How My Week Went

 Another in the "My Life As A Fabulous Cat" series 

by guest poster Toffee

This is how I prefer to spend my day: lying sideways on a flat surface. Not only does this position set my face off to perfection (as well as resting my ample girth), it also causes the slaves to exclaim delightedly about how cute I am. And who doesn't like a little slavish worship?

If only they would obey my Look But Don't Touch dictum, particularly the young slaves. 



This is my other preferred position, but for some reason the slaves don't like me doing this. They think it causes me to stay awake at night. Apparently I make too much noise while they're sleeping (but do I care? not I). Silly slaves: I make noises at night not because I am well-rested, but because it's the only time I get to claw the damn chesterfield. Note to Richard: that piece of cedar you screwed onto my favourite clawing spot? The one you hope I'll scratch instead of the material? It doesn't fool me. I'm a cat, not some dumb dog. Honestly.

When I tire of lolling, I like to sit in the window looking as atmospheric as possible. Here I am in the pose known as The Regal Egyptian. I usually sit like this until Sheila has the camera JUST about focused, then I move right when she clicks the shutter. This really exasperates her but it's so amusing. I do enjoy thwarting her. She's SO bossy.






The only trouble with annoying the slaves is that they get fussy about my Feed On Demand strategy and start paying attention to how much food I've had each day. Don't they realize that my ample girth doesn't get this way on a starvation diet?

Idiots.







Thus am I compelled to beg cutely.

Always a bit deflating to the old ego.












 To get back at them I resort to specific tactics.

Here I am biting the hand that feeds me.














Here I am hiding while they are calling me. This particular spot lasted well over an hour.

















My extensive yoga moves always get a rise out of someone, particularly if I'm licking a certain part of my anatomy.

Right in front of them.

Right when they're eating. 











  Tip: make as much noise as possible.

Nothing like a little suction noise, combined with some gnawing and chewing, to really get them all stirred up.














 Sometimes it backfires on me and they find me hilarious.

I hate being laughed at. It's so undignified.

  Luckily I have my balls to play with. I find this very therapeutic.

When FDPG isn't around I use her iPod for Selfie Practice. Is it me or does anyone else struggle with the screen button when taking selfies? Steve Jobs obviously wasn't thinking about cat paws when he designed that thing.

I meant to get more of my face in this one.








And this one.

This is probably the worst thing that happened to me this week. For some reason no one heard me knocking at the door.

I sat there for ages.














I hate when that happens, don't you?

Never fear, I'll get back at them.

One day.

(For more in this series please click CATS in the sidebar section marked LABELS or type How My Week Went into the search bar)

Springing Out Of The Ground

The plants, I mean.

After years of growing radishes every March, then giving up when they either split or become entirely gnawed on by woodbugs, I think I might just be getting the hang of these things. Sow thinly in a cool place, pick when still relatively small, take a lot of photographs of them (glistening with water), then consume.

 Some might call this a trendy repurposing of old greenhouse shelves, but the truth is that these are the lengths I have to go to to keep the cat from repurposing my salad garden as a toilet. These shelves stay on until the seedlings are tall enough to discourage even the LAZIEST cat from scratching around in them. Worth their weight in gold, them shelves is.





Lettuce seedlings (Plato II, Valmaine, Esmeralda), bulb onions (grocery store cheapies), radishes (Cherry Belle), baby turnips (Mikado), beets (Golden), and kale (Dwarf Blue Curled).










Celeriac seedlings getting settled. I was listening to Local Garden Persona Carolyn Herriot this spring, at a Seedy Saturday lecture, when she showed a photo of celeriac plants. They were positively bulbous, so I asked her what she did to get them so big.

"Those overwintered," she said. "They take more than one year here."

Ah. So that's it. Why doesn't it say that on any of my seed packets then?

 It's almost strawberry time!

 It's definitely asparagus time.

 This, folks, is what I have to work with in my back yard. No flat open stretches for me. No, no, no. It's all one big slanting sloping Machu Pichu of a garden.

Finally, Snapping Dragons, reclining in the sun.