Where did August go?

Too fast that's where it went...

The month featured a tale of two cats, one of them - an old friend - died, we will have her wake tomorrow. The other started visiting us at Gin O' Clock every evening, she accepts a piece of salami and then uses our garden as her personal bathroom.

My father is very ill I have been visiting as often as I can. He's actually very calm and comfortable, clearly at peace with the prospect of an ending but we are all in fear at the idea of a world without him in it.

 

Smelly Cat

I was in London last month looking after a very hairy cat. My temporary home was a flat with  living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and 'another room' I guessed what this room was for and tried to keep the door to that room shut but the latch wasn't strong and the cat could easily push it open and loved going in there. 

My mother paid a visit. She noticed the cat scratching at the 'naughty' door

What's in there?

Nothing much but the cat loves it and her fur gets very smelly in there.

Mum opened the door and took an investigative sniff - ah - cannabis - she's getting high in there

Offensive Waste Driver

 = Top job in my feed today - not sure how offensive they want but I'll give it my best shot.

 

I've recently been keeping company with  Belcher, a fat snorey old cat who lives in Cornwall

Cornwall  is a land of diverse residents. On leaving the main road to Lands End I follow signs to Gnome World then Screech Owl Sanctuary then Indian Queens,  I drive on past these delights - my destination is a pretend old village built by our newly Kinged Charles III.

Belcher is not impressed by the amount I feed him and is highly suspicious of me - if he's not giving me hard stares from his food bowl he stands sentry under a plant-festooned coffee table. On the rare occasions that I do feed him, I'm rewarded by an extensive and close-up washing ritual, his plumpness makes this difficult so it takes a while.

Turkey

After the queen's funeral, the Man and I took a holiday. We stayed in a sleepy town on the Turkish coast,  lodging with our friend Selma in the pension she runs with the help of her three daughters. 

The town is notable for having a mountain that has been perpetually on fire for ever - one can walk up a path at any time of night or day and come to an area where flames are burning out of holes in the rock. These flames are visible to boats on the sea. People thought it to be the breath of a Chimera - a fearsome snakey-goaty-lionish creature that lives inside the mountain. 

Every evening, large tour groups follow men with flags to see the flames, where they roast marshmallows, and drink beer at sunset.

We went to the flamey mountain before dawn, the route involves meandering uphill for a couple of kilometres, then a steep kilometre of increasingly impressive stone steps, it was still quite dark when we turned the corner and saw all the fires dancing on the rocks ahead of us, - and completely magical. A cat had followed us to the flames and we'd noticed bobbling headtorch lights much further up the mountain path but at that dawn moment we were just the three of us being in awe of the phenomenon.

Once the sun was up the debris left by the marshmallow revellers from previous evenings became apparent, the headtorch lights ahead had gone, there were now voices and then young people with backpacks.

The young people were Russians, Putin had announced a partial mobilisation a few days previously, it seems that few were prepared to fight his war, everyone knew what happened in Russia if you put up opposition and the young are trying to leave in their tens of thousands. These people told us about the limited options for ways out - most borders are closed, their homes were now abandoned and they didn't forsee that they could ever return - whatever might succeed Putin was not likely to be any better.

When we  returned to our pension we started noticing all the Russian cars and started meeting other young Russians, they had also backed what seemed like the only viable alternative - Navalny -  apparently now very weakened by continued torture in detention, there is little faith that he will be allowed to recover.

This month I was a theatrical landlady, a doting daughter and a Cornish-cat sitter for one lazy cat and his lively sister. The lively one pissed on my bed the day I arrived and then decided that I was probably ok and spent the rest of my visit prancing around and testing my bath water.

 In my capacity as landlady, I hosted a wardrobe mistress from Singing in the Rain - thirty cast members  and they all get wet at the end -TWICE a day!!! That is a lot of dustbin-fulls of sodden clothing to lug upstairs to the laundry.

My Ma is in better spirits, I will post about our spot-the-queen walk next time

Kittens

 

The beginning of November was spent in London in the company of a kitten doing all the adorable kitten things including sneakily creeping into cupboards and drawers then getting stuck inside.

The sea temperature has plummeted, I'm still swimming and wanted to share the experience but it's harder to draw myself encased in a block of ice than I imagined*, enough to say that the commonly used term for the lobster red colour of the swimmer's raw flesh as they haul themselves out of the water is 'The Clevedon Tan'.

*I post about chilly swimming with a monotonous regularity, the web view of this blog shows tags that could lead you to more swimming-related posts - this one is typical

Low tide at dawn

 

London 

scrunching feet on  sandy-gravelly beach  

sounds of lapping water  

geese 

first visit here in over a year and I'm easing myself back   

 

looking after a cat that I first knew years ago  

her feline friend died while I was away

 

 

 

I was looking after a pet

in Cornwall. The owner tried to pass it off as a cat but it's clearly the lovechild of a fox and a ferret, her fur is beige with burnt edges and her face is actually more pointy than my drawing. Also she might appear delicate but this killer is adept at rabbit-hunting.

at the beginning of March

my hand underwent surgery. The surgeon gave me a sketch of what he did and I've been showing it to all and sundry in the manner of a proud parent-to-be showing a baby scan.

It's still the recovery period (and for another month or so at least), doing lots of flexing and massage to build strength in my thumb joint, to bring the nerve endings back to life and reduce scar tissue - it's sore and I can't drive or put my bra on!

It's been a sad month - a dear friend and beloved member of our neighbourhood died at the end of February.


I am setting up an art project in Surrey, I'm still in the preparatory phase. As I'm not able to drive and I'm unfamiliar with the area I took up the offer to go and look after a long-haired cat near the estate where I'll be working. The hairy tomcat spent his days and nights out and about, getting up to mischief no doubt. He'd slink back to the house with evidence of these adventures on his prodigious coat - bits of hedge and moss stuck all over him, surprising odours hitching a ride too - one morning he came in smelling as though he'd been in the sewers.

Back home on Friday I decided to try swimming in the lake by the ocean with my injured hand, the temperature is still quite icy, as the cold seeped in my thumb joint complained and I had to return to dry land swimming single handedly, the poorly one held above my head as though I was calling for help.

Cat repair person for hire

I've returned to Devon to look after a cat called Edna, I was here a couple of months ago. Edna was a gaunt, trembly old thing when I arrived but after just 10 days in my care Edna turned into a lovely shiny thing, her tembliness became bounce, she had plumped up nicely and her owners exclaimed with joy about the new, improved cat waiting for them.

I seem to have discovered how to work the cat reset button

I'm not saying I can mend a properly broken cat, my abilities lie in fixing those slightly manky cats, the ones that have gone a bit boss-eyed and keep forgetting to clean themselves, or the ones that over-lick one area of their body, also the bony neurotic cats that shiver for no good reason and I'm pretty good at eliminating asthma attacks. I've had no luck with dirty-protest cats like the Bum-Crayoner but I do think there might be a call for a professional cat-plumper-and-polisher (feline-smoother/cat valet?) - I'm working on my marketing for this new business

New Cats

the excitement's died down and I'm back at my Cat Woman day job in London with two fat boy cats - a cross-looking-black one and an anxious black-and-white one.  The anxious one nibbles things in other people's gardens which can result in an allergic reaction in the form of a swollen lower lip which makes him look a bit daft.

I'm in Brixton, which is one of my favourite bits of London and really great for not reading the academic tomes or writing the big essays that I am supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW.

Today I went touring fabric shops with Pam where we got lost in shiny things, she bought several metres of silver embossed plastic tablecloth which she might use as wallpaper in her new bathroom. I bought a metre of silky silvered fabric because the-man-at-home  wants something like tough silver cling film to make a 'sound camera' and this might be the stuff to do it.

When I meet a new cat

 -  it is important that I put my bag on the floor so they can have a sniff and see what sort of thing I am.

Just as I've been pussy-footing around in London, The Man has been in Chile filming pumas - big grey cats who wear a lot of mascara - sassy cats. 

I watched footage from a recent trip - pumas in their hundreds were creeping up on the crew, a cameraperson might feel a whisker touching their arm then slowly get up to do a controlled crouch-ey backward walk away from dinner time.

This action looked great played backwards but nevertheless I was a bit alarmed - the numbers, the closeness !!!

I was assured there was nothing to worry about

They're just bag-sniffers, they're exactly the same as your cats

I'm in Bethnal Green

keeping company with a large male cat in a tiny ground floor flat. I'm under instructions not to give in to Porky's requests for more food and must watch out for the lady who sometimes lets herself into the front garden at night, convinced that the cat is starving, she likes to push food through the catflap-in-the-window.

It's all about bodies lately - my research has led me to reading about London burial places and bodies on the Thames Foreshore. 

I teach Life Drawing in an old mortuary* - sited near the place on the Thames foreshore where bodies tend to wash up. Our model for the next couple of weeks is a body builder, pumped to the point that his head doesn't quite belong on that body but this might be a help to students who worry about being realistic.

*no longer functioning as a mortuary

image: Lucy Mcrae

This week has mainly been wet

by day I have been on the Thames foreshore scrubbing chunks of ship and other items embedded in the beach and visible at low tide - this is part of an archaeological survey and a pleasant way to spend a morning - even when it's raining which it did between bursts of spectacular sunshine.


At night I have been creeping down to the gym in the Glamorous Apartment Block. It's a bit spooky weaving through ranks of gigantic walking machines, rowers and other pulley contraptions but finally I arrive in the darkly shiny spa. It's a novelty for me and I am alone here so I spend far too much time steaming, sauna-ing and jacuzzi-ing before emerging prune-like and squeaky clean to drift back to my penthouse where the cats are waiting for me to play Evil Villains which involves caressing them on my lap as we swivel in the Big Evil Villain chair surveying the entirety of London laid out before us.

as usual I am kept under close surveillance

The Look Out team consists of: 
The-One-That-Perches-On-Things
The-One-That-Peeps-Through-Things
and 
The-One-That-Licks-Things-To-Keep-Calm

This week I am in luxury accommodation

 this is my view 

and these are my new friends

I have become fascinating

everything I do is scrutinised at close quarters    

the cats have a dirt tray in the bathroom 

which they never use - because they go outside for that ...

 unless I go in there and don't shut the door really tightly

I am the TV

at night the cats sit on the window sill outside to watch the latest episode of Me

Conversation with 5 year old who has decided that she wants to become a doctor

our lungs are amazing! our whole body is made of lungs; our eye balls, our fingers, our hair...

so what are our lungs made of?

pottery

The new household

Fred and Ginger are prize-winning visions of sleekness their home is full of toys and play towers

Fat boy and Fluffy are the hobo cats who live outside - Fluffy  is timid and has a very tiny head on her fat grey body, Fat Boy is her father - an enormous tiger-striped champ with a broken ear, his wide eyeballs give him an air of shockedness

I have been instructed to take care of all these cats - there is an entire room full of food for them including a fridge and a freezer packed with prime cuts of beef and chicken from the butcher.

This is Black Pete, the one-eared neighbourhood pirate cat - we are all scared of him

Mealtimes

Gary makes sure there's no funny business with the knives, Brian and Nigel cover the exit -Barbara is sitting on my feet