Recycled Post #1

Seeing as it is my birthday I thought I might be lazy and recycle a post from September 2004. I'm sad to say that Harry de Cat is no longer with us. But his legacy remains - Bert is now an avowed cat lover.

The Proper Care and Training of Cats

When our ancient three-legged cat died I swore there would be no more cats. Then Scary Tam called around and said they'd had another litter of kittens. "What are they like?" says I. "Totally gorgeous" says he. "I might take a look at them" says I. I phoned Zoe who agreed to accompany me on the viewing expedition. "I definitely want a female" says I. "I quite agree" says she.

So we landed at Scary Tam's and the kittens were rather nice. Zoe upended the three of them and pronounced them all males. She considered a career as a vet for a time.

"I'll take one anyway" says I. And so we landed home with Harry. He was always great fun. No fear of dogs at all and he used to take great running leps at them. Nowadays we have to dose him with catnip to get his violent urges going. Needless to say we got him castrated. My friend Vinny says that the average lifespan of an unneutered tom cat is two years.

But there was one huge problem. Harry had a thing about pissing on Bert, preferably when he was asleep. The duvets I had to dump! He got a name change for a while and was known as Pisher McGee. But he was still loads of fun and got away with it. "He'll grow out of it" says I. "He'd better, or I'll shoot him" says he.

Then one day that Bert happened to be up early and he went to the front door to have a piss. As we live in the country there was no one to see him but a few thrushes in the hornbeam hedge and Pisher McGee. Bert spotted the cat, adjusted his aim and sent a good morning strone all over Harry. And as God is my judge Harry never peed on Bert or anywhere in the house after it.

Sidebar Stories

d@\/e asked exactly how many eggs a day do we get from our 19 chickens? But there's a lot more happening around my sidebar than chickens.

Daughters - 3, Parents -1, Siblings - 6, Husband - 1, Dogs - 3, Cats - 1, Chickens - 19, Calves - 3 Pigs - 3

What of the daughters? All are doing well as far I know. See for yourself. This one is making ice cream. This one appears to be in France. This one is sounding off.

The parent (Matty) is doing fine. Spent this evening barrelling around Tescos filling her trolley with the sort of pap old women like - cooked ham, white bread, Marie biscuits and People's Friends. We always separate in Tescos. Matty does her own thing, I do mine. I meet my Cousin Eye. She and her beautiful daughter admire the contents of my trolley. Eye's beautiful daughter says it's a really healthy trolley. It contains oatcakes, a papaya, cambozola cheese, apples, three pairs of skimpy knickers (this mention of skimpy knickers is going to bring droves to my blog but mind you if I said I'd got Cherub knickers in my trolley that would really up my stats. Trust me. It happened before ) and two paperbacks. BTW the knickers are for Hannah. I don't do skimpy. When you get to my age you like to keep your kidneys warm.

I also meet Jazzer and her daughter Teeny Bird. Teeny Bird is wearing a tiny little vest top. Eveyone else in Tescos is bundled up in coats and woollies. Matty also bumps into Jazzer. They nod politely to each other. Matty does not approve of Jazzer. She has taken an unreasonable dislike to Jazzers facial piercings. She pretends she does not know her name. She pretends she thinks that Jazzer is called Gnasher.

So back to Matty. We meet up at the check out. She abandons her trolley for me to deal with and scuttles off to buy a scratch card. On the way home she fills me in on the current state of play of the parish feuds. Matty takes a keen interest in local politics but is wise enough not to get involved. Some of these feuds go back to the 1930s. But, as Matty says,

They're all very good to me.

Siblings - there are six of them. Two live and work in London and one of those is a blogger. One is in Vancouver. I believe he is an entrepreneur. Two live in Real Ireland. One of those has just come back from a pilgrimage to Santander and the other is a full-time student. The youngest sib lives next to Matty. I like to call him Jolly Joe. It's ironic. He reads this blog. Hi JJ!

Husband - the current one is very recent. We've only been married for eight weeks although I've known him for a bit longer than that. We were Nellybert long before Brangelina. Marriage hasn't changed our relationship much. We still bicker, I still blog, he still plays the clarinet.

Dogs Bonnie remains on her medication. Steroids. She drinks like a fish, pisses like a cow and eats like a horse. She is doing well. The other two still do that Dirty Rotten Scunging Devil Dog thing every time they get the opportunity.

Cat - a complete bastard. I don't really want to talk about her.

Calves - are still calves.

I asked Bert,

When do the calves become bullocks?

When you cut their balls off.


Pigs - I'm a little worried about the pigs. Bert has developed a bit of a 'relationship' with them. He keeps saying he'll never be able to eat them because he loves them so much. And there's us only newly married....

Which brings me to the chickens. Dave asked how many eggs do our 19 chickens provide us with. d@\/e, at present our 19 chickens lay one egg a day. That's right. One. Mind you at least a dozen of them are roosters. We shall eat them eventually. Pearlie gets the egg.

I'm Worried About Bert

He's changing. He's not as ruggedly masculine as he used to be. I hope it's not an ageing thing for he's not even 50 yet!

First there was the slug in his cabbage. I remember a time when that wouldn't have fazed him one bit. Slug on your greens! He'd have laughed at me or the girls for making a fuss about a little thing like that.

Then today he was giving off about me running the hot water away. Isn't it a woman's thing to be moaning at men for wasting the good hot water?

But worst of all - I came into the den last night and Friends was on. 'You're not watching that are you?' I remarked as I grabbed the remote control and switched to Top Gear. He was a bit miffed. 'Well it's better than that oul crap,' says he indicating Clarkson and Denise van Outen. We had to go back to Friends. Turns out it's his current favourite programme and Joey and Phoebe are his favourite characters. Dear God! It's only a matter of time before he's out at Daniel O'Donnell concerts.

But one thing gives me hope. He's still pissing on the toilet seat.