#elCato

Update from a Small Cat – Jan 26th

‘Ah. You wish me to meander with you.’ It wasn’t a question. The cat had stood up and capered along the wall under the fence at least five minutes beforehand, and was likely waiting on the corner for his frenemy, el cato.

‘I didn’t say that, you did.’ El cato projected this thought through the glass door at the rear of his own house. ‘I am not ambulating today either.’

‘What are you doing then. I can’t see you?’

‘Nope, I am a figment of your imagination and you are a worm.’

‘Oh, fabulous. I have always wanted to be a worm.’

‘You have not.’ Of this, el cato was sure. ‘You said you never knew which end to talk to.’

‘Perhaps I’ve changed my mind?’

‘I don’t think you have changed your mind.’ El cato stood and stretched, fluffing up his magnificent tail. He had spotted le chat peering over the fence. ‘Little basket.’

‘Speak to me not of baskets, I am breathtaking. Look at me.’ Le chat wiggled his backside with anticipation. ‘Just so you know, I’m ready to pounce. I’m not sure what at, yet, but I’m ready.’

The dog on the other side of the fence wrinkled her pretty face. ‘What are they doing,’ she mumbled. ‘And why must I always be the one between them?’

The human, who had not got up to look around the corner (through sheer willpower alone), sighed deeply. ‘I can hear you all. Will you please cease and desist. It is Sunday morning. Even the birds are silent.’

It was true. The birds were distant, the wind was lifting into a breeze, and le chat was beginning to sing the song of the people, so they would hear him and perhaps wonder…

‘Oh there you are,’ said the human under her breath.

‘I was bored,’ murmured le chat. ‘Wall smells like stone, fence smells like metal.’ He stared vaguely off into the middle distance. ‘Cobwebs.’ He crouched low on the sand coloured brick. ‘Extra large.’

The human made a slight wheezing sound which the cat assumed meant she was laughing. He stood and turned, wrapping his own black tail gently around his forepaws. The patch on his shoulder stood out starkly against the white of his coat.

‘My ears are not lopsided,’ he chided her. ‘One is merely listening more than the other.’

On this, they could agree.

‘And, just so you know,’ he added. ‘Bermuda is the general opposite place in the world of where we are, which is why, when I dig, you say I am trying to dig all the way to Bermuda.’

And that was the absolute truth.

Updates from a Small Cat 4

This morning, the cat adopts a terrible French accent. He wishes to discuss his neighbour, El Cato.

‘Why do you wish to think in an accent you cannot truly speak,’ thinks the people mama at him.

‘It does not matt-air,’ says the cat, for this morning he shall speak with an accent different to his own because it is fun, and he shall speak because he is a cat of nine lives. When one is a cat of nine lives, a cat has options to don whatever character they choose.

‘Be shush,’ says the cat, for the people mama was speaking to other people and not him. ‘I em calling from ze fenz end you mest sive moi.’

The people mama decides to check the fence where last she saw le chat and see if he truly needs saving. She opens the door to the rear of the building and he dashes in, chatting excitedly.

It sounds a little bit like, ‘Meh, mow, mioh, me.’ What it means is, ‘I ev sived myself from ze fenz, and now I mest check on ze Farza Figga.’

The cat has tap-danced into the master bedroom, checked on the father figure, and tap-danced back out, only to throw himself into a luxuriously verdant position on the floor that resembles hardwood but isn’t. He is a cat of short thinking today, and it is difficult to keep up with him.

He decides to talk around his breakfast. ‘Did you see ‘ow well El Cato’s human counterpart played last night, mama,’ he mumbles around his food.

‘I did,’ says the mama. ‘His own mama must be very proud.’

‘She is, I think,’ says the small cat. ‘Although we think he may have been slightly distracted by distractions at some point during the evening match.’

The people mama pushes her mouth together and tries not to smile. ‘Yes, well. That is none of our business, and we shall not discuss it.’

‘Not any of it?’ The cat is determined to be naughty this morning.

‘No. I am sure he is a very good boy.’ The people mama is also determined, but she is determined not to start laughing. ‘He played very good tennis, and that is the whole point. Just like the falling apart old man down the other end played very good tennis.’

‘Fallin’ apart old man?’ The cat is confused. ‘That man is not so old.’

‘I suppose it depends on how one looks at age in certain aspects, like sport for example,’ explains the people mama. ‘In sport, that old man is absolutely ancient, and falling apart at the knees. Plus, he has small children, and that makes him even ancient-er.’

‘It does?’ El Cato’s human counterpart is curious now. ‘I thought it would make him younger? Perhaps I should reconsider the idea of making small children any time soon.’

The people mama decides her time is up. To upset other mamas is not why she is here. She smiles and waves, and quickly leaves on wings shaped like bonnets and a crash-helmet shaped like a yellow flower, one she had tied to her head with two very thin pieces of grass.

‘Is that who I think it is,’ said the small boy’s father. He grinned to himself as the ladybird flew off. ‘I think there might be a story about that ladybird around here somewhere.’

But that might be a story for another day.

Updates from a Small Cat 2.

The human companion and I arose early this morning due to being overheated and having interrupted sleepings. This is because the Father Figure’s sleepings were loud and obnoxiously noisy. It is also because when the human companion overheats she has not-very-nice dreams and it makes her cranky-pants.

Other people readers will notice when I allow the human companion to speak on my behalf sometimes, I have a slightly different way of communicating. This is because I am a cat with nine lives, and I do not need to explain this anymore than what I just have.

I am currently stalking fence. Up and down, up and down, I stalk the fence because I can balance. I am sending human mother updates as I stalk and she listens to me and rolls eyes dramatically. I am not only a cat, I am a sentry. Occasionally I am a sentry stuck on the roof and demand of my human companions to show me the way off the roof. They are not always happy about doing this, especially after the third or fourth time. This is not my problem. I am a cat, and they are supposed to save me.

It is dark, and I have forgotten what I was doing. Because of this I will send the human companion aka the human mother aka… anyway, I will send her messages to come and find me because it is fun.

She cannot find me. This is possibly because I am at the front of the house and she cannot come to the front of the house without making excessive noise that will not only wake up the occupants of the house but the neighbours as well. I think this ha-ha. At least, I do until I require her assistance to come from the front of the house to the back of the house , just in case the neighbours cat, who is rather large and majestic in the human companion’s humble opinion, decides he also needs to travel from the back of the house to the front of the house.

Many times the neighbours cat and myself encountered have each other. Have encountered. Have crossed paths. Sometimes it is not so bad. Sometimes it is not so good. Sometimes I forget how to send people companion messages in English and she leaves it how it was written because she thinks I am a ridiculous cat. I am not ridiculous. Ridiculous was a dog and he was also slightly. I am a cat and I am magnificent. I am not slightly, I am very small.

There are many things I need to say this very early morning. In order to do this, the people companion first needs to make herself coffee. It is going to be a very long day indeed.

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The people companion has just needed to save me from the roof. I required her to come around the side of the building and remind me how to come down, using the exact same way I have alighted from the roof many times in the past. It does not matter how many times the people companion shows me this, I will always forget. I am a cat.

Sometimes, I think the people companion and I have quite a lot in common.

I may have mentioned many times in the past, in various other places, that I am a cat with no nurries. This means I am a ball-less cat. The little furry bag that once contained my family jewels is jewell-less. This is not bad, in my humble cat opinion-ing. This makes me a safe cat. I do not wander too far and that is very fortunate as I frequently do not remember where I am going, or why I thought I would be going there in the first place.

My people companion nods and smiles. She says to me, very kindly, that she understands cats, even male ones, and she says it is much safer for me if I stay in my own home. She says to me to ‘Watch the telly sometimes,’ because sometimes, she says, there are very interesting cats on there I might like and all I have to do is watch them and nothing else. She also says to me to ‘Not be rude’.

I don’t know what that means. I am a cat.

I have observed the people companion has taken to watching a thing called ‘tennis’ lately because there are very many interesting people on it. She tells everyone in the house, who would all be males like me, to be quiet because she is watching the men hitting the green balls. She has favourites, as well, and they are not all Australian! It is mortifying.

She says, ‘Don’t be silly.’ She is this thing called middle-aged and says that means ‘far too old to be playing silly buggers.’

I think she is slightly creepy, but what would I know. I am a cat.

I have also heard the Father Figure admiring the clothing of the weather ladies on the T.V. I did not know the Father Figure had an interest in fashion, but apparently he does. It does not appear to bother the people companion too much unless he says something that she finds nasty, then she is all up in his face from her distant couch, telling him off, or ignoring him completely, because that is what one does, apparently, when someone is being rude and nasty. She says it is none of his business whether someone has put weight on or not, or whether the colour of someone’s clothing does not suit them. She thinks, and very loudly, that perhaps he should look in the mirror sometimes.

As I am a cat, and do not have a female cat companion, I do not know exactly how this works, but most of the time, despite them watching strange people on the box, they seem to get along okay.

My personal people brothers/adult male companions (other occupants of this house) do not always understand the people companion and the father figure. I think that is not my problem. I am a cat.

I think maybe the human companion should get a dog. That would be good I think. A dog would understand the people companion even less, and I can beat it up with my bare paws and spit at it for being a dog. I did this with the old dog before he went to heaven under the lavender bush, and he didn’t seem to mind at all.

It is daylight now, and time for me to go to bed. The Father Figure will be up soon, anyway, and my People Companion will need to start doing more things for free.

Goodbye furrever,

Jodh.

Updates from a Small Cat

The human companion has written on my behalf many times over the years and I can safely inform you she isn’t getting any better at it. As I am a cat though, I can’t complain. I can only bite her viciously occasionally and maybe rabbit-kick her with my rear legs.

It has been several years (and I do allow her to write several because I can’t count and she can’t remember) since I joined this small pride of people, and they seem to be learning absolutely nothing from me at all. Instead, I am ridiculed for my continued lack of masculinity (I believe the tag formerly used was #nonuts) and, I am still not allowed within the confines of the younger men’s room as they do not like it when I wish to conduct one-cat scouting parties for feral beasts and spare food.

It is beyond preposterous.

Yesterday evening, the human companion (whom some may call the people mama although it is not very often I see her acting in a motherly way) attacked me with something resembling a feather duster. I use the descriptive words of feather and duster together simply so people understand what it was she was attacking me with. It is not quite the correct term, as there are no feathers on it, merely some form of cotton/acrylic blend atrocity that serves the purpose of dusting when it is not being used to provoke me.

The damn thing has an extendable arm, which she (the human companion) has become rather adept at extending. I would call fowl play but as I said it has no feathers, therefore I shall use the term foul play instead, which, as I am being informed by the human companion, is exactly the right term to use – not that I particularly care what she says, because she doesn’t even know how to catch a mouse. She chose to poke me with the duster for several (please refer to the former comment on several, which usually means somewhere between five and ten but here refers to “we are not sure”) minutes after my most recent attempt at deconstructing her forearm (and sections of her upper arm as well).

As a cat, I will state here that my attempt at human arm deconstruction was for a very damn good reason, and I shall lay that reason out below.

The human companion sat down next to me.

I know, right? I do not remember giving her permission to do that. Then, the horrible creature decided to pat my beautiful fur and say hello.

The nerve of this interaction has simply upset me all over again. While I lay here in the bedroom this morning at the foot of the “Father Figure” I am tempted to attack said foot just to make up for the rudeness of his feminine partner. Unfortunately for me, I know I would be then rudely ejected from the bedroom with… Okay, I am exaggerating. The Father Figure only rudely ejects me from the bedroom when I have performed extreme and repeated manoeuvres with the vertical blinds at the front window. I may simply bite the Father Figure’s foot gently through the doona. I will not use claws, as this can be felt through the doona (it is a light, summer doona), but will bite hard enough that the light pressure (and, as one can tell I am using light as a term lightly) of my teeth will be felt and probably ignored unless I do it again.

My human companion has been enjoying herself far too much writing this update on my life, so I am going now. The rising of the sun has lightened the sky from its former darkness to a colour I cannot describe as a cat, and it is time for me to go to sleep.

Sincerely,

Jodh, AKA leChat AKA #nonuts #thatsmycat AKA many other names I have been called by the bloody woman who writes about me. Pfft.

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**This is a picture of me, taken this morning. I am waiting patiently for my neighbour, el Cato, to jump onto the fence so I can surprise him.