Cat news - well, what were you expecting?

I have very strict instructions from Isabelle to post about the cats. And, as I have said before, I am very obedient and Isabelle is a teacher and therefore very authoritative, so here you go.

Bellus and Zyra have settled in amazingly well. They don't seem to mind being confined to the kitchen/utility room during the day, they eat like little furry pigs (Zyra still watches Bellus intently as she eats and then, just as he is about to finish his, she shoulders him out of the way and cleans his dish for him. Bellus has now got wise to this and he just walks around behind her and cleans her dish. She is evil, calculating and yet not so bright.) and they greet us with great enthusiasm when we come home or down the stairs in the morning.

They like to sleep in their tartan basket in the kitchen, cuddled up together. Like this


and also in other parts of the house, most notably the big old blanket box in our upstairs hall, which is known as the Humpty Box. Because most of the Humpties live on it. (Except the Humpty royal entourage which has moved and taken up residence on a former telephone table on our landing - you have to maintain a certain station in life, you know. I really must tell you about the Humpty genealogy one day.) They have even been known to join us in the living room of an evening.


What is noticeable in both of those photos is that Bellus is being pinned down by Zyra and is wearing his long-suffering sat-upon cat expression. He wears that quite a lot.

I took the catlets to the vet today to have them micro-chipped. The cat rescue shelter has a deal with a local vet whereby you get 50% off the cost of micro-chipping, and since we intend to let the kitties out into the garden soon, we decided to go ahead and get it done. And anyway, chipping totally means our cats are now cyborgs.

Both cats went reasonably happily into the carrier for the short car trip to the vet. During the journey I made the happy discovery that you can apparently hypnotise cats with windscreen wipers. The pair of them were rivetted by the wipers going back and forward - they looked like very intent spectators at a particularly mechanical tennis match. If I could have, I would have taken a video of them. But I assumed that if talking on a mobile phone while driving is an offence, then turning round and filming your cats staring at the windscreen wipers is probably frowned on too.

Next step is to actually introduce The Furry Ones to the back garden. I will report in due course.