Can you see them? 
Scary!
<long sentence warning, take a breath now>
Combat cleaning’s monthly stop-by to put their duster, vacuum, or wet-wipes in all those places that spiders congregate, to make sure that I don’t drown in the discarded natural insulation produced by the fluffballs, is a particularly pleasant luxury.
<long sentence over, you can relax now>
Pleasant because they
- ask about the building work then giggle endearingly at the answer.
- don’t complain when my tap (US = fawcett) handles fall-off (if twisted at the wrong angle) in their hands.
- take the drapes diving for the floor, because the super-glue holding the drape-hangers up just isn’t quite as super as the advertising would have me believe, in their stride.
“how are the cats settling in?”
Thankyou to everyone who inquired after the wellbeing of my darling fluffballs. I am happy to confirm that they have quickly adapted to this Wendy House and are exhibiting a full range of healthy fluff-ball-ee activities, most notable of which is the Monaco-ish, formula-1-ish speed and agility, dangerous-staircase dash.
Dangerous-staircase dash
Starts in the garden where Sampo cues-up Matrix by strutting backward and forward in front of her just out of paws reach. Next, Sampo runs for the front-door gathering sufficient speed to arrive before Matrix, maintaining sufficient control to take the entrance-hall-front-room 90 degrees doorway-bend. Occassionally Sampo misses the bend and ends up in the bathroom where she is cornered by Matrix and has clearly lost the chase. After several months of practice she has the hall-front-room doorway-bend almost fully mastered.
The subtle curve on the approach to the foot of the stairs occassionally causes loss of footing on the bare floorboards and is invariably accompanied by liberal doses of meowing from both teams. The main course-obstacle is the dangerous-staircase u-turn. The dangerous-staircase u-turn either involves a headlong crash into the front-room wall for those missjudging their momentum, or falling down the first couple of steps for those misjudging their paw-friction. Sampo tends to crash into the wall due to belly-induced-momentum, Matrix tends to slip on the steps. Once past the first few steps, if Sampo is still ahead of Matirx she’s pounces safely to the finish line on the first-floor landing and is ready to start the next round. Fresh water, views of local trees and birds are provided on the landing at the end of the course for the competing kitties.
The cats are regularly able and willing to practice this tricky F1 course on a daily basis often changing chaser-chasee roles and investigating route variations including the dinning room table top, sofa-bends and comfy chair corner.
Ringside tickets are available.
Corporate bookings and sponsorship considered.
An exciting evening was spent studying pussycat-paw-preferences. If you are already yawning, stop reading now, this is the excitment climax sentence for this blog post. This is the sound made by the fluffballs decending the staircase of danger in WendyHouse:
Matrix: bur-bump, bur-bump, ber-pump
Sampo: bump—bump–bump-bumpbumbbump
Watching the bumpy affair indicates that Matrix always first puts her left-paw onto the next step while Sampo uses the not-insubstantial momentum of her stomach to launch herself down planting her left paw on every other step. The cunning corner two steps before the bottom of the staircase has occassionally taken advantage of Sampo’s momentum to literally bump her. Sampo, not the brightest of kitties.
Matrix = left-pawed
Sampo = Ambidextrous
Today I’m catless, carless, surrounded by dissembled furniture and half packed suitcases.
Goodbye blubbing by me and soulful wailing by Sampo. Matrix looked her normal relaxed self.
Matrix and Sampo can’t join me in the UK until the last 4 months of their PETS passport process, 6 months quarantine, is finished. Today they moved to their US foster home.
