from the bikkies he's asking for, because the bikkies in his bowl are old, used bikkies. But I'm ignoring him and his insane feline logic.)

He's actually been fairly upset with me all week. First Prince moved out, then his secondary patter-and-feeder (dr_carrot) moved out, and now, horror of horrors, he doesn't have a second bowl of (Prince's) bikkies to snack off, so he's feeling starved and ill-treated.

I remain hard-hearted. I will calmly ignore my cat's piteous meows, and read the internet instead.

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free cat for the gullible

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:52:09 GMT

If anyone would like to buy a cat with a sweet, gentle disposition, who purrs placidly, never makes demands, and absolutely does not wake you up with incessant wailing at 2am, pleading, demanding, and howling at the top of his lungs until he's woken you up from what was a restful sleep... then honesty compels me to admit that this is not my cat.

But please, feel free to believe that he is, and take him away.

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not a way I want to wake up

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:58:21 GMT

Am awake bright and early this morning, despite my plans to sleep in.

Why? Because my wonderful cat, delight of my life, peed on my bed while I was in it.

EWW.

He is now in deep disgrace, my sheets have been swiftly deposited in the bath, and I am bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and contemplating dim-sims for dinner.

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yes, I see this on a daily basis

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:57:38 GMT

One day, when cats get their own credit cards, I'm going to market a back door for the up-market feline, and I'll make a fortune.

Unlike those stodgy old human doors, that open when you touch them, my door will have several stages:

Stage 1: Weather Report
On first approach, the door will open its main forcefield. The door will still be mostly closed - but it will let in a taste of the breeze, temperature, and exciting smells, allowing the discerning cat to decide if he truly wants to proceed to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Primary Excursion
If the weather seems satisfactory, the door's secondary forcefield will open for exactly 20 seconds - allowing the cat to walk outside, sniff, turn in a full circle, and then come back inside for a brief period of relaxed contemplation before proceeding to Stage 3.

Stage 3: A Considered Exit
After the cat has fully thought through his strategy, both forcefields will open. Before closing... very very slowly. The cat must be able to keep his tail in the doorway for a full two minutes after he first set paw to ground.

Other stages that may or may not come into play (but probably will) include Stage 4: Checking That Inside Still Exists in which the cat can come back in, circle the house, and then wander back outside again, and Stage 5: Battle Tactics, in which the door will get used as the border between the kingdoms of two cats, in the ultimate deathmatch for dominance of the door area.

In other news, I have opened my back door a total of 12 times this morning. And I've only just finished breakfast (my cats still haven't).

Must go. Elf is requesting an ingress.

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cute little annoyance

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 11:34:49 GMT

My cat is snoring.

My CAT is SNORING.

I'm not married. I'm not living with anyone. Nor do I have small children. There is no reason I should be getting kept awake by a loud companion. AND YET.

My lovely cat is snuggled up next to me, contentedly snoring as loudly as his teeny nose can manage. And it is so, SO LOUD.

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Pictures!

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 07:53:09 GMT

Herein are a cross-stitch, a homicidal cat, and some cute boys.

( photos )

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[warning: BIRD DEATH]

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 01:59:53 GMT

Elf brought me a bird today.

My first cat, Koko, arrived when I was about 7. He was there to solve our mice problem - and solve it he did. He was an astonishingly effective killer of small, cute animals.

Although I'd read many storybooks about cats, and knew about the mouse-killing in advance, no-one had mentioned the other thing about cats: when they kill things, they bring them to you as presents.

Koko showed up, started killing mice right on schedule... and started proudly depositing their ravaged corpses at my parents' bedroom door.

So far I had avoided such morbid displays of affection - since Elf is a total wuss, and completely incompetant at killing anything.

But, today, he killed his first bird.

[Let me insert a short pause here, for cries of horror.]

[And a second pause for me to be a proud mummy. MY LOVELY BOY KILLED A BIRD. SO PROUD.]

And he duly came back home, and gave it to me.

The thing is - it really was a PRESENT. And my first response of running off to fetch
a) lots of paper towel
and
b) my camera
left my cat sitting there, indignantly meowing at my lack of gratitude.

...so I came back, patted him, praised him enthusiastically, and then ran off to get the paper towel so I could get the corpsified bird off my nice clean floor.

Cats are slightly strange...

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clever kitty

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:16:18 GMT

Elf has discovered how to open my wardrobe door with his feet.

He has since decided that the ideal way to spend a day is to push open the wardrobe, climb into the dark little cave that is revealed, and snuggle up on top of my pyjamas.

There's really no way I can prevent him from doing this. I'm pretty much stuck hoping that my jammies won't get totally covered in fur...

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clever cat

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:18:38 GMT

In the last month, my cat has figured out how to open both the wardrobe in the sitting room (sliding mirror) and the wardrobe in my room (standard hinged door). He can now open every single door in the house except the laundry door, and the actual front and back doors. And those probably aren't too far behind...

We are all doomed.

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the trials of Elf

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:11:57 GMT

My cat is sulking.

So far, his week has gone like this:

Monday – Outside! Oh glorious outside! Get into cat fight with arch-nemesis, and win! WHO'S THE BADDEST CAT ON THE BLOCK. OH YEAH.

Tuesday – Lick wounds, and then prance around outside feeling like a badass.

Wednesday – Ditto.

Thursday – Spend the whole day licking wounds, and waiting for Mummy to get home so I can go outside. Am just getting to FINALLY go outside, and Mummy grabs me, pokes at wounds (OWW), shrieks, and drags me off to a smelly place filled with dogs, where I am poked, prodded, and injected with something.
Don't get to go outside - at all.

Friday/Saturday/Sunday – For some infuriating reason, Mummy keeps sticking gross paste in my mouth right before mealtimes. YUCK. It makes the food taste disgusting.
Even more infuriating, she refuses point-blank to let me outside! Arch-nemesis is probably reasserting his erroneous claims over MY territory, and there's nothing I can do about it!
LET ME OUTSIDE, MUMMY.

He's not at all happy with me...

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every solution has a problem

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 22:29:11 GMT

My life this week seems to have consisted of several HUGE MASSIVE PROBLEMS, followed by wonderfully simple solutions. As follows...

Huge Problem #1: My "daybed" (spare bed / couch), which I ordered back in September, arrived with a rather important part missing. I rang up and complained, and they assured me that they'd take care of it, and I'd definitely have the missing part by January 10th. (FOUR MONTHS, people.)

Solution: I responsed to their "January 10th" idea with a simple LOL, WHUT????, and the next day, the missing parts were on my doorstep. I now have a very nice piece of furniture! Woo!

Huge Problem #2: Elf got into a cat-fight! Somehow I failed to notice this momentous event, until yesterday, when I suddenly realised that there were huge chunks of my cat MISSING. Raced round to the vet, in a total panic, wondering how many stitches he'd need, and how long it took for blood poisoning to kill pets...

Solution: According to the vet, the type of injury he's received usually ends up with lots of pus trapped under the skin and needing to be drained - so, the fact that Elf has a massive gaping wound is actually good, since it allows the pus to drain away naturally. I just have to feed him antibiotics for a few weeks to prevent infection. PHEW.

Huge Problem #1: Lilac's latest nervous breakdown. Which was apparently caused by a logic-board failure, and would be so expensive to repair that all and sundry advised me to just buy a new computer instead. Despite the fact that it would devastate my bank account, I stubbornly cuddled Lilac (metaphorically) and informed aforesaid all and sundry that they CAN'T TAKE MY COMPUTER, BITCAS.

Solution: Computer guys dove into Lilac's system to try and fix the oh-so-expensive logic board, and discovered that the entire problem was a SINGLE CABLE. Which suddenly makes the repairs $70 in total. Woo!

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just woke up

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:11:08 GMT

I came up with three utterly brilliant blog entries last night, and then woke up and realised that none of the stuff they were talking about had really happened...

Also, I'm fairly sure I also came up with another blog entry that would have been true - but now I can't remember what it was. Hmmpf.

In other news:
- Elf and Prince are fine with each other, as long as Prince doesn't violate Elf's personal space bubble with a radius of about a metre. Prince deals with this by staying exactly a metre out of reach - and looking hopefully at Elf.

- The jobs are both still really fun - but taking a lot out of me. Hence the sad lack of blogging.

- nuggan! If you're grumpy, go join!

- Sadly (care of last night's dream) my house does not include a secret lair with a funky shower. Happily, the tragic lack of secret lair also means that my hencemen are not trying to kill me over the funky shower...

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cat-sitting

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 19:17:51 GMT

The former housemate's cat is staying with me for the next 12 days.

No, not Smudge. The former former housemate. The one who was responsible for the teeny fluffballs (Smudge's brothers). Of course, that was over a year ago - and the teeny fluffball is now a full-grown cat.

Elf is not happy. Prince is also not happy.

They're currently sitting on opposite sides of the living room, glaring balefully at each other and growling. This has been going on for nearly fifteen minutes now...

Any bets on how long it will take them to become friends?

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this week...

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:52:22 GMT

I spent several days being sick. I am now not sick, but have absolutely no voice left as a result of having coughed so much. Hopefully no-one will urgently need me to tell them things for the next few days...

Went to a wedding on Saturday. They had activity bags for the kids who came to the reception - which included colouring pencils, stickers, bubble mix, lollies, and disposable cameras with a "scavenger hunt" list of photos they should try to take during the evening. Such a good idea! First reception I've seen that had kids and didn't have extremely bored kids wailing to go somewhere else.

Tangled is still a wonderful movie of brilliance. I now have icons.

My cat missed me while I was away (the wedding was in Adelaide), but he also missed being outside. He's spent the last few hours meowing desperately to be let outside because he hasn't seen outside in days, and then instantly meowing desperately to be let inside because he hasn't seen me in days. Maybe I should have just gone outside with him?

Much unpacking still to be done. It'll have to wait until tomorrow: I am hereby allowing myself a relaxing evening of doing nothing much.

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missing friends

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:39:53 GMT

Elf is horribly upset and bewildered. Smudge is... missing. And I don't even care.

He's spent the last half hour circling the house, meowing plaintively in the hopes that Smudge will suddenly appear from wherever he's hiding, and the world will be back to normal again. (Elf's mummy, meanwhile, is heartlessly trying to pat him, and completely ignoring the fact that Smudge is GONE.)

He wouldn't eat dinner. For some strange reason, I totally failed to put any bikkies in Smudge's bowl, and Elf can't start eating until Smudge can come and eat with him...

His whole kitty world is topsy-turvy and wrong. And he doesn't know why.

(No, Smudge has not entered the ninth dimension. He has moved a grand total of eight houses away, with nimthiriel. It's just rather tricky to explain that to someone who only speaks Cat.)

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BIG weekend

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:50:31 GMT

Smudge has a security blanket, in the form of one of his favourite toys: a piece of cord from nimthiriel's pyjamas.

nimthiriel (the housemate) and her husband moved out this weekend, and Smudge spent the whole day walking around looking lost and bewildered, carrying the pyjama cord for comfort. He's spending another week with me, and then moving across to their new place. Elf will miss him... and so will I...

Far too many late nights in a row. I keep falling asleep in odd locations.

On dr_carrot's recommendation, I have started using exciting new shampoo/conditioner/body wash/face cleaner, from MooGoo! So far, I'm enjoying it.

It's apparently called MooGoo because it was invented by dairy farmers using an adapted form of the lotion they put on cow udders to keep them healthy...

This weekend, the boyfriend has helped me nephew-sit, lent me his car to get me home early, started a jigsaw with me, moved furniture for my housemates, eaten my cooking and made yummy noises, held my hand, watched ridiculous tv with me, whispered silly comments during church, listened to all my ridiculous blathering, and patted my cat.

He's terrific.

I really will get all those photos up soon, I promise...

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side-effects of spring

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:55:11 GMT

The useful thing about having a cat with white bits is that he shows the dirt.

Of course, were he a carpet or an item of upholstery, this would be a bad thing. But, in cats, him showing the dirt means I have a reasonable chance of detecting it before he jumps all over my carpet/upholstery. Like this morning, when he returned (contented) from his trip outside, with dark grey paws instead of his usual white. I managed to crashtackle him, and dunk his feet in the sink before he wandered through the house scattering dirt everywhere.

I did end up with a shirt covered in fur, and a ruffled, wet-pawed cat retreating behind the curtains to sulk... but that was hardly unexpected.

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things that are making me happy right now

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 22:25:00 GMT

1) Spring is here! Along with lovely spring weather.

2) The boyfriend brought me flowers. Because he's great.

3) Funky country music on my phone. (Yes, that's a GOOD thing.)

4) My hair is getting long!

5) Elf purred at me this morning, and looked happy.

6) Spring! Hurrah for spring!

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(dimsims, anyone?)

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:14:09 GMT

Cats don't just get annoyed.

And they don't just get revenge. Oh, no.

Cats stand around and watch, eagerly, waiting for that final triumphant moment when you will discover their revenge and TRULY KNOW THE POWER OF THEIR FELINE WRATH. MWAHAHAHA.

(I can't be certain that it was Elf who peed all over my bed this evening - but from the way he hung around my bedroom innocently, observed my full grossed-out reaction, and then sprinted for cover once I began to recover from the shock... I'm pretty sure it was.)

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is tired

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:23:26 GMT

My cat really does love me.

I occasionally go "Nah, he's a cat. He'd like anyone who fed him." But I'd be wrong about that. My cat is, in fact, very much obsessed with me, personally.

I just got home from a weekend away with my family - a whole day-and-a-half. And my cat has not left my side since I walked through the door.

He has varied from
a) sitting next to me
to
b) sitting at the other end of the bed
c) purring at me
d) sniffing my nose
e) sitting on top of me
f) walking over to check that I'm really still here.

*feels very loved*

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Bag Pursuit

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:03:59 GMT

You know those green-friendly! shopping bags that you can buy so that you never have to get lots of plastic bags with your groceries?

I just found my cat running frantically around the house, because he'd stepped through the handle of the shopping bag and couldn't figure out how to get it off. He was dragging this bag around after him, and freaking out more and more because it was chasing him! The evil bag was chasing him!

He got very upset when I tried to helpfully take it off him...

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