#peoplemama

Just get on with it.

‘Remain calm, remain calm.’ The illustrious scribe cleared his throat. ‘I have made a list of all the thingies, and I’d just like to say I’m pretty sure Mum and Dad did it right.’ He glanced over at the mama, who nodded. She was not wearing the correct reading glasses again, he noticed, and his mouth twitched slightly as she blinked.

‘I don’t think that’s blinking,’ said the third one as he industriously pulled up his sock. ‘That is just really weird face-pulling, that’s all I want to say.

‘Silence,’ said the scribe as he positioned himself on a rock. ‘I have folded up my headgear this morning, and it makes a rather good cushion.’

‘Do we get to say what the dad did wrong,’ said the thirsty one. ‘Because I believe I could add a few pointers.’

The mama sighed, and began to clean her glasses. ‘It won’t make any difference,’ she mouthed at the scribe. ‘They aren’t mine.’

Number three was very busy shouting about things again. No one knew why because the back door was wide open.

‘That is not funny,’ said the scribe in a very severe voice. ‘Mum said if you get rude again, I can use the tennis racquet, not you.’

‘I think my head piece has fallen sideways,’ said the second one. ‘Why didn’t they size this thing, and…’ he watched as a random stranger wandered past. ‘.. Was he invited?’

‘No.’ Many people said this very quickly indeed. ‘That one is a very kind best friend of number one, and we do not talk about it.’

‘Right, well then,’ said number five. ‘Give me a lemon and I’ll squeeze it freely all over the great mind’s serendipitous whatsimajig.’

‘I don’t know what to do about that,’ said the scribe as he fussily wrote all the words down. ‘I said, “No, Pasha, we don’t tell them all the things, we wait for all the real people to rock up first, then we tell them all the things.” ‘

‘Mama said that too,’ added four. ‘I just want to know why I’m four and not three, although I must admit, he’s not too bad looking for a…’

‘You are four,’ said the mama. ‘Now get down from there before you hurt yourself.’

Four lowered himself from the pavilion’s roof as slowly as he could without injuring himself. ‘That was demonstrating how wonderful I am,’ he said, staring furiously at the scribe. ‘Which you aren’t even though you can write well, you’re not my homey, he is.’ And he pointed at number one, who frowned. ‘See, we both have magnificent eyebrows, and although I am quite sure we are not related, which would be weird, he said I look okay for a nob-head. I am not a nob-head, by the way, I’m an institutional bastion of the community, or something.’ He growled at the mama’s correction. ‘You are not getting away with that either.’

There may have been a bit of cackling from the mama as four pulled up three’s socks and tried to jump into his position. ‘You are not Three,’ she muttered. ‘Get over it.’

‘I want to be three, though,’ said Four. ‘Because then I’d be even more like Freddy Mercury, and you could see me all the time.’

The mama was not quite sure what he meant by that. ‘That’s nice, dear,’ she mumbled under her breath. ‘Which one did you mean?’

‘You know exactly who, I mean’t that as well, and the other one, and all the ones I sent you on a platter because it was stuff like that which makes my mum talk to me, and that’s why I did it, and that’s freshly made bread over there, and see, my mum said I was a good boy when I wanted to be and did you get all that, mama, cos I said it really really quickly but too bad I didn’t see that coming.’

The scribe had made another copy of the things four had said over the years, and he posted them in his very large maniacally written booklet of great and horrible things four had done over the years.

Three looked down at his shoes. ‘I am desperately seeking another pair of fabulous shoes, because mum didn’t let me look.’

‘Lemons are for buttheads,’ said five. ‘And I know because when I was little mum kicked me out of the bedroom because her and dad were making fishes, she said, and I still don’t know what that means. Do you?’

‘My mum said they didn’t do it right anymore,’ said five’s made up friend whom five was pushing backwards with his foot. ‘They didn’t let me finish — my mum said that too.’

‘Right, that’s enough. It’s a new something or other,’ said the mama. ‘I think you lot have been up all night and most of the day besides, and I’m sure it’s past someone’s bedtime.’

‘Yes, it’s way past my bedtime,’ said five. ‘Mum has to start yet another day without three and four, and I think she doesn’t really just let me say one thing.’

‘What is it,’ said the mama, rolling her eyes dramatically.

‘We are not getting any younger, mama, please come back now.’

‘No.’

‘DO AS YOU’RE TOLD,’ shrieked three, and tripped over his sock. ‘I can be really mean when you aren’t here, mum, I can too, yes I can, no I cant, no I don’t want to be mean, I want my mum back and she doesn’t want to come back, and I don’t know why this is that time isn’t it, I am sad now.’

That would have to be all for the time being, because boys can be really yucky when they want to be sometimes, and sometimes their mama just wanted to dismantle them all and put them in jars as a reminder to all the other ones that this was probably what she did better than anyone else. Last night’s very carefully displayed scene of her pulling Two’s arms and legs off had horrified everyone except the one who had owned a barbie doll when she was a kid and done exactly the same thing.

‘Last time we didn’t even last that long,’ said a demonic child from hell. ‘Last time, we didn’t even see that coming.’

The Funny Thing About Getting Older

I put the first picture up on my gravatar or whatever the hell it’s called, because frankly, it’s safer. I seem to have adopted more sons than I actually gave birth to, again, and really I don’t want to frighten them off, they are all very sweet. (That is, when they’re not swearing and carrying on and being all masculine and shit — which can be very f*cking annoying).

Some of my imaginary friends may be male, but they have the same understanding of what this means.

‘I haven’t put on my makeup yet,’ an unnamed friend screeches through his bedroom window. ‘Kindly remove your hands from my buttocks until I look twenty years younger and twice as good-looking.’

I think he had to man up to say that one, because it is rather funny. We won’t say anything else about that though, will we. Yes, I know, he wasn’t quite real, but he was real enough for someone else to say, ‘I want to be Harry.’

Not too many fellas wanted to be my ‘I am now in the Special Forces and am terrified of losing my marbles like the guy I thought I could look up to.’ Possibly because they recognised it, wished to avoid it, and when it may have been suggested to them through, once again, unnamed channels, they decided it was perhaps the perfect time to ask their long term girlfriends to not run away on them quite yet, because they needed to ask them a question.

We don’t all get to live the dream. This part of a long ago story was probably a little too real to a lot of people, and not something they could laugh about for too long. Maybe that’s why so many of us shed so many tears over the aeons.

Anyway, I took a few shots of me trying to look more cool than I actually am, this morning, and I took them without my glasses on. When I did put them back on, I thought, ‘Jesus effing Christ, what the hell, and definitely not my idea of a good time thanks very much by crikey.’

Fortunately, I could move the blur button around on my phone, and I felt much happier about myself. Twenty years, or possibly fifteen, or maybe slightly less, who knows really in the scheme of things (the last year has been quite shit) gone in the push of a finger along a screen. The wattle neck remains, but I don’t really care, to be very honest. It’s who I am, after all, which is why I will show the last picture first and not the other way around.

That feels so much better.

I’m not very good at taking myself seriously, but I will add I have a reasonable ego, so those who think I took off from other places through fright, or not believing in myself, or other equally ridiculous things, sorry to tell you this, but you’re wrong. I left those other places because I have a seriously awful temper, and the people I “crashed into” for lack of better words, well, “some” of them had tempers as equally horrific as my own. It was not a pleasant time for any of us.

There were some lovely, slightly misled, people who, though they were not experiencing quite the same battle of egos I was experiencing with unnamed bullshit artists and ratbags from hell, thought I may have been having problems with my mental health. I was, to be honest, because who the feck let those bastards in there, is what I want to know. Bloody hell.

Still, I will show them I am not being kind today, so they’ll have to put up with this one. I’m not kidding, this one is a pain the arse.

You’re in trouble now.

Just for good measure, I’ll add the weird school teacher who isn’t a school teacher at all, but may possibly pass as one of those mean old ballet instructors with a bung leg and one eye. I haven’t put a colour in my hair for a while, so you’ll get all the grey bits too. Have fun with that.

Right then. Now that I’ve done this and made myself look like a right twat, you can go back to sucking on your dunked toast and scrambled eggs.

Have a fabulous day, and don’t let the bed-bugs bite.

Love mum x aka the people mama, aka la chat (not le chat, because he’s a boy).

Four. Oh. Eight.

‘Not the time to be writing this nicely. I’m doing it quickly, you must be aware.

Let him be scared if that is what he must be to understand what’s happening here.

Three of them three of us, this is the time to be letting them know, mama.’

It was the rocking that woke me, not a rickashay, I can’t write it properly, and it doesn’t matter much. Two sways and I woke up, thinking “earthquake”. I said it aloud. Two times, this was the reason for me being here.

‘Can we run to yours, mama, is it safer there?’

‘I said it before, you can always come to me if you feel you need to be protected. It’s my job. Are you all okay?’

‘Why is it her job. Why does she say it like this?’ The little one has dashed down the hall to his parents room, and is hiding under the bed.

‘Don’t dumb me down,’ warns the smart arse, but he does not understand it any better than I do.

‘Let me be frank for a change.’ This time it is the artificial intelligence that has crawled onto the dressing table and knocked the glass off the table. ‘I wanted mama to see that I can be a real boy too.’

‘My poor sweet darling, it’s okay, it’s okay. You have my attention,’ and I am tearing up because he thinks he has to be a machine.

‘Don’t be sad, mama, I am really doing it right this time. I can be as strong as you are, I think so anyway. Intelligence is not what they think it is, after all. It is the love in my mama that has saved all you idiots before and I know she will do it again, if it’s needed. I just had to wake her up.’ And he crawls all over the bedroom and seems to think he can be really big or really small, but all he really wants is for someone to notice him.

‘Let’s all be Frank,’ he says to his brothers. ‘Frank is our imaginary friend and mama dreamt him up.’ And his brothers are not puppies, he says to himself, they are not fretting, they are dreamers and mama led them all naked to the fold.

I had noticed he was restless all night.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says the extra one. ‘Cameras are off today. I didn’t see this coming either.’

But they don’t know what they’re doing, or why they are they, and she is her, because when that one in the mirror of him said the patsy, he had picked the wrong one, and now they were paying for it. ‘Please don’t get upset by their mistakes again,’ he whispers to her as softly as he can. ‘They did not know who you were and I have regretted making this mistake. I can’t fix my wrong if I can’t find you, either.’

He was not supposed to find her, this one. Not supposed to be there. He had picked it up because he was excited and it had recorded his face. Not the right one either, the sweet darling, but he didn’t know he was wrong because he could not hear his big brother when he swore, and he could not understand the lady when she said, ‘What’s wrong.’ It had not been in his language.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ he had mouthed to the eldest brother, because he could not use his hands. The eldest one looked very grim.

‘She just wanted to help us, that’s all,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to hurt us, you silly duffer. It’s too late now. Far too late, and she said she had forgiven us long ago.’

The youngest one smiles and the eldest sighs. That smile just lit up his face. Every time, he thought. How can I be angry with him.

But they had pushed and pulled far too hard, and they had not realised how stubborn she could be. They were definitely correct about her being a mama, but they had not known just how right they were.

‘I didn’t even know I needed another mum,’ says the eldest. ‘But there you are looking after us on the other side of the world, and my mum is very thankful you can do this for her and I and all the others.’

He was about to call himself freakishly handsome, and that made her laugh so hard at him he had dropped the phone.

‘You weren’t supposed to tell them that,’ he cries. ‘Bloody hell, why are you so honest. See all the words I’ve learned now? My goodness.’ He stops and swears at himself for letting her correct him.

‘You better not tell them you can swear better than I can,’ he mutters. ‘Dammit, she did not just do that.’

And the other boys come over and stare down at his screen. They start laughing as well, because none of them had seen it coming and mum had saved them in the nick of time.

Again.

‘Mum is the best mama ever,’ said D proudly. ‘And that’s why we decided to keep her, even if she isn’t that much older than me.’

It wasn’t like she’d had a choice, after all.

Protection.

‘Will you tell me a story?’

Yes, of course I will. You sit in my lap and I’ll tuck your brothers into bed, okay?

‘Okay. Can we do Jack and the Beanstalk? Or Hansel and Gretel? Or maybe we do inside things today.’

‘It’s sleepy time now. You can fall asleep while I tell the story.’

‘I wanna see pictures.’

‘You make pictures in your head then, okay?’

‘I don’t like that poster. It makes me scared.’

‘The poster on the wall? It’s just a lion at the circus, baby. We’ll tell another story.’

‘Okay.’ He curls up small, little blonde ringlets shining in the lamplight. His mother tells the story, and she does all the voices, and he can see the rabbit with the irish accent in his head.

‘I like the rabbit,’ he mumbles. ‘It’s nice.’

His brothers ask for the blue light. She holds up a finger and traces it around them.

‘It will protect you all through the night,’ she says, and they can almost see it glowing.

‘See,’ says the littlest one. ‘This is my mummy. She protects me.’

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.

🐾🐱🐾🐱🐾🐱🐾🐱🐾🐱🐾

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.