#thestoryofthecat

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.

What is a fairy tale?

‘Doing this properly or not, are we?’

My translation is too rough for you. You can’t do this thing and I cannot help you.

The small green frog has nestled himself within the zucchini bushes and frets about what he will do next to escape the cat.

Zucchini plant in our garden.

The cat is merely a small white and black moggie who considers himself a saviour to humans. He is rather proud of himself – which is very catlike and normal for cats.

‘Do I need saving from a frog,’ thinks the human. ‘There really are not enough of them around for me to be saved from them. Perhaps you should reconsider the circumstances of el cato.’

The circumstances of el cato were deliberately falsified by other human beings. We do not return to that horrible place. He thinks this often and it has been agreed the cat’s “mother” had been right all along. He sees a large and heavy ball by a wall, coloured to resemble waves on water or electricity (which are really quite similar). It was a pond the princess had been playing beside in the original story by the brothers Grimm or was that Hans Christian Anderson? This is the purpose of the frog and the “maid” – to share these stories with new thinking and similarities that show how the blending is done.

An old float repurposed as a garden ornament. It is very heavy as it has water inside and we are not sure how the water got in there.

The frog can hear this from under the large leaves of the zucchini plant. ‘What about me,’ he burps quietly to himself. ‘Do I need saving, or can I just dig myself a hole?’

There are many questions floating around in the small garden of the family. The frog suggests the people mama do not go out to the back fence because a kangaroo child is also listening in.

They have all watched the child of the small brown kangaroo follow his mother back and forth along the hot street. Some have seen how she gets stuck when a route she used one morning is blocked the following morning and she must feed her child by a fence with no openings she can discern. Some think they should be fed, although this is not the way of the kangaroo. All she needs to find her offspring (and here the frog would grin as his mouth is wide and the perfect shape to perform such an act) is some narrow-leaved plants with lovely sweet pieces that sit just under the soil.

‘That is all I need as well,’ thinks the frog. ‘Just some plants that are damp enough I can find some insects to eat. I am very good at hunting insects.’

‘How is the translation going,’ questions the female bird. ‘Am I getting this right again?’

‘Understanding and doing is not the… damn it,’ says the frog around an insect whose legs are long and crunchy. ‘Then count me as I jump, for I would rather be a bearer of good news.’

Pleading with me will not work, for I did not put him here.

Can we see him yet, though? Is he rounded and full with new information? Can he see the light of day? Must he always be such a pain in the arse, or will the mother realise he is dreaming again?

Does she even know my Hame, thinks the kangaroo child, for he has learnt at least one language other than his own in recent years.

The mother looks up from her position at the table. ‘They are spying,’ she thinks to herself, and she is right, for they have been trying to write with her this whole time.

They do not wish to be horrible, thinks the frog, but they do not know why she thinks they are friendly.

‘I do not believe she ever thought they were friendly,’ the cat yells from the back door. ‘Oh whoops, I didn’t realise it was open,’ he thinks as the person stares down at him with vague irritation. Ducking his head to apologise for his own small thinking, he clicks and clacks his way down a dark corridor to where he knows a large and comfortable sleeping place awaits. ‘This is the only place that is friendly, and this is where I am staying. These are my people, and I am a cat.’

He thinks loudly out the window and a kangaroo child is frightened by his noisiness. 

‘Bugger off, I said.’

The little beast is dumbfounded. How did such a big thought come out of such a small cat? The cat smiles to himself. He has been training with humans, and learnt how to borrow their voices to make his own thinking louder. He leaps onto the mattress and gazes at the man who talks in his sleep.

‘This one continues to surprise me with these thoughts,’ says the wannabe demon of his large human counterpart. ‘Where is that frog again?’ He jumps off the bed.

The frog sneaks off with a plip and a plop to find himself a hole in the sand. He just wants to live another day and get some new ideas.

‘This one is too much for frogs,’ he thinks. ‘She doesn’t like me at all.’

He would be dumbfounded to know he was right.

A “recalibration” (retelling) of The Frog Prince, with dashes of Rapunzel. Spoken with Grimm determination in an Australian accent.

C.S Capewell.

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 3

The human observes the cat digging a small hole. The cat does things in the small hole by balancing over the top of said small hole. The cat then pushes sand into the small hole and proceeds to run in short aimless leaps around the tiny backyard.

The cat thinks the human is boring and should make what the cat just did sound a little more exciting. The human nods in agreement.

‘The cat has attempted to dig a small hole in the direction of Bermuda. It is highly likely he will not be able to dig all the way to Bermuda as there are things in the way, but he has attempted it. As I watch, with slight horror, the cat’s tail resembles the actions of a small lever which, I assume, means there is something coming out of his (the cat is a male) rear end (his bottom). This does not take as long as it normally would, so perhaps I am incorrect in assuming it is what I thought it was, and perhaps the cat is ‘releasing water’ instead. The cat then hurriedly covers whatever it was he deposited in said hole and makes the decision to run around the small backyard with gay abandon.’

The cat would sigh if it could sigh. The human has heard it snore before, so thinks to herself it is highly possible the cat could sigh.

The cat thinks the human is boring. The human nods in agreement. The cat notes there may also be a couple of words one could consider “politically incorrect”. The human frowns, then makes the decision to use a lot of words that, if taken with context when joined with other words, may be considered highly amusing even if they are “politically incorrect”.

The cat, if the cat could smile, would be smiling right about now. The human is showing her teeth on the inside, and her inner teeth are surrounded by a very large upward smile.

‘Hehehehehehehe,’ thinks the human.

‘The cat has decided to start removing sand from my backyard, from the desperate attempt of a garden bed to be exact, and has also decided he is helping to fertilise it. This is acceptable, even though I do not wish to be observing it right now. He now covers it all up, like any cat would, as they do their best to be clean, even if it is not always in a situation where a cat can be clean. Having done that, he proceeds to use a Thesaurus to describe the motions he is performing around the backyard. Perhaps the motions are considered joyful dancing in that he has helped to fertilise the planet? Perhaps the motions are considered thoughtless, although he seems to land with incredible precision in certain places so as not to injure himself? This is debatable.

Perhaps, thinks the cat, if the cat could think which is also debatable, the human could ask other humans to describe what it is their cats do in backyards when they are doing what this cat has done. Perhaps other humans cat companions do not have the pleasure of having a backyard and need to use small boxes instead?

Perhaps they should have a bloody go then, thinks the human and considers the fact she has written that down. This may be considered as thinking as not out loud but as ‘being recorded’. In her head, the human dons a nondescript yet rakishly attired head covering and waves a pen shaped like a sword or a feather.

‘Speak to me of an Irish cat,’ she cries, then smiles in a slightly lopsided manner as she makes a dashing yet fabulous exit from the area within which she has been writing.

‘Ah ha!’ A distant persian laughs with glee. ‘I recognise this dance.’ He turns to his performers and claps his paws. ‘Begin.’

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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.

The Dog’s Job

Peeing upon a lamp-post is a dog’s job. It means he leaves his scent behind and adopts a new one.

‘Is this the why of people’s wearing perfume,’ asks small cat.

His people-mama laughs, for this is indeed amusing.

Small cat says, ‘I rub bottom on ground because worms.’

Possum from far distant past thinks,’ I rub bottom along ground because scent glands. I mark my spaces too.’

‘Ah,’ says small cat. ‘I rub my face on things for same reason, and do wee directly at people face for this reason too.’

 There is much face pulling from the crowd of poppies. They are vastly amused, but not surprised at all.

This is the truth of a cat, whether he be large or small. Children must cover their faces sometimes, for a cat is an animal and this is not pleasant, even in a zoo.

‘Do not come too close to a cat when he or she is in this mood. It means he or she is coming back this way again soon, and must remember the places he or she has been.’

‘Like a goldfish,’ a small child demands, and stamps their foot.

‘Not like a goldfish, no. Like something else entirely.’

Great cat yawns and shows its teeth. None of them are missing. ‘Not false either,’ says Great Cat. He is proud of his teeth, including the wisdom that remains. ‘She of wisdom one has a small cat, I of wisdom four have a big cat. I like to think I am a cat in need, but I am a cat in sorrow.’

Small cat, if small cat could, wrinkles his whitened brow. ‘Huh?’ He does not understand.

‘Too late, I have pulled one teeth.’

‘One tooth,’ says the small cat’s mother.

‘Bugger me dead,’ cries a laughing dog, and they have scored another wicker basket.

‘Let Moses be in this one and be found,’ whispered a commentator to himself.

‘Oi,’ says cat friend. ‘Oi oi. You are cheeky baskets.’