Just found this photo of Carla on the camera card. I think it was taken last month when the world was sunny and lime green. She’s on the fence between our house and next door. She is a very beautiful old lady, isn’t she?
Tagcat
1. With each cough, his tongue pokes out further. It is almost impossibly cute.
2. A long walk at lunchtime. We bat some ideas around and enjoy the sun streaming into the empty woods.
3. The one person paying attention, the one person amongst the chaos who wants to listen and learn.
1. The car’s display tells us it’s 5.05pm and 5.5°C.
2. He’s had a hard day – first starved overnight then an operation to remove nearly all his remaining teeth. He’s hungry but his mouth hurts too much to eat and he pulls frantically at his gums with his paws, his claws. All I can do is give him a hug and take him to bed. He calms down and curls up next to me. When he awakes, he eats his food and looks at me with happy, shining eyes.
3. Finding the most efficient solution to a supply and demand problem.
(I wrote this as a draft and didn’t write any more from that day – but think it should be published anyway.)
1. Lily has always been soft to the touch but not as silky as the cats. We have a new found appreciation of the cats’ fur since Lily joined the team, especially when the cats touch somewhere other than our hands. Carla sat on my bare ankles is a delightful sensation.*
* I actually started the day with Carla sat on my forehead with the back of her rear leg joints up my nose. While her fur felt just as lovely, overall, it was a less pleasant sensation.
It’s a year today since we moved into our new home. I only started 3BTing a couple of months after the move so only have just a few tweets to mark the day — I think a few hindsight 3BTs are in order ;)
1. It’s strange to see our things, the items that decorate our lives, out of context, packed Tetris-style onto the van.
2. John drives us and the cats over ahead of the van. They’ve been kept out of the way in the bedroom all day over there and here, they’re shut away in the bathroom. Taking in cushions and duvets that smell like us, I join them and after a moment’s hesitations, they’re out of the carry boxes and exploring as a group: in the bath, on the window sills and peering in the mirror expecting to see out then turning around to realise it’s a reflection of the same room.
3. I leave the cats to help empty the van and provide desperately required cups of tea. Two of the movers stand, cups in hands, looking out of the living room window, gazing out at the tree line and down into the woods. “Nice, innit?” I hear one of them say to the other. (I’ve seen that exact scene – same stances, same stares – repeated several times over the last year, the position of the window just seems to demand it.)
4. I return to the bathroom and two of the cats are gone! Gone! They’d been fine in this strange room in this strange house while I’d been there but when I’d left them, they’d got frightened. Boron is alone, curled up on the duvet and I search for the others, acutely aware of the open doors and windows downstairs. I find Carbon back in his usually much-loathed carry box but his sister is still missing. I scrabble around looking for her, calling her name. Then I notice that the towels hanging over the radiator look plumper than usual. I touch the rounding and a shiny black nose appears out of the far end.
5. Once the movers are gone and the house is secure, we let the cats creep out of the bathroom. We herd them into the bedroom – they sniff around and jump on the dresser. Then someone, Boron I think it was, leads the charge downstairs and into the dining room. Blasé now, they head straight to the living room door – they want to see more, more!
6. We unpack some key boxes – the kitchen stuff, our clothes – then after weeks of long days, we allow ourselves to relax. The cats join us on the sofa – as I’d predicted “home” for them is the sofa and us – then at bedtime, they follow us up the stairs to our mattress on the floor. In the morning, we’ll all wake up dazzled by the morning sun upon us and I’ll tell the cats “sun! in your bed! how ace is that?”. It’s really pretty ace.
© 2024 Louisa Parry