This afternoon I’ve set myself a challenge…
Write a quick post and then….
Do I dare attempt…to bake a cake?
Is that a smiley face laughing at me?
Usually I can do things when it’s impromptu. It’s only when I start planning that it all goes wrong.
It’s the man’s birthday, you see.
So I feel I should try.
Though Dee Dee Sasha is very dubious about it.
She has facial expressions for everything.
Here, I had disturbed her siesta.
This cat has some serious moves.
She ingratiates herself with strangers with head rubs and loud purrs and eye smiles. But it’s all about what she thinks she can extort in the way of treats.
She would never leave her main man.
And she’s not fond of sharing him either.
She especially likes being taken for a walk by herself,
just the two of them.
This particular day, there was too much snow on the ground for the little miss, but she soon got Grant to give her a lift.
“Well”, she says, “he does it for that old black cat!”
The minute Penny lifted her eyes to Grant he was a goner. He’s a soft touch but old, abandoned black cats are special. The shelter had described her as “bitey” but they had not worked out that it was because when they handled her, they were causing her pain.
Penny has arthritic hips, that’s all. She’s very sweet.
But black cats with bad reputations generally don’t make it out of shelters.
An unfortunate set of circumstances led us to Penny and Sikkim at a time when I had shut down my foster website and declared the inn to be full.
Which is was. But there was no way I was leaving these two in a shelter where they shouldn’t have been in the first place.
Shame on people.
It wasn’t long after Penny and Sikkim joined the happy home that I made the sudden, earth shattering decision to move back east.
Let’s say it was a turbulent time.
Sikkim and Willow travelled by air with Grant and I.
Which was when we discovered that she suffers from motion sickness. It was a very long, very stressful journey.
Considering the alternative road trip, it was fortunate that I had selected Sikkim to be the second “air-cat”. Two days of uninterrupted motion would have been dreadful for her, for the handlers and for the other cats.
But Grant could not get over his guilt at having subjected her to the air journey. Never mind that it had all been my doing!
Not long after we settled in, he decided that Sikkim was sad, that she was maybe missing someone.
So it became his mission to cheer her up.
Then there’s his Tinkerbelle….
…and Toby….
“Damn! How many have I to share with?”
“Oh well I am his MAIN cat. And don’t forget it.”
“Now go bake that cake and don’t mess it up!”
Oh yes, she bosses me around.
She probably thinks I’m the live-in slave.
The cats are lovely, the humans are not bad either!
Joanna
You are both cat-mad, undoubtedly.
Not a bad thing of course.
(Just that dogs are better… 🙂 )
Best wishes, Pete.
Dogs are different! I lived with cocker spaniels for quite a few years and my relatives in Wilts had terriers. The wire haired terrier was jealous and when I kissed my aunt goodnight she would attack me. As a little girl I took exception to this. The Jack Russel was mentally deranged. She seemed to have been born that way and a very bad experience made her a lot worse…on top of being a Jack Russel. Still, I loved them all and I would love to have a dog now…it’s just not the thing to do, so when I can I enjoy other people’s.
I do like cake but snow… I don’t think so! 😉
it’s only a tiny bit now…next weekend maybe….???
That’s it … Grant’s got them all on his side! Happy birthday to Grant (warm sunny wishes from South Africa 🌞). I hope that cake came out alright (doesn’t matter how it looks or even sometimes how it tastes … it’s the thought that counts) – or that’s at least what I’m telling myself after baking a cake!
I don’t know which is better, the slice of life or a slice of cake. Maybe I’ll take both!