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.

Yay for GSCs!

George is near me. I keep meaning to go and visit him. Love his Facebook posts.

Oh Papergirl1968, please go to see George! I only follow him on Twitter/X but I think he posts the same on both Twitter and Facebook. He is very social media savvy as I think he does Instagram too.

I've been to the Bluebell Railway Grumpy. It was very nice but sadly no cats to be seen.

Hope all the various construction activities for your son's flat are going well, Shell, as well as the out patient appointments. The photo of Picard impatiently waiting for your return was very funny.

Remember Tama the Stationmaster (and now honorary eternal stationmaster and spirit goddess) in Japan, and her successors?

I used to be regularly greeted by a very friendly ginger cat at Staines Station when I commuted from there 10 years ago. The staff in the station used to leave food out for him. I think he lived in the flats opposite as I saw him coming out from there a couple of times looking guilty. He behaved as if he owned the station car park. 😼

Thanks everyone for the festive photos...even if they aren't recent...Christmas photos of cats never get old...well, actually, any cat photos never get old and are always appreciated!😻

@TheShellBeach decorating at ours is the same.

Bah humbug - shouldn't start on Christmas stuff until Friday when it's December. I am currently ignoring the office team tree which someone put up last week, and won't acknowledge it's presence until 1 December.

They all seem to think I'm a bit of a Grinch but come Friday the USB powered mini fibre optic tree will be adorning my work laptop, and the mini bottle brush trees will be scattered about on the desks. There may or may not be tinsel around the screens, though the tinsel in my hair won't be until the week before the actual day. The battery operated mini tree that dangles from my rear view mirror should come out next week or the week after.

Look at this gorgeous Mexican cat. My sister doesn't really like cats (I know, she's clearly mad) but keeps sending me photos of the cats she's met in her neighbourhood. I have asked her to get my nephew to bring this one back for me when he goes to visit next month, but apparently I "have enough cats".

Oh, lovely! Your sister is probably on the right side of the legal/practical situation, sad as that may be. We had a ginger tabby feral queen move in to our garage with six kittens - Amber and her babies, named by me Ginger, Topaz, Sunflower, Sunshine and… whatever the other two were called, it’s been over twenty years. As our (utterly disgusted at the intruders) farm cat had been one of the first cats ever to get a pet passport we had to find them new homes and leave them behind in France instead of putting them through vaccination, horrible travel and weeks of quarantine. Very sadly Topaz was killed on the road. Less sadly but a little oddly Sunshine was renamed Daisy. My parents got me and my sister Siamese kittens as consolation when we returned to the UK and mine was named Sunshine (my sister and I both had our favourites in the litter). A lovely and lucky but ultimately bittersweet experience. The worst thing about cats is having to say goodbye so soon.

I had never heard of Tana, Catsmere. What an amazing story. Despite the lack of a station master's cap and name badge, Grumpy's Sttaines cat definitely looks as if he thinks he is in charge!

If I fits (sort of), I sits.

Doh! Pressed wrong button.

I bet he could get in there. Dare him :) (if I’ve misgendered, apologies).

Velvet always has her forelegs extended in her basket, and goodness knows why because it was bought for a cat over twice her size so she fits with no effort.

Today’s tally is attempting to climb an armchair four times, falling off said chair five times, an unsuccessful attempt at a backflip, making me laugh aloud three times and a sortie into the frosty grass. Now peacefully asleep on my bed doing her giant furry slug impression.

Back to the vets for us. Poor Matt’s waterworks have gone into spasm again and he needs another catheter to drain it, although they’re not going to leave it in.
I think the dog is stressing him out more than I realised but he will insist on being in the same room as me and dog, and not staying out of the way upstairs.

I do love to hear of Velvet’s exploits.

Oh Papergirl. Poor Matt, and poor you.

@Papergirl1968 I love to share them! And I’m going to make a generous assumption that she loves her fans :)

Poor Matt. I might be extrapolating a shade too far (into the mind of a cat) but could it be that he has some unresolved anxiety about the dog and instead of hiding, he wants to know what’s going on so he can react and stay safe? This is purely based on the fact that as a person with quite severe PTSD, I would much rather have threatening people in my eyeline than not knowing what they’re doing, and as an animal that instinct might be even stronger.

Also I’ve been reminded by another thread about these adventures of other excellent cats who are neither velvet nor Mr N.

My grandparents took on the care of our Siamese siblings when we had to emigrate to the US on one day’s notice (we’d been warned, but thought it wouldn’t actually happen). Our absolutely hapless Custard Cream (the same one who was run over and would spray Christmas presents and power sockets) didn’t hunt much, but he would occasionally bring down something unsuitable such as live baby birds, a baby muntjac - juvenile Siamese are small so this was quite the exploit - and for variety’s sake he also got beaten up by a squirrel, who bit his leg to the bone. His sister was mostly quite content to become slowly more and more obese, my grandparents are real cat spoilers, but was capable of the odd mouse. But one day Custard brought in a young ferret. Unfortunately my grandad had an electric/Hammond organ with large speakers and you’ve guessed it, the ferret ended up in the speaker. Custard just randomly left at this point but Sunny and my grandparents were around so they decided to tug this enormous organ speaker out onto their front garden. I’m afraid that’s the end of that story, but even more ridiculously Mr N brought in a ferret, or something similar, to our house several years later. I found myself building book walls out of the collected works of Charles Dickens and lying on the ground trying to find this creature. We never found out where it escaped but it must have done.

Linney posing by the Christmas tree

......... and Linney having a nose round the back of it

Every time you post a picture of Linney I think what a handsome chap he is 😁.

@twobluechickens another glorious picture of a grumpy-looking black cat.

I love them! They always look pissed off.

Here's DD's cat, Toby, who went OTRB some years ago, but was very, very good at that "I am not amused" face:

And here is my friend's cat, Goliath, at Christmas time

Thank you!

I'm waiting for the 3rd photo captioned "Here's Linney having knocked over the Christmas tree." 😉