Eyepeasea

*S* and I were in Waterstones picking out books for the holiday, when she found a book called, well, you can see from the title!

It's an engaging look at some of the subtle and not-so-subtle characteristics of AS, demonstrated with a set of lovely cat pictures.

This isn't a really in depth guide to coping with AS, but if you are vaguely familiar with it and would like to find out more (anything that helps us understand other people is a Good Thing, in my book), then this is a lovely book to read. You can find some reviews of it on Amazon

I'm back.

Less than a week - and then I jet off to Tremblant for a week of riding horses through the snow, hanging on to a dog sled for dear life and becoming familiar with frostbite when I forget to take my extra warm jumpers....

Hopefully I've recovered from my blog-block and so even if I don't manage to blog in real-time, I'll make up for it, on here, when I return.

Very best seasons wishes to everyone - old friends, new friends and friends I've yet to meet.

Ian

P.S. Is Blog.co.uk any better on PDAs yet? That might still be the best way for me to keep in touch...

I was so fond of her. When we spent time together it was a perfect antidote to the hectic and increasingly stressful days at work.  Loyalty and commitment are important to relationships and without those two things it was always bound to end in tears.

Now I feel used, taken advantage of and, to be honest, pretty stupid.  I should have realised what she was up to when I was out at work, and who else she was seeing.

And to cap it all off, now I find out that she is actually a he.  Is there no end to the pain and humiliation that is being heaped on my already overburdened shoulders?

What?  Pardon?  Oh, no.  No, no, no.  Sorry.  I didn't mean it to sound like that.  I'm talking about the cat, not my Girlfriend.

You see, it was completely obvious (to me) that she didn't have a home, that she had been cruelly abandoned.  And this was always going to stir my empathy and sympathy genes.  We had a rain storm and when *S* opened the door, there stood the cat - shivering and looking forlorn (in a one eyed kind of way).  

She shivered until we dried her lovingly with a towel.  She lay listlessly until we found the right nourishment to give her.  She looked bereft, alone and scared until we hugged and caressed her.

Once I realised that she loved fish (she settled for fish flavoured cat food after realising that she couldn't get the lid off the aquarium), she began to eat in my kitchen every day.  I have pictures of her eating, sleeping, more eating and more sleeping.  She'd been abandoned and now she had a home.  She was mine. I was hers.

I drove into my road at the weekend to see a new (less than 6 months, so obviously I haven't spoken to them yet) neighbour stroking my cat.  I was mildly irritated by this intrusion but I nevertheless struck up conversation and without prompting, she started talking about her cat....

So she is a he.  He gets fed regularly and has a nice comfy place to sleep, thank you very much.  Eating my food at my house, getting love and attention and, of course, sleeping on my bed was just convenient.  I thought I was important to him, I thought he CARED. 

<sniff>

by a cat (picture to follow).

She started coming round to my house a couple of months ago; just lazing arounding in my garden. She wasn't too pushy to begin with but got bolder and came into the house more (the back door is always open). I started to try and keep her downstairs - my youngest has always been alergic to almost all animal fur. However, I can't stop him wanting to play with the cat and, to my surprise, he didn't start scratching, sniffing or sneezing... Phew.

Cat (yet to be named) is now allowed the free run of the house. The final part of our relationship was meal-times. She just wouldn't eat anything I put down in front of her.

Mind you, have you ever sniffed cat-food? Foul (and fowl) stuff, to be sure. So it isn't really that surprising that she turned her nose up a the choiciest-chunkiest-rabbit-filled lumps from Wiskas.

The other night she discovered the two gold fish. Oh heaven (for her). She spent 30 minutes scratching at the perspex before giving up. The fish seemed completely non-plussed by the whole episode. Whilst rather unsatisfactory for the cat, she did find some spilt fish-food (the small flakes variety). She licked the table completely clean; both saving me a job and making it clear that the food she wanted was fish based and dry, not rabbit based and wet (IYSWIM).

Last night, *S* woke up to hear the screams of a cat in the garden of one my neighbours. She looked out of the window to see a fox throw a cat several feet into the air. The cat tried to escape but was pulled down the fence by the fox (I didn't even know that foxes could climb fences). Some more screams and then silence. I woke to find find *S* in tears. She couldn't tell if it was 'our' cat, but we don't see many cats around my house and so things looked very bleak. I was at work early today but got a text at 10:11 this morning. Just "Cat's back - having breakfast in the kitchen". What a relief - it wasn't 'my' cat killed last night. 'My' cat will be there when I get home (and it was hard to resist the temptation to go rushing home). It took a while for me to think that someone has lost their cat and perhaps they don't even know it yet. I am sorry for them, but I'm glad that my cat will be there when I get home.

It's funny; before I had a cat (I used to have kittens, when I first left my ex), I couldn't understand how people could get attached to cats because they always seemed so snooty and aloof. But now... now I understand. Cats are incredibly loving; they just reserve that feeling for a small number of humans...

Now - a name?????? She must have a name. I thought about 'lucky' - but she wouldn't understand, and I'm certainly not going to tell her what happened to the other cat last night....

This probably fits more into the category of my justjokes blog, but it's so good (IMO), I thought I'd share it with my friends here...

Thanks to Kevin for this one...

If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one colour, pink.

However, if you stare at the black "+" in the centre, the moving dot turns to green.

Now, concentrate on the black "+" in the centre of the picture. After a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating.

It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear.