A Blancmange No More…

Hi All

Today I thought I’d give a quick update on Chea. Blancmange Chea can now squeeze through a much narrower gap. Three weeks on a diet and she has started to develop her waist-line. She still has her little furry fat-sack but it’s empty. No storage of fat for when times get tough and the supermarket runs out of Gourmet. Oh, by the way, she now likes the new Gourmet, the one that costs 86p for a tiny, round metal dish.

I don’t know if she was feeling a bit peckish the other day because Richard said he spied her on the garage roof. We call it a garage but it isn’t, because you can’t get a car down the side of the house. It’s Richard’s dumping ground for all things manly and secretive…or so he thinks! Apparently, Chea was stalking a wood-pigeon. It was unaware of her presence until she was about a metre away and then it saw her. Instead of having a heart attack, it raised its head and started walking towards her. Chea held her ground for a minute before deciding that Mr Wood Pigeon was maybe a tad too big and powerful to take on, and she turned tail and ran.

I am dreading the arrival of the nesting season. DREADING it with a vengeance. Last year Chea took great delight in raiding a robin’s nest and trotting home with three chicks, one a day, for three days. I was horrified. HORRIFIED. The poor things were too young to survive and there was no way of knowing where they had come from, and so they died. I hated her so much for doing it. I even told Richard that he could take her back to the RSPCA. Richard would have rather stuck pins in his eyes (or mine) than to do that, and told me so. It took me a long time to accept that little episode and I fear that she may attempt the same thing this year. In her defence, and I hate to say it, because I believe that once you put a thought ‘out there’ it becomes a reality (unless it’s the thought of winning the lottery), to date Chea has never brought anything else back. She did once find a shrew but I don’t think its demise had anything to do with her. My CSI intuition told me that Mr Shrew had been dead a good few hours.

Chea’s latest trick is to pooh in the fine soil of the greenhouse border. She’s watched me liberally manuring the garden, and I think, in her little mind, she considers this helpful? I have two choices…remove said pooh, or reconsider the siting of the tomatoes this year. I am leaning towards the latter.

To be honest, spending time in the garden with Chea is one of my greatest and yet simplest pleasures. She’s funny. She makes me laugh. I don’t think it’s possible to remain angry, pent-up, up-tight, miserable, or furious at Richard for eating the last of the Victoria sandwich etc, when I am in the garden? I may be a simple soul who finds pleasure in the simple things but it seems to work for me. Give me a bit of cat-pooh to remove from the greenhouse border and I’m away with the fairies.

So! Off to whack in a few broad bean plants. I haven’t seen Chea for the last thirty minutes so if I’m quick, and I’m lucky, I will escape her attempts at helping.

Take care my lovelies x