The Very Eventful Lives of the Excellent Cats

[TheShellBeach]

Calling all cats and their overworked slaves - join us as we grudgingly accept that every day is National Cat Day as far as our moggies are concerned.

@TheBalletCats I love the image of them racing out to get a ride up the stairs! Hope all goes well and safely with your stairlift.

Fizzby showing her multitasking skillz - tail-chasing during lap time.

@Catsmere thank you 🙂 am getting a stairlift & a wheelchair ramp & it feels very strange to be excited about either; but the freedom they represent is exciting & there’s nothing to be gained from marshwiggling about how I wish I didn’t need them 🤷🏻‍♀️

@TheBalletCats how very true, it's a pain to need them but there it is.

Love the term marshwiggling btw - Puddleglum was one of my favourite characters in that series.

I loved Puddleglum too - very creative use of his name. There’s a superb, very pessimistic echo of him in the Song of Ice and Fire as well. Dolourous Edd if I remember correctly, but he’s obviously not a Marsh-wiggle. Best of luck with your new freedom tools!

There’s something very satisfactory about “marshwiggling” as an adjective: it encompasses so much in the single word. Puddleglum is a truly spectacular character name - & a beautifully written character too. I did have a slight marshwiggle on Wednesday I must admit: I had an AFO fitted on Tuesday, but it’s a type that [partly] attaches to your shoe rather than the plastic calliperesque thing. I needed to leave it attached to my shoe to be able to fasten it. My daddy, collecting me for an appointment on Wednesday, “helpfully” removed it & passed me the AFO & my shoe & I cried from sheer frustration because I couldn’t fix it & I didn’t want to need it & I wanted to be back in pointe shoes not… yes, well, that lasted about 30 seconds, but 😶

It is exciting. And I’ve asked wheelchair services to do a reassessment, which may take months, but will hopefully result in a lighter chair. (Subject, of course, to the cats’ approval - Balanchine is very fond of the cushion on my current one, & likes to reclaim his throne by taking a flying leap into it as it’s manoeuvred into the house. If I’ve had to use patient transport I always warn them - & try to stop him - but 4.3kg of fast-flying floof has been fielded by more than one 🤦🏻‍♀️) .

Oh Ballet, I am sorry though. I can in a tiny way appreciate how frustrating the loss of ability is and how you just want to be ‘you’ again. But as you say, nothing to be achieved by it. We are who we are now.

I must say though, that Nijinsky putting his collar safely next to your phone actually melted my heart this morning 🖤

I want this bed. I need this bed. I suspect it is just slightly out of my price range though.

(((Hugs))) to everyone going through shitty times.

I shudder to think how much that bed is even without taking exchange rates into account! 🙀

Oh my gosh!!! It’s amazing!!
Although I do doubt it’d fit up my stairs

I'd be prepared to take my window out 😂

DH would be prepared to move to another bedroom 🤷🏼‍♀️

Here's Leroy in a box because... well, just because 🥰

I'm with your DH Yes. While it's very amusing, I'm not convinced I'd want to sleep in it.

It reminded me of this.

I'm trying to tidy a load of car parts out 9f the dining room. (Don't ask 🤣)
The cats are not helping by commandeering every box I get out to use, either to attack me or each other.

That’s a gorgeous picture of Sybil!

One of my mother’s friends regularly has to tidy out small aeroplane (Tiger Moth) parts out of their dining room! Lovely pictures of both cats, I just want to give them both a good cuddle!

I mentioned the Tiger Moth parts to Mrs Grumpy in a 'you see, it could be worse' kind of way.
I've had a distinctly unimpressed reaction 🤣.

Sorry it didn’t help! Unfortunately “it could be worse” is often counterproductive at least at first… you could try persisting by saying the clutter eventually extended to a live bantam hen nesting behind the TV (the friend got understandably tired of tidying up).

Velvet has so far managed to fall off a sofa twice and climb a sturdy hardwood door when my boyfriend left - having shown no signs of liking him or wanting to go outside prior to that. She’s also done a sideways roll right across the kitchen floor for no reason, she was playing with the rug (no soft furnishing left behind) and ended up just rolling over and over until she crashed into a door. I’m putting that on the “stupid” side of the balance. On the “clever” side I put on a vaporiser for aforementioned boyfriend, who has a cold, and Velvet managed not to touch it at all. Here she is having a snuggle.

I barely slept last night so it feels several hours later than it is. Flerble. Balanchine keeps putting his paw on the lens/screen when I try to take his photo, so I attach a photo of him & Nijinsky standing outside the kitchen while my brother puts out their food, doing their Bisto Kitts routine. (Have included image of [one of] original Bisto Kids advertisement[s] for context.)

@LostCats
Thank you. I try to think - obvious a choice as it is - of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. Not only for the most-famous “I am large, I contain multitudes” but also its opening:
“The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.“

@YesItsMeIDontCare
That bed looks ridiculously comfy. And Leroy looks both adorable & as if you’d better have got the good biscuits out of you’re going to disturb his importing catting with your humaning.

@Grumpyoldpersonwithcats
I think you’ll find the cats are “strategically occupying” the boxes to prevent a catastrophic loss of box (their [un]natural habitat) not commandeering them 🤔

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau
I feel there has been a Tiger Moth/chicken cliffhanger here… poultry X 1930s bi-plane parts is not a crossover one would immediately think of 😄 Top snuggling by Velvet there 🥰

@Catsmere
Fizzby looks adorable!! (Also, on a side note, I have cups v like that to prevent me from accidentally baptising myself - or worse, one of the cats - if I have hot squash/juice/chocolate. They really are ridiculously good, even if they made me realise I apparently stored lots of memories of drinking from my Tommee Tippee cup: I could probably have used the space for something more useful; but never mind. Lovely blanket too.)

@TheBalletCats, do you have fingerprint recognition on your phone? Balanchine may be plotting something. If several kilos of Dreamies turn up from Amazon in the next few days, this would confirm my theory.

@TheBalletCats yes, the sippy cup is a godsend - I bought it for Mum because she baptised the carpet several times (we now have a stain that won't go until it's steam cleaned, and stuffed if I'm doing that while there's one aged parent and two cats to clear out of the room). Only drawback is it's remarkably difficult to clean.

Fizzby (which is one of Phoebe's nicknames) is very good at adorable, she's been practicing a long time. 😻

I love that bed. It looks so snuggly. I couldn't imagine buying one like it though. Inspired by Yes's find, here is another cat bed for humans and a sofa. I see the sofa is now discontinued which doesn't surprise me.

That couch reminds me of this gorgeous old gif

Whoops, try again

MN just ate my message & Jin says it is past my bedtime. An adorable wee face, but not one to argue with!

Is it only me that finds those beds Absolutely Terrifying?

My solution to the spills (and, in my case, food dropping) is to choose carpets that are very forgiving of spills. I have always been clumsy and lazy, and I now just accept that I am.