Pusheekat Diaries 4
October 20thPatchy decided to surprise us all for once and catch a rat. I somehow don’t think it is because she is guilty about the financial burden she is causing Marmar. Im also convinced she did not plan it with the Forethought and Predatory Cunning Coming From Millions of years of Selective Evolution as they say on Discovery Channel. I think the real situation would have been that the rat was drunk and tripped over her front paws by mistake and got tangled in that little curved thumb claw, then Patchy panicked and tried to shake it off and get rid of it and in so shaking, it banged its noggin on the rafters and passed out on the spot. …subsequently lacking anything in the way of CPR it would probably have died of repercussions as they say on Cable TV….
Sigh…
The sum and total of this of course is that it started doing what dead rats do rather well in a tropical heat ie smelling delicately more and more interesting in stages…
I was monitoring this of course. We cats cant see colours, did you know that? Smells on the other hand we sense in technismeller* This particular decomposing rodent smelt reminded me of the cave art of Australian aborigines…very fundamental if you ask me..
October 21st The poor hewmie family of course began to walk around poking behind furniture and acting mighty paranoid. They changed the cushion covers, threw out some rugs and sent the kussi woman to the front shop for moth balls.
Then they had to call in “Bubbee”
This was interesting to watch and Bubbee broke the ceiling a bit and charged them Rs LKR 350/= to get ALL the thick white worms away without leaving any behind as otherwise they fall on the dining table...
I personally think Patchy should stick to being lazy and eating saaleyo and acting her age which is Old.
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Technismeller is the cat equivalent of human Technicolor and we smell dead rats as a very interesting shade of burnt sienna, with whorls of brilliant carmine in the centre like a strawberry roll would look to you. Hm… I think. –
Introduction to Ally
Name: Chandrika aka Pushy aka Aljuhara etc
Sex: Female, but I don’t accept any of the weaknesses attributed to the state.
Age: 38 looks a bit older, but feels a lot younger due to having lived life back to front.
Civil Status : Divorced in December 2004 after 4 years separated mother of two a lovely and cheeky daughter aged 17 who is quite capable of taking care of herself , and a naughty but sweet son aged 12 who likes to cook. The kids however want to stay with me and my mother in law is still a good friend as are all my sisters in law, so they are very much a part of my life and always will be.
Reason for divorce- obscure,but Im pretty sure I was the innocent party as boring as that sounds- I wish I wasnt !
Physical appearance: 5 ‘6’ 68 kg, 38-32-38. fair skinned, hirsute (you wont beleive), frizzy hair(recently straghtened fairly succesfully but still wild) short sighted, a few teeth missing but so far all toes intact. Podgy nose. Excellent behind, I’m told.Have decided to experiment with Fair and Lovely cream on only one side of myself so if its working you will see a definite color difference.
Profession : ACCA finalist works as a Librarian, currently studying graphic design, journalism, web design, Arabic, and a whole host of other generally useless things
Education: till 13 schooled at various foreign schools including Norman Gordino in Kampala and a primary school in Manchester , Lindsay in Colombo, and from then on the world is my teacher. Would love to go back to school.
Religion:Humanist, Buddhist upbringing, admires all religious leaders, disagrees with Islamic ideas of practised degradation of women. (Willing to argue on this topic for hours.) Gets along well with Christians Catholics, and vegetarians. generally terrified of Sri Lankan Buddhists as they have somewhat obscure ethics and tend in my experiance to trample on you in their dedicated quest to stay on the "middle path"...
General Disposition: Cheerful, jovial, indulgent, honest, laid back, sympathetic, broadminded, understanding except where it comes to smoking
Vices : fickle. Dosnt take life seriously no matter how many hairline misses she suffers. Somewhat unhygienic, lazy and occasionally mean to small children, (only if trapped with them.) leaves used tea cups lying around and throws clumps of fallen hair and sometimes used underwear, behind book shelves etc. suddenly laughs and screeches loudly. Jumps to conclusions. Very bad singing voice. Useless at gardening – any plant dies if I so much as touch it.
Advantages : a very good telephone voice, good at soothing massages, anything I touch gets well soon- animals live- Excellent English , sense of humour if understood is guaranteed to bring cheer .does the counselling thing well, if the number of calls I get is any indication..
Likes: Sunshine, clean flat surfaces, sun dried kittens and animals of any type, milk, murunga, vaathathel, small onions, garlic, books and that row of second hand book shops in MacCallum Road, horror movies, Famous Fives, Tintin, Wilbur Smith, Alistair MacClean, Enigma Enya ,Spanish and Arabic Music, jungles, old monuments, a good cuppa tea, travel, writing and my black yamaha .
Dislikes : cleaning up after cooking, stuffed buses, cold rainy mornings , hypocrisy, being restricted ,confined or incarcerated in anyway, being suspected of lying (but to be honest it’s a long time since anyone dared to do so) & government offices .
Odd habits: taking tea and a magazine to the loo, smiling absently at no one in particular in the middle of a crowded bus, dressing in flannel.
Social Habits: avoids parties like the plague, vaguely disapproves of drinking and gambling- strongly disapproves of smoking and drugs, prefers to stay home with good music and a second hand book. Likes to go to temple but not on crowded days. Loves latin dance but not very good at it
Seeking : a partner in crime. He should be : kind , intelligent, honest, a HAPPY PERSON dependable,caring,artistic at least 80 kg and 5’56’’ , preferably mid forties, should be divorced or widowed , preferably with kids, and he should understand everything in the above profile(even the murunga) even if he doesn’t agree. He should be willing to put up with lots of weird unsanctioned laughter and a few hippie friends, and actively support my cat farm and 2 dogs. .. He doesn’t have to have much money but a good bike would be much appreciated. but he must never make the mistake of borrowing money from me because I don’t respect that in a guy. He obviously has to be a person who appreciates good writing. Long hair is ok, dark skinned guys welcome, beards are no problem but nose and ear hair and mustos are OUT. Letters and calls and even meeting a few ex girlfriends will be tolerated even encouraged if it makes him happy. But, lying-never! There is just no need for lying in my home.
Oh and he has to smell nice.
ABSOLUTE ACADEMICS
by aljuhara
I admit I sometimes read the marriage proposals section of our Sunday paper. In fact , with the cost of living as high as it is ,we can only afford one hardcopy newspaper a week and the trick is to make all the waffle last my current weekly reading requirements during those periods of digestive constipation…ok let me admit it I also occasionally half heartedly scan the horizon for a suitable partner..or is that just an excuse to find merryment in unlikely places..?
Im noticing a recent trend now where advertisers for both brides and grooms are beginning their spiel with the obscure and decidedly ungrammatical words “absolutely academically”… either they claim to be absolute academics or are looking for such.(whatever these are) mind you -Tough luck in a country where half the kids failed their O levels.
And to be honest I would not like to spend the rest of my life with an ABSOLUTE ACADEMIC whatever that defines. It sounds quite boring and miserable, a partner with no interest in cookery,karate, fast motorcycles or Latin dance. Marriage to an absolute academic would in fact be a dreadful excuse for life, a fate worse than death… in my books...flies droning in Latin come to mind...
But it makes you think – what is it with this Sri Lankan obsession to be at the top of everything?? Sominona next door advertised and it came below mine nyah nyah
Are you advertising here to spend your life with people who just may give up searching before they get to advertisements beginning with the letter “d” or “f”??
Im thinking, you wake up in the morning and say “ who am I going to marry today” or as the case may be “who am I going to make my daughter marry today” and start by reading all the first adverts beginning with absolutely academic and then your enthusiasm fizzles away and by the time you reach around G/B parents Gampaha district , statistically the chances are that you are asleep drooling on your chest …?
seriously , if that’s the case, folks, we deserve all the desperation we're in!
DAILY MEWS 5
February 21st
Last night things were rather strange. The “KARANT”* went according to what my Hewmies were saying. I don’t know what kind of thing this is and where it went but it made them behave in a strange way. My Hewmie could not do his usual cooking. He banged his shin on the coffee table and hopped about. He finally set fire to a small wax pipe and walked about with it while making us dinner. I think this Karant is important to hewmans otherwise they are uncoordinated like toddlers. Come to think of it they are quite silly vulnerable bipeds although they think they are boss on this planet. ** Without their technology they are practically blind, hairless and they cant even smell a rat. I hate to admit it here but if they didn’t have fire sticks and clothes and were a little smaller than we are we would be eating them by the dozen, just by reflex and apologizing later. They do look so helpless.
But I admit some of them are kind.
February 27th
I remember when I was a kit, and long before I learned that it is only acceptable to climb my hewmans hind leg if he had trouser -longs on. I used to get unbearably over-excitied when he made my salmon and suddenly claw my way up his hairy hind limbs when he was wearing only trouser- shorts. Man, Goodness, he would howl and stamp about that close to swearing . His kitchen woman is better , she wears a long flapping sail of cloth called a SKERT which is much easier to climb. and she dosnt scream much except when I put my head into the “LICK- WIDIZER” I don’t know what that thing is but they put the chicken wings in it and then make a big sound and they produce the most delectable sloppy fishy mush. But sometimes I got lost inside her skert which is decidedly unpleasant I must say.
And then there are the hewmie cublets. They are strange silly dangerous things and I heard that one of them put Patchy inside a Krisco tin. The boy one. I need another page to write about all the weird things these young life forms get up to.
They like to throw us food though so they are not completely bad.
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* Editors note: Pichau seems to be referring to electricity
* *that’s us actually since we are in control of them! Hee hee.
DAILY MEWS 6
February 21st
Last week Koookie developed some rather disturbing holes in her skin and spent a lot of time itching and licking. Kookie is one of my Hewmies resident mutts. They had to take her to the local petinerary sergen. Mistress Hacketty used a large polythene bag they found wrapping the new fridge and then she kept it in a cupboard for this purpose in future. This whole polythene problem makes me mad. Hewmans have made a horrible slimey material which makes a horrible high pitched noise like siri siri -, which they throw around everywhere which stays pasted to the ground and trees and things and never goes. Man, you cant even shift the sand a bit to take a dump, theres this clingy stubborn stuff wrapping clumps of sand!!. I hear they say it is so bad for the earth we live in. I really wont be affected much since the most I will live is fifteen years , but don’t they care about their own cublets ? these hewmans say they love their offspring. They are constantly having babies one at a time and taking them about to clinics and to grandparents houses and showing them off and all. But don’t they think about their futures ,they have to live more than twenty five or fifty years or even seventy five don’t they ? so why do they keep messing up the earth with this polythene layer? Polythene aught not to just be banned it should be criminalized I tell you and anyone caught smuggling polythene given a pretty long sentence.
February 26th
Today my Hewmie family watched a movie called Slumdog. I wanted to watch it too because I don’t know why some dog anywhere should get a lot of prizes but it turned out the film was not about pooches. It was about people from Indian slums. Well, if you think the people are having a tough time in slums you should try talking to real slum dogs in poor countries like here and see, their lives are living hell. The best way to continue to survive would seem to be to get some real rotting skin disease where your pelt is practically history and raw bits of skin are falling off you- then you go on and on living (and itching ) forever…
Cats of course don’t live in slums .We use our brains and vote with our feet and go somewhere where food is decent. We have standards, again another of the reasons Egyptian nobility treated us like Gods.
Labels: cats, colombo
DAILY MEWS 7
March 1st
I remember reading a joke somewhere about how to give a pill to a cat. It said something about 17 steps which always ended in the pill being lost and the administrator being hospitalized, which was not only funny but quite typical. Cats are tough creatures which is why they have survived for thousands of years among humans and in spite of being quite tiny in comparison to almost anything around, except perhaps rats. And these tough cats don’t ever accept that they need medication but they occasionally do. Our Mistress Hacketty I saw recently has found a solution to this. She merely grinds what ever pill it is and mixes it with bees honey and rubs it on Patchy’s pelt. This is gruesome to even watch. Patchy being the clean and self respecting feline she is, cannot so much as sleep until she has licked off the resulting mess and this takes a lot of determination and the occasional grimace of disgust which is hilarious to watch. But at the end of the day the poor cat is clean and shiny and the medicine has been licked off. I guess a cat caught in an oil spill wont last very long, eh. Unfortunately for us we are a race of animals completely obsessed with our pelts to such an extent that we constantly need to keep licking it spotless. Pthew.
March 8th
Today is International Women’s Day. I find it strange. Hewmies have a day set aside specially for the female of their species. In fact I think, hewmie females are a strangely disadvantaged lot. No where in any other animal species do you see the female being abused, starved, ill treated, incarcerated and even killed just because she is a female. Most of the time in the animal world females are welcome as they are the ones who bring fourth young and half the time they are courted lovingly and even respected. And of course no one wants to mess with an angry mother…but it is strange that with all their power hewmie mothers seem to be very subservient and tolerant.
March 14th
Today mistress Hacketty got a bit annoyed because the baby cublets would not come for dinner. They like to sit near a square light, which makes them keep looking at it and their paws hit the floor in front of it with a lot of tapping . It makes them quiet and crazy a bit like kuppa –mania but it has a much longer effect. Sometimes they sit in front of this thing for hours. Then when they come to eat they are not very bothered about the food and their mother has to remind them that they are lucky to be in the worlds top 5 % of the population that can afford dinner. This of course makes me smirk, since, being her cats, we are in the top 1 % that can afford to be picky about dinner . Hee hee. ..
Labels: cats, colombo
