Christmas with the Excellent Cats

[TheShellBeach]

......... Silent Night.........

Well, maybe not so silent when there's a cat about who wants to be fed.

Join us in the run up to Christmas 2023!

Said in the voice of Papa Lazarou.

That was my thought 🤣

@TheShellBeach @CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau
Yes he’s not quite 6 months old
bought him a new treat provider toy today to help the boredom

Trying to watch Call the Midwife with Linney in the way

Velvet is truly being Excellent today. Not eaten much as she’s actually becoming spherical due to us all accidentally giving her meals at the same time, but she’s snuggled up at my feet for a spot of snurring. Lovely little one.

Water continuing to rise.
Grumpy Manor is now an island (completely surrounded by water) and we have water in the garage. Downstairs loo is backed up, and apparently the sewage pumps in the area have been turned off so we been told not to flush toilets and not to use showers, baths, dishwashers, washing machines etc.
We are better off than some on the street where their houses are flooded.
Cats (especially Karl and Lenny) are desperate to go out - but sadly they can't.

I suppose I could declare the house to be a castle and legitimately claim we have a moat 😁

Oh blimey Grumpy 😱 Have you flooded before at all? I know Dad's garage floods at least once a year, but up 'til now the house itself hasn't. <touches wood, crosses fingers, holds breath etc>

Gosh, that sounds awful, poor you grumpy. To be honest, unless your cats are absolute maniacs like Velvet who don’t care about getting wet (she has jumped into every sink in this five-bathroom, three kitchen-sink house while the tap is running and also joined me in the shower), you could honestly probably safely let them out and get the reward of some soggy moggies pelting straight back in after thirty seconds! But you’re doing the right (if annoying) thing. Floods are dangerous and super scary and I am dreading the day the nearby river properly bursts its banks. Crossing my fingers very hard for you that the waters rise no higher.

That's really worrying, Grumpy. Fingers crossed the waters abate.

We flooded in 2003, 2014 (twice) and now. We are OK house-wise as ours is fairly recent and built well above the 1947 flood level. Sadly a fair few people in the street already have water in their houses.
It is a royal pain in the arse though - only access to the outside world is by wading up the road.
It's completely unsafe for cats - there is a strong flow on the floodwater.
Our road this morning. (It was still dry yesterday). Not too deep by us yet - but thigh deep further down, and apparently chest deep on the island road.
Water is still rising. Supposed to peak today 🤞

Oh my gosh Grumpy!! I really hope the peak isn’t too much higher!!

In 2003 the flooding was described as a one in a hundred year event.

Was it heck!

To be really clear, I was 100% joking about grumpy letting the cats out and proceeded to praise her for doing the right but annoying thing by not letting them out, then saying how terrifying flooding is.

Also, it’s the dying gasps of climate change denial to say these events occur once a century. In probably twenty years it’ll be every bloody Wednesday.

I was also joking about the general tendency of cats to stand crying by the door and then either just straightforwardly go “nope, bit cold actually, I’ll pass” once it’s opened after hours of feline complaints or (as ours specialise in) be let out through the door and then whiz back in through the catflap so they can pounce from behind while you’re still locking the door.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau
No problem at all with any of your comments, (and yes our cats do stand by the door, miaow to go and then think 'bugger that, it's a bit too chilly out there')👍.
Just for your information I'm a man btw (No issue with being misgendered though 🤣)

Oh sorry! I am really sorry about that and it’s cool to have a man admitting he loves cats tbh (my very tough DGF who among other things was chairman of Jaguar, Next and accountant for Alan Sugar when he started Amstrad, made no secret of his love of his Siamese who were allowed to eat cereal and milk and then his newspaper alongside him at his fancy varnished dining table and I also thought that was cool).
Velvet normally toughs it out with rain, cold etc despite having very fine fur, but she does have the attention span of half a goldfish. I was accepting a parcel for my parents the other day and said “is there an annoying little cat hanging around” and he said yep and then as he went off on his bike I heard a little mew and it was Velvet who had got bored. We’d be in real trouble if she were any cleverer as she’d be in the next county ever couple of days.

And that’s not a typo, I think he was slightly cleverer than V but a bit weirder but we did have a Siamese who would casually eat cereal with milk at the table then eat the newspaper.

No need to apologise - you made a perfectly reasonable assumption on MN. 😁
I know loads of men who like cats by the way (NDN for one 😻). I've always assumed it was Kipling's fault for suggesting men shouldn't like cats that has spread the fallacy that men don't like them.

DH "isn't a big fan of cats" hahahaha... hahahaha... hahahaha... ...

Yeah. Right. 😂

People who say they don't like cats just haven't spent time with them 🤷🏼‍♀️

Popping up to say @Grumpyoldpersonwithcats a "1 in 100 year event" does not mean once every hundred years, it means that every year there is a 1% chance of that thing occurring, so 1 in 50 = 2% chance a year etc. Each year is independent of previous years so you can have a 1 in a hundred event in 2 consecutive years, it's a statistical average over a very long period.

Apologies for interrupting this thread with boring probability theory , and very much hope that you, your home and your cats stay safe and dry, Grumpy

@Defiantlynot41 I do love your assistance with statistics and probability.

Grumpy, you mentioned the 1947 flood. Do you mean the one in Hunstanton?

Point taken about the stats. 👍
The 1947 flood I referenced is the Thames one. Building regs in our area demand a specific height above that peak for new builds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_Thames_flood

My dad maintains he doesn’t like cats. He put up with our old one who I once watched climb his thigh to bite him in a painful place perfectly fine and roughhouses with Velvet nowadays, but he put up with the old one for fifteen-ish years. He also pretends he doesn’t like chocolate or television but the chocolate disappears and the book is put down. Mysterious…

Appreciation for the stats! I am an expert on the law and can do brief stats analysis but I know that “once a century” isn’t accurate as normals will understand it any more due to climate change unfortunately. Life’s a bitch and then we die probably due to flooding. When you say it’s a once in a century event people think it means it’s going to happen once a century. It’s not, and the probabilities are increasing due to climate change as well. You could see it two years in a row nowadays, no trouble at all.

Happy times! Have a sleepy velvet to take the edge off.

Sorry to hear about the flooding Grumpy. I hope the clean up afterwards isn't too bad.

@Catsmere I'm giggling at Portarlington being a cute seaside town. Here in Ireland it's a muddy Midland town surrounded by bogs. I think the Aussies got the better deal.

Here's a picture of Mouse mid-blep.