cat burglar

ahem ..... seem to have replaced talking about the weather with talking about cats. A temporary state of affairs I hope because soon there'll be lots of things happening in the garden I can write about. 

Instead of bringing in the usual carnage of very small mice, moles, birds, bunnies etc. Pocket (quarter Bengal) brought home a pound of sausages.(uncooked) Heaven knows where he stole them from - we are ten miles from a butchers - I can only imagine they came from someone's kitchen. Either that or they've started production in the shed where the pigs are kept just a few yards from our house. He obviously knew he had done wrong and furtively dropped them on the lawn when he saw me. But his greed over took him and picking them up again started to run off towards the bushes where he could eat them undisturbed. However he picked up the end of the washing line (which had fallen on the ground)in his mouth,with the sausages and when he'd run the length of the line -  was brought up sharp! You could see his mind working out whether to keep trying to run or put the sausage down. I wonder if it's the Bengal in him - imagine what he'd bring home if he were half or even full Bengal. I guess he'd be hauling home wildebeest. 

 Anyway he pretty much rules the roost up here - Nancy the black cat keeps clear of him when they're not rolling around the floor locked in some spitting, turbo charged bundle of fur. When I lived in London and had another cat, all the cats in the the neighboured would come into the house through the cat flap. I think he held cat parties when I was out. I had to invest in a magnetic cat flap which means your cat wears a magnetic key on its collar and the flap only opens for the cat with the key. I had images of a lot of cat collar swapping going on in the community. The downside of this was that his magnet would get stuck to anything metal. I found him attached to the fridge once and another time he went trotting past me with a lot of dress making pins stuck to his collar. 

It inspired me to write this poem.

What me?

Harry enjoying the joke about the sausages

Animal Magnetism.

You seem to have a fatal, metal attraction

drawn inextricably  to any iron contraption

an ally of alloy.

Now with your magnetic key

dancing from your collar

you are no longer

the cat who goes forth alone.

I see you clinging like a shadow

to the bucket in the garden

or making overtures to the mower

as you plot a course North.

Not a cat to grace a lap

I saw you in hot pursuit of a toe cap

on a pair of Doc Martens.

I might have found you, your head clamped

to the Art Deco lamp in the hall

or in a clinch

with a crampon in the shed

until recently when you formed an embracement

with Mrs Lacy's hip replacement

and bonded with the handcuffs

you found under her bed.

The two shocking images I've come away with from this week's news is that of clever, beautiful, intelligent dolphins being trained to remove the underwear from a Paul Raymond's showgirl and kids in America wearing bulletproof rucksacks to school.

Below is a less shocking image.

tulip purissima