The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
It was cute at first, but the daily ritual of chucking a dead mouse in the bin is getting tiresome :) We found two this morning. One on the floor just next to the bed (where I usually put my foot down first thing in the morning) and a rather juicy one on the living room carpet (though this one probably dates from the weekend and we missed it last night).
Still, joy.
He's becoming a proper mouser!
For the past week, he's been bringing us dead mice – usually one a night. He's so cute walking in with them in his mouth, but I have to say he's less cute when he's batting around a mouse corpse around the living room…
Still, he seems to heartbroken when we have to pick up and throw away his “present” for us :)
The little fucker did it again. He peed on the couch. Twice in the same day!
We woke up this morning to find a damp spot on the right side of the couch. I used the cleaning spray that Katy bought when he peed on the couch last weekend and it got rid of the smell. When I got back from work today, everything seemed hunky dory. We went for dinner at the pub and when we came back, lo and behold, he'd peed on the couch again. On the left side of the couch.
Katy thinks that it's because we've introduced him to going outside, where he smells a bunch of other cats and this has somehow triggered the instinct to mark his territory. Maybe. Looks good on paper, but it will not be tolerated. Trouble is, there's no way to really enforce that. We're going to get a cat flap installed in the back door so he can go out when he wants to. Hopefully he'll catch on to the concept of peeing “outside” where we won't want to kill him every day.
Besides from sliming the couch on a regular basis, he's in fine form. He gets lots of fuss and still likes a good game of fetch-the-catnip-mouse.
I really hope this behaviour stops quickly though, cause we're running low on cat pee remover and I'm running low on patience.
Well, he didn't pee on the rug, but he peed on the couch (again) and he peed in a laundry basked. I am talking, of course, about our cat. For reasons unknown, he's boycotting his litter tray and making contributions to the decor of the soft furnishings around the house. We've already had to throw away a backpack that had gone unnoticed until it turned rancid, yellow and generally biohazard-esque. We're also going to chuck two cushions cause they just smell nasty. I just hope it's a temporary situation; otherwise things will get unpleasant :(
In other news, I'm a bachelor for the weekend. Katy is in Derby visiting Rita. I spent the morning lounging around then went into town to run a few errants. On the way back, I saw a sight that really made me want to reach for my camera but I didn't have the time to do so because my bus arrived and I had to hustle to get in. Imagine a gaggle of 14-15 year old girls wearing black fuck-me boots, cammo crotch-hight mini skirts and black wrap-around tops a few sizes too small just hanging out in front of an off-license shop. Now the same sight if the girls were 5 years older would have made me drool (come on, I am male after all). That one though was just wrong in so many ways…
Our story, gentle reader, begins last friday.
It was time to get the furball's booster shots and get him vaccinated for feline leukemia at the same time. Initially, he was only supposed to be an indoor-only cat but since we're planning on letting him out once in a while, he needs that vaccine. We took our brave, strong cat to the vet. He didn't like it. He didn't like us either for the next few days and, to show his displeasure, he peed on the couch. Nice. We're letting him off this time, because the shots left him feeling really under the weather for about 36 hours. He's still a bit dopey at times, but he's getting back to his old annoying self.
That evening, Katy and I went to the pudding club at the pub. It was a glorious meal :) Initially, we weren't sure if we'd be able to go because we left it quite late to try and book a table. In fact, the dining room was indeed full up, but they were able to accommodate us in one of the side booths. It was probably nicer that way, to be honest, because we were quite alone and it was a nice ambiance to have a chat. The “light main” course turned out to be quite a hearty coq au vin (which was divine) and I don't even want to contemplate the number of calories we had trying out all those puddings. The new chef at the pub is a pastry chef and she's brilliant. We also got quite drunk (but just drunk enough). It was a fun night.
Saturday saw us going to Cromer for a beachfront day trip. It was a nice day and it wasn't. Traffic to get there was murder and it was just way too hot to be enjoyable. Cromer seems like a nice seaside town and I wouldn't mind going there again under more enjoyable conditions. I'd learned my lesson in Geneva about wearing a hat but I still managed to get a pisser of a sunburn on the back of my neck. I'm still a bit sore, but it's gradually going away. I have pictures of Cromer and they should be up shortly.
Sunday, Katy baked. A lot. A whole lot. She spent the day at it. The lemon cake was lovely (and is already gone) and the marbled cake has only been sampled once (and will probably be portioned out and frozen before it goes stale – it's huuuuuge!). I made a nice roast chicken dinner and we spent a slow day watching Heroes and Grey's Anatomy episodes that we'd taped earlier in the week.
Yesterday was my birfday (I'm now an old fogey at 32) and I was spoiled rotten.
Katy got me:
– a gift voucher for the Cambridge gliding club good for one towed flight to 2000 feet
– tickets to go see Avenue Q in London this weekend (and she booked us into a nice hotel in Mayfair)
– a thumbring 
– a book (You Suck!, by Christopher Moore)
– some chocolate
We had some homemade steak sandwiches with chips and Katy baked (yet again) some freshly-made profiterolles with artery-clogging double cream and dark chocolate. Hooah.
My parents and sister called me earlier in the day and tried to be subtle in telling me to go check my bank balance. I knew they'd said that they were going to pay part of my ticket to go to Canada in September but they went, shall be say, completely off the deep end :) I'm still in shock… THANK YOU!!!
I also got email from Michel last night and I hope to be able to resume our less-than-frequent phone chats with him this week.
Finally, on a purely silly note, I bought myself a SD card for my e-book reader (which, btw, Katy now approves of and wants one for herself :). The card itself is 32 x 24 x 2.1mm and weighs about 2 grams. This is how I got it this morning:
Also, for future reference, here is my flight information for my trip to Canadia:
Gatwick -> Ottawa:
Flight Zoom 411
Leaves Thu 13 Sep 07 14:15
Arrives Thu 13 Sep 07 16:40
Ottawa -> Gatwick:
Flight Zoom 710
Leaves Sun 23 Sep 07 22:55
Arrives Mon 24 Sep 07 10:30
I have no definitive plans yet, but I hope to see as many people as I can.
Tolstoy, the mighty scavenger waiting for us to leave the driveway so he can go scrounge for food on the countertops:
It's a hard life, innit?
This is how dirty the back patio was…
Nothing more need really be said.
Random graffiti at Norwich Castle:
I bonded with a pigeon:
Right next door to the world-famous Coleman's Mustard shop
The Norwich Cathedral. It's a shame it was such a gloomy day :(
Many more pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/hinxton_easter_2007/ and here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/norwich_mar_2007/
How many cat owners need to regularly clean the paws of their cats to get rid of the crap on them? And I'm not talking about the bottom, where it might be explained that he got them dirty by burying his crap in litter. No, I'm talking the top of the paws. I mean, what does he do? Shit on his paws for the fun of it? And talking of crap, how the hell do you, when sitting in a litter box, manage to miss and crap outside of it???
Ahhh, the joys of cat ownership.
Yay.
He's so cute when he's carrying that thing around the house. Plus, when he's in the right mood, he'll play fetch-and-disembowel :)
Cause I haven't had one for a long time now.
That's what the moggie is looking like these days.
The flock of pissed-off geese that live on campus.
The flock of Bobbles that live in our bedroom.
Ginger pork and veg soba noodles in broth.
I'm trying to do a bit of coding work, which is not helped by the fact that the cat is attacking his catnip mouse at my feet. Repeated attempts to throw him out of the office are useless, because the dumb thing apparently enjoys being flung in the air and always comes back for more… sigh.