Three things I have learned recently

Following on from last time's revelations about Paddy the cat's nocturnal mouse-munching activities, he remains shut out of the bedroom at night - something he is clearly not happy with. So, as the rumination of rodents failed to have any impact, he has reverted to emotional manipulation to gain access. As soon as he hears the alarm clock go off in the morning, the whining and scratching at the door begins.  I have learned that, if he is ignored for more than a couple of minutes, the supplicating furry arms appear:-

Followed by a slightly more insistent gesticulation:-

And when that doesn't work (mainly because I am laughing and trying to take pictures very early in the morning which is my excuse for the shocking quality) there comes the vaguely threatening two-paws approach:-

The second thing I have learned this weekend is this....If you are in a DIY shop and have to dodge out of the way of an injured man using his walking aid to point out the location of the paint to his wife, do not say to your husband "blimey, that bloke nearly hit me in the face with his crutch" because it will make him snort with inappropriate laughter and everyone will stare at you.

And the final thing I have learned lately is that, if you discover the lasagne you just used to make a delicious meal for your family is 2 years out of date, say nothing.  They all survived the experience and they never read this blog anyway.  Right?

The proof.....sssshhhhh!

Named and shamed

Enuff said...

The further adventures of the Ginger Ninja or how to get a teenager to tidy up

This is Paddy.  

You may recognise him as he is perched in his favourite flowerpot on the right, so you probably see him whenever you visit.  I am a cat person.  I do like dogs but I can’t bear all that incessant walking in the rain/sleet/snow, the necessity to bathe them regularly or have your house and furniture stink and the ever-present, unconditional devotion is a bit of a pisser too, TBH.  And there is no-one and nothing on this earth whose turds I wish to scoop out of the garden.

Nope – give me a cat any day.  I like a bit of haughty indifference – a bit of “well, I can take you or leave you” and a few snooty looks.  The thing I don't enjoy about cats is the hunter-gatherer instinct.  I have written about this before here and there have been many times when Paddy has brought all manner of disgusting wildlife into the house – some of it alive and some of it rather mangled.  I still haven’t quite found the product that successfully gets rodent blood out of carpets.

Now that you have met Paddy, let me introduce you to these:-

These are my daughter’s Doc Martin’s.  They are the real deal and I shuddered and swallowed hard as I coughed up over £90 for them a few weeks ago.  I’m trying to look at it on a cost-per-wear basis as they will last for decades. (They’d better).  And lo, she brought them home and the Shah did laugh and rant and call her “Like Minnie Mouse” and she did hit him hard.

Now daughter is inclined to come home and kick off her footwear, leaving it wherever it falls.  When I got sick of falling over these giant boots, I instructed her to leave them at the bottom of the stairs where they would be out of the way.  This worked well for a while until I realised the fatal flaw in this plan.

The bottom of the stairs is, basically, the killing fields.  Don't ask me why Paddy likes to bring wildlife in and ritually slaughter it under the coats hanging there, but he does and it’s not uncommon to find a neat little pile of guts waiting there for us.  So, one morning recently, it felt odd to wake up without Paddy on the bed or nearby.  He is always around in the mornings as he is ruled by his stomach.  I shambled along to the top of the stairs and this is what I saw:-

                                                      

 A quick call out to the Shah ensued (it being a blue job to rid the house of all rodents, living or dead).  He very grumpily lumbered along and took the offending boot out into the garden and shook it out, depositing a little field mouse in a flower bed whilst I distracted Paddy with some of these 

which he loves more than life itself.

So far so good.  The Shah and I sniggeringly came to an agreement that we wouldn’t say anything to the daughter as we knew she would be less than impressed (understatement of the century) to think that there had been any kind of wildlife sheltering in her boot, probably crapping itself with fear.  Paddy worked the innocent look:-

That all went fine.  Until yesterday.  I took some pictures of Paddy being daft in the garden and the daughter grabbed my phone to look through them...

Daughter: (flicks through pictures) Oh bless Paddy!  Look at him, he's such a sweetheart!  Hey - what’s this? (brandishes phone under my nose)

Me (weakly): Um a picture of Paddy admiring your boots...?

Her:  WTF?  DID HE HAVE A MOUSE IN MY BOOTS?  WT ACTUAL F?  ARE YOU TELLING ME A MOUSE HAS SHAT IN MY BOOT?

Me: (Trying to hide laughter and failing) um probably...

Her: I DON’T BELIEVE THIS – THEY’RE GOING UP TO MY ROOM RIGHT NOW!!!

(stamps up the stairs, is not seen again for some hours).

Me:  Result!  Thanks Paddy. (showers cat with extra treats)

Squirreled away ...

Because I am a good and careful mother and I make sure I feed my children (and their friends) a balanced, nutritious diet, I ordered in Pizza a couple of nights ago. Well, I have my excuses. I was due to go out with a couple of girlfriends who are known to my kids as ‘the usual suspects’ because they are the people I see most of for GNOs (Girls’ Nights Out in case you hadn’t managed to figure that one out).

We had decided to go and see A Single Man, the film for which Colin Firth was Oscar-nominated, on the grounds that the chances of any of our husbands taking us to see a film with gay men in it were - well - what can I say but oink, oink, flap, flap... I had arranged all this, cheerfully forgetting that TD wanted to come home with a friend, tart themselves up, grab a bite to eat and then be transported back to school to watch their mates in a Gymnastic display. I had also forgotten that the Shah had headed off to the Midlands somewhere on a business trip (for which read ‘Getting Smashed in the Hotel Bar’ Trip). Not that the culinary welfare of my children would have been much different if the Shah had been in residence – it would have been Pizza out of the freezer as opposed to Pizza out of the Delivery Man’s scooter box. But I digress.

So....the pizza man rings the doorbell, the girls are upstairs and I hear TS coming in through the back door from his hockey practice. As I open the front door Paddy, the ASBO cat, has obviously come up behind me and shoots past and out into the front garden. Nothing unusual in that – Paddy is obsessed with the front door, spending many happy hours staring at it, willing it to open.  I pay the nice man, take the boxes and shut the door again.  I turn and yell out to the girls (by now half way down the stairs)and TS that Pizza’s up. Then I take one step forward in the direction of the kitchen and land fatefully on something soft and yielding. Of course I jumped a mile, thinking that I had stepped on the other cat’s tail or something, but he hadn’t yowled so that didn’t quite ring true. Holding the pizza boxes flat in front of me meant that I couldn’t actually see my feet, so I lifted the boxes up to look at what I had stepped on.

There, supine on the hall rug, lay a very large, very mauled and very dead squirrel.

(Cue voice over from Keifer Sutherland...) What follows takes place between 6pm and 6.22pm last Tuesday evening...

Actually, what follows is a bit of a blur. I do believe I shrieked “FUUUUUUUUCK” at the top of my lungs and ran into the sitting room. The girls screamed in unison and shot back up the stairs. Big beardy TS also bawled something beginning with ‘F’ and ran through the house, driven by a morbid fascination, to have a look at the corpse. I also have a vague memory of yelling “where’s your (expletive deleted) father when I need him?” as it dawned on me that TS’s rodent phobia (see previous posting entitled A Tale of Two Kitties...) meant that he was going to be feck-all use in clearing away the carcass.  I was so utterly repulsed by the sight of this giant rat-with-a-furry-tail spread-eagled on my favourite rug that I could hardly bring myself to go near it, and I’m not the squeamish type (well not really).   Then, of course, I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t dead, merely unconscious which actually made me want to retch as I got close to it.

Eventually, I had to grab the coal tongs and two carrier bags, one inside the other for safety, and then gingerly, and at arm’s length, pick it up and bag it, tying the ends in a double knot. Meanwhile, the girls had kept up a stream of squeals and “like ewwww, grrrrooossssss, Mum” from halfway up the stairs where they remained, gazing horrified through the banisters until the coast was clear.

So, being the kind of good and careful mother I really am, I then spent a happy ten minutes chasing TS round the house with dead squirrel in a bag to get him back for leaving me with the cadaver.

As I left for my GNO, his voice drifted after me down the garden path...”You are a bad, bad person!”

He loves me really. Honest.