... but I would get a proper camera to film my cat drinking

I Would Do Anything For Cats (But I Wouldn't Do That): Nine Things I Would Never Do In The Name Of Cat Love

1. Get the names of my favourite two cats tattoed inside a heart on my back, with the word “Forever” inscribed beneath it in gothic lettering.

2. Name a star in honour one or more of my cats.

3. Encourage one of my cats to eat by taking a mouthful of its food, then rubbing my stomach and saying “Yum yum yum”.

4. Check my cats’ horoscopes.

5. Sit my cats down in a circle and read them said horoscopes.

6. Purchase a cat stroller or pushchair.

7. Abandon essential household furniture in order to make way for elaborate oversized scratching posts or imported “cat condos” (e.g. The Naughty Paws Bungalow: RRP $475).

8. Purchase a dressing gown with the name of a cat food manufacture embroidered on it or save up “bonus points” then send off for said garment free of charge.

9. Wear one of these:

The Bear's Problem Page Letter

George, beloved cat of pet writer Celia Haddon, is now handling what might be the web's first moggy-voiced problem page. Noting this with interest, The Bear recently decided it was high time he voiced some "issues":



Dear George,

My humans, Tom and Dee, are constantly voicing "my" thoughts for me. It's not just that these thoughts are largely inaccurate (I have never said "Please" or "if you don't mind awfully" before being fed a tin of Applaws chicken and cheese cat food - because I view receiving it as my right) that bothers me, nor even the humiliating fact that some of them will soon be available to the populus in a book that Tom has written called Under The Paw. What really gets to me is the voice in which said thoughts are delivered, which is somewhat upper-class and simpering - the kind of voice you might have found Willie Rushton using whilst narrating a 1980s children's TV programme, and - I think you'll agree - utterly unbecoming of a cat who started his life in a plastic bag on the side of a motorway and has braved some of the tougher parts of South East London and Norfolk. I am neither a) a character in a Beatrix Potter book, or b) a slightly effeminate aristocrat fallen on hard times. I am a warrior, who has slept on the world's sofa and fears no-one, with the possible exception of my pygmy grey half-sister, Bootsy, when her back's up and her breath is particularly fishy. How can I explain this to my two-legged dimwit housemates and get them to stop patronising me in front of my step-siblings?

Yours sincerely,
The Bear


George's response

Bootsy at the tap

The Bear's Expensive Tastes

It wasn't my intention to advertise on this blog, but this stuff is magic. It might even have altered my lifelong scepticism towards "gourmet" cat foods (you know - the ones with the adverts with women in expensive silk dressing gowns). The man who initially tried to sell it me started eating it himself to prove how good it was and while Dee and I haven't gone that far yet, we've ordered a job lot of it for The Bear, and it seems to be contributing to his reconditioning (the chunk of fur that had disappeared from his flank before Christmas has regrown).

He's been wolfing it down on the kitchen work-surface, whilst taking imperious glances down to the more inferior members of his species chowing down on their Felix salmon sachets, then going for a big sleep in his "Certified Reconditioned" computer box. Obviously Dee and I do sometimes give my other five cats some Applaws as well, since we wouldn't want to practice too much favouritism, but we can't help feeling that The Bear somehow deserves it more because of his tougher life. Either that, or he's really got us trained with that new big-eyed look of his - the one where he just seems to give a tiny nod in the direction of the top of the fridge, where the Applaws is kept. He hasn't seemed to enjoy his food this much since the legendary day in 2001 when he ate a pop tart followed by some broccoli.

Children Do Not Like Catnip: The Reminders A Childless Cat Owner Gives Himself When In The Company Of The New Offspring Of Friends And Relatives

1. When engaging the attention of toddlers, do not tickle them under the chin or wave Shipley's favourite fluffy feather stick toy under their nose, in an attempt to get them to bat it about.

2. When the talk turns to how rambunctious little Edwin/Dylan/Amelie is, do not attempt to work your theories about “measuring cat strength being a bit like the football results” into the conversation*.

3. Those cat biscuits with the fancy packaging with names like “Enticements” may work as a special treat for The Bear when he is in one of his despondent moods, but they probably will not have the same effect on a colicky juvenile, and could lead to irrevocable digestion problems.

4. When new-parent friends start to joke about how expensive their offspring’s taste is getting (“It’s only Waitrose rusks for Minnie!”), try not to see it as an opportunity to talk about Bootsy's preference for memory foam over polyester.

5. Do not spend an overt amount of time cuddling Bootsy, since it may make new-parent friends think you are only slightly less bonkers than Tori Amos was that time she posed for one of her album covers suckling a pig.

6. Upon hearing friends discuss the intellectual development of their offspring, do not try and compare it with that of your cats.

* Just as it never made sense to me as a kid that Aston Villa could beat Liverpool 2-1, and Liverpool could beat Wimbledon 5-0 but Wimbledon could beat Aston Villa 3-0, it does not make sense to me now that Ralph can beat up Shipley, and Shipley can beat up Janet, but Janet is still, on balance, slightly harder than Ralph.

A Cat Dictionary: Some Random Selections, Part II

E.S. Pee
The telepathic process which leads a cat to only get properly settled on its owner’s stomach in the moments when that owner is most desperate for the toilet.

Fool’s Bogies
Crunchy yet slightly moist snacks that are passed off as a “treat” because they cost more and come in smaller, very slightly more lavish packaging, but essentially taste just like other more ostenstibly run-of-the-mill crunchy yet slightly moist snacks.

Furmat’s Last Theorem
The inarguable mathematical law that states that a cat’s affection will rise and fall in direct proportion to the dirt on its body at the time.

Helping
To offer crucial moral support with while one’s owner is hard at work. More popular examples include “Painting” (brushing one’s tail against some fresh paintwork and leaving a hairy residue), “Carrying” (darting in between one’s owner’s feet when they are transporting a heavy tray of food between rooms) and “Testing For Bacteria” (licking some freshly buttered bread while one’s owner's back is turned).

Muzzlewug
The state of bliss created by the perfect friction of an owner’s fingers on a fully-extended chin.

Quantum Physics
The mysterious force allowing a contented cat to fold its limbs, head and torso into an area a quarter of the size of its usual body mass.

Rain Paper
Tissues (preferably Sainsbury’s Rose-Scented).

Reflectytime
Those meditative I-should-really-have-a-newspaper-here moments on the litter tray or the freshly hoed soil when one’s hard-set veneer of dignity is momentarily dropped, a certain faraway dreaminess comes over the eyes, and, just for twenty or thirty seconds, all in the world is right.

Simulslurp
The mystic force that, without the need for discussion or consensus, will cause numerous cats in the same room all to clean their most hard-to-get regions at exactly the same time.

Sleeping With The Fishes
The particularly contented, lengthy state of REM that occurs after one has clandestinely intercepted one’s owners shopping bags in the wake of their last trip to the seafood counter.

Uwookwack
The wobbly-lipped noise made by a cat when it looks out of a window and sees a wood pigeon “acting up”.