cats – Page 7 – Louisa Parry

3BT – my dream guy, rocking out, feeding, the future

1. I wake up and tell John that I had a dream I was being wooed by another man. He was a very pretty Italian boy who worked as a waiter and repeatedly brought me great pizza. John understands why it would be hard to resist that and we decide that I should allow the dream waiter to continue to pursue me, and share the doughy reward.

2. We – John, Dan and I – play Guitar Hero until the room starts to scroll away from us and we see coloured dots whenever we close our eyes.

3. We’re feeding the neighbours’ cats over Christmas – two next door and three next door but one. I make small talk as I spoon out the meat and conduct rollcalls.

4. People start disappearing from our private work chat channel throughout the day, with messages of “see you in 2010”. The individual years of the decade have crept by without me really noticing but 2010 feels like the future. 2009 has been a difficult year but I’m feeling positive about the beginning of the next decade.

3BT – cold paws, colour, curry

20/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

1. We return from the shop but the planned bacon butties are put on hold because, for the first time in days, the cats show an interest in the outside world. We walk down the chilly garden together, the cats sharply contrasted with the white. Boron shakes his cold paws with every step.

2. As beautiful as it is, the white world has made me crave colour. I wear my new-to-me stripey jumper for the first time and when I’m looking for wool at the yarn shop, oranges and purples leap out at me. I buy some and imagine curling up under a giant, bright granny-square blanket.

3. John makes us a curry for tea and it’s his finest yet – spicy and highly flavoured but not oppressively so. The best thing about it though is there are enough leftovers for dinner tomorrow night too.

3BT – sugar, snow, dinner, snow #2

17/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

1) Jeremy returns from the shop with an armful of mini cakes. The sugar high silliness starts before we’d even open the packets.

2) Eyes light up, fingers point, the woman at the fish and chip shop will be delighted – it’s snowing outside. Soon we’ll start talking about the inevitable, unnecessary traffic chaos that will ensue but for the moment, we enjoy the novelty of the sky falling down.

3) We exchange anecdotes and in-jokes over our Christmas meal. The food and the company are both excellent. The whole team together for the first time.

4) When we get home, we peek out onto the world transformed – the first time we’ve seen our garden and the woods filled with snow. The stray light from around and about is reflected back to us, letting us see further in the dark woods than normal. The snow on the balcony – around the cat flap – is undisturbed but with a bit of encouragement, Carbon steps out. He makes it a few steps before turning around and running back inside.

(Oops, forgot this one. It should be 3.5: I discover celery and honey go strangely well together, the second unexpectedly nice combination of the week. The first was strawberry flavoured sugar-free Calpol and toothpaste.)

3BT – next year, jokes, chilled

13/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

Felt awful again this morning but starting to feel more human again now. Just in time for Monday and work. Two weekends in a row lost to Team Peach illness now, boo.

1) After a day of health-promoting rest, I have a long soak in the bath. I find myself thinking about what herbs and vegetables I’d like to grow around the garden and house next year. We’ll still be limited by sunlight to some degree but not as much as before. The possibilities are exciting.

2) Carla stays at my side for most of my time in the bath and as I’m just about to get out, she moves from her safe, comfortable spot on the steps to the side of the bath itself. Her tail is looped around her side and starts aloft, but gradually drops down until it’s skimming the water – then suddenly, completely submerged. I don’t say anything because I think it will be funny for her to get a wet tail but the joke is on me – as soon as she notices, she flicks it upright – showering me in the face with all the absorbed water. I laugh and wonder if cats have enough planning capability for practical jokes.

3) Chilled by winter, water fresh from the tap is the perfect temperature for soothing a still raw throat.

3BT – too tight, warm, discussion and snow

4/12/2009 / louisa / 1 Comment

carla-sunshine 0. (From last night) I always cast on too tightly, making the first row of knitting on circular needles a right pain in the arse. By comparison, the second row at the correct tension is a joy and I happily, mindlessly, knit two, purl two until the item is finished.

1. After nearly a decade in a north-facing house, the cats love that the bedroom and living room in the new house are sunny in the mornings. Even in December, the sun streaming through the window is warm enough to make them toasty to the touch. We make sure there are comfortable places to sit to make up for their years of gloominess.

2. After a lunch of manchego cheese and Iberico ham (again, our holiday lives on in the food we carried back with us), we discuss genes and memes, fire and water.

3. John’s ill so we decided on comfort food for tea: fish and chips from the great place at the end of the road. The vinegar sizzles as it hits the straight-from-the-fryer fish and the woman serving remarks that she somehow got some salt in her mouth. We joke about how she must have been throwing it everywhere for that to happen, and she adds: “I’m pretending it’s snowing. I can’t wait until it’s snowing.”

3BT – light outside, mushrooms, future warmth

1/12/2009 / louisa / 0 Comments

I’ve been meaning to start my own Three Beautiful Things posts since I found Clare’s blog over a year ago but I’ve never got around to it aside from using Twitter for the occasional beautiful things style tweet. I figured I shouldn’t start any more projects unless I could commit the time to maintaining them but while we were in Madrid last week, I thought I should just frickin’ give it a go. Don’t know how long I’ll manage to keep it up but here goes nothing ;)

1. We came back from Madrid after dark last night but the sun is shining when we wake up. I look out into the garden – at the trees, at the beck at the bottom of the garden, at the sky stretching out into the distance – and smile. Nice to see everything is still where it should be after the bad weather.

2. Later on, I venture into the garden with two of the cats, Carla and Boron. We’ve been going on walks together around the garden (and the woods next door) since we moved into the house in October. Left untouched by cats and humans for over a week, a huge cluster of mushrooms has grown on a log. I run up the stairs to the house to look them up in my mushroom identification book.

3. Workwise, I have a bad day catching up on everything – I’m still behind as the afternoon passes into evening but John insists we both stop work anyway. After dinner, I grab some lovely pinky-purply wool from my stash and crochet up a neckwarmer. It’s improvised but it turns out well.

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