Under The Paw

September 16th
Excited, having seen promotional literature for my home town mentioning "the famous ducks". Am now finding myself looking at birdlife around garden and local park in whole new way. That massive muscovy with the magnetic aura and strange sense of entitlement: he's got to be one of them.

Received missing parakeet missive. Parakeet in question answers to the name Charlie, talks and is "very tame". Religious flyers sticking out of my letterbox I can cope with of a morning. This level of emotional turmoil I cannot.

September 17th
I remember those happy, carefree times, seven or eight minutes ago, when there wasn't a slaughtered rabbit on my kitchen floor.

September 18th
Received a review copy of a memoir through the post today, all about a dog and the dog's owner, and the heartwarmingness of the dog-owner thing they had going on. From what I can gather, the main themes of the book are the owner, his dog, and how generally warming the whole thing was, particularly in the heart area. People should publish more of that kind of thing: it's a potentially enormous untapped market.

Still puzzling over dead rabbit. Ralph and Shipley, who are getting too spoilt and lazy to kill anything apart from the odd vole or seven, were sleeping at the time it was brought in, as was The Bear, who is a pacifist when it comes to non-feline animals (presumably it wasn't Bootsy or Pablo either, what with them having moved out a few weeks ago to live with Dee at her new place). I was alerted to its presence on the kitchen floor by the equally pacificist Janet, who was standing next to it, meowing in that special mournful way he only usually does when he's brought in an empty packet of Monster Munch dating from 1987. Was it a rotten rabbit, killed and discarded by a fox with fussy eating habits? Perhaps Janet mistook it for one of the increasingly popular Litter Bunnies being purchased and subsequently junked by spoilt children in the neighbourhood? Anyhow, it is in the bin now: a temporary solution before I decide I can look it in its half-remaining face again and arrange a more organic form of disposal.

September 18th
I wrote my first ever TV comedy sketch today. It is not about cats because that would be f***ing stupid and predictable. I also wrote my second ever TV comedy sketch today. Okay, I admit it: that is about cats.

September 20th
I note with some interest that The Bear is now cultivating his own special "piss meow". I'm not necessarily looking on it as a bad thing, as it serves as more of a warning system than anything. I suppose it's a bit like a smoke alarm. (Except with piss, instead of smoke, obviously.)

September 21st
Given the reputed commonness of the activity, it is surprising more celebrities don't reference their Daily Cat Puke Cleaning Session in The Sunday Times Magazine's A Life In The Day column.

September 22nd
Sometimes, when I stroke my cats, I get an electric shock. I suppose this is the natural result of the static created by the stroking itself, but I also can't help suspecting that they might be plugging themselves in behind my back. A couple of them have, after all, been working on a new sound recently. It's probably inevitable that Going Electric is part of it.

September 23rd
It's amazing how when a person own cats, by simply walking upstairs to do some ironing and finding a stray JML pet mitt on the floor and a nearby sleeping cat (Ralph, for example), they can inadvertently invent a new game. I have decided to call this particular one 'Happy Cat, Sad Cat', having discarded the slightly inferior working titles of 'Confusion!" and 'Dimpled Stroky Thing Good, Big Clanky Thing Bad'. The speed of the fluctuating feline emotions it elicits are nothing short of breathtaking.

September 24th
Went a walk today with my borrowed spaniel, Henry - a creature Dee once referred to as my "alter doggo". The setting was Blythburgh, near the Suffolk coast, where Black Shuck, the demon dog, once legendarily terrorised the local church's congregation. I'd like to say I deliberately chose to walk in Black Dog Country with a black dog, but in truth the symmetry didn't occur to me until I was about seven miles into the walk, and lost amidst river-damaged footpaths, by which point my appreciation of it was dampened, in an unpleasantly literal sort of way, by a shoe full of blister blood. Besides, the likelihood of happy-go-lucky Henry intimidating an entire congregation seems quite unlikely, though he did slightly unsettle a sleeping heron, which promptly shat itself.

September 26th
Most lovely Under The Paw-related letter of the week: "Just loved discover today that you have a book about cats feelings. Is possible I found this book in Brasil?"

September 27th
Earlier today, I stroked my beard. Not the most riveting anecdote, I grant you. What does make it marginally more interesting is that the beard in question was false, sitting on my bedroom floor, where I'd discarded it after he previous night's fancy dress party, and at the time I had mistaken it for one of my cats.

September 28th
They say that some days you eat The Bear, and some days The Bear eats you. What they fail to add is that some days all that happens is that The Bear eats a tray of Sheba Rabbit And Chicken Tender Terrine, while you sit nearby, attempting to eat a jam sandwich without choking on mechanically recovered meat fumes.

September 29th
Was in kitchen this morning. Most Idiotic Cat was in kitchen too. Most Idiotic Cat nudged drying pillowcase with tail. Pillowcase fell on Most Idiotic Cat, becoming "cat cloak". Confession: felt no immediate impulse to remove pillowcase. Further confession: did not act on non-existent impulse.

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