Dreams of Thrushes, also Grey Squirrels with Ratty Tails

They were in a green square with branches of sweeping yellow. The wind tossed the tasty bits along with the leaves. Idiot dogs ran fatly, close to the ground. Round and round the black cars went. Inside was the spring, and my lunch.

Mindfulness seminar

Humans have a lot of trouble with what they call (in a fit of imprecision) mindfulness. By this, they mean that they can't stop worrying about what might happen or brooding on things that have happened instead of simply looking out of their cave and seeing the tasty flutterings go by.

Their brooding and their worrying (not to mention all the fluttering things they miss) make them very unhappy. They then fight against their unhappiness by all sorts of lesser and greater ineffectuals. For instance, they talk or eat or collect.

What they should do is to try to be more like us lower animals. When the sun is warm on our backs, we stretch out in it and never worry about filing our taxes. When we smell rodent, we hunt. When our arses itch, we lick them.

Since the publishing business is not making me any money, I have decided to run high-priced seminars in mindfulness, taught by myself and other experts. Such as Gooney, who, it is rumoured, has no sort of mind at all.

G says: "watch and learn, folks"

Magical Spring Recipes

I have been thinking of magical activities which might make the glaciers retreat from the deck and back garden. Not that I mind the sedimentary deposits of four months of snow, all crispy and edged with dirt. I just can't stand Bhiksu's shrill complaints as he stares down the back door, willing it to open.

Cooking is, of course, the best of magical activities. My recipe books make a pile that reaches to the ceiling of my cave. I haven't even opened all of them.

How the tips of my whiskers vibrated when I opened the index of a particularly fat one and saw the entry, HALIBUT. Think of it, recipes addressed to ME. The maker of this cookbook, though, thinks I must be particularly fond of fish, which as a landlocked prairie-dweller, would be a difficult kind of game for me to pursue too enthusiastically. Still, I think that Delicate has a large frying pan somewhere in her closet.

"A recipe for Halibut." Thank you, how kind!

Flooded cave

I was dreaming of voles. All was set for a satiated afternoon of sleep, when a particularly big one emptied a bucket over my arse.

You can imagine the state of indignation in which I woke. No voles are going to give me the spa treatment! Halibut never bathes.

The truth is, however, even worse, as it usually is.

My cave is dripping. I expect the stalag mites and tites to be forming soon. Gooney is simply not absorbent enough to mop it up as it comes in, even though he is doing his best to supplement fur with his busy little tongue. (Gooney has always liked strange waters.)

It's the ice dams. Damn you, sun! Why did I ever call you back from your solsticial sleep?

A present from Mr Feng Shui, probably someone I've dropped from my Christmas card list

My experience, early in December, with the purported St Nicholas the present bringer made me resolve to sleep through Christmas.

I did, but woke a few days later to find a curious book stuffed into a sock, just outside the entrance to my cave.

Gooney and Bhiksu do not read; they appear only to provide scale.

Since I had also received a voluminous cookbook with promising recipes that I wanted to test (having received a large shipment of imported rodent meat for the holidays), I threw Mr Shui's book onto the comfortable pile of rubble at the back of my cave.

While lying there half-conscious just this afternoon, I began idly turning the pages with my foot.

I am not sure what I have learned, except that Mr Shui is very bossy.

Here is the kind of thing he is apt to say:

If you want the support of your superiors and colleagues, always sit with the wall behind you. Even better, hang up a picture of the Himalayas behind your back.
Look for the three-legged frog in the supermarket. Display it for luck, but don't let it look at the door.
Do not plant a thorn bush outside your cave. Avoid cactus plants and their killing energies.
If you use a litter box {and some do!}, trace a wavy line across the sand to allow good luck to flow slowly to your posterior.


OK, I made up the last one. But this is very much the style adopted by FS. Does this suggest, as M Salaud le Marché Boursier was suggesting to me only the other day, 'un retour au mouvement littéraire et culturel de l'absurde'?

Even fewer signs of the Apocalypse

It seems that recent scattered showers have been due to avian sponging. It is well known to me that many of the feathery tribe (particularly Turdus migratorius and Bombycilla cedrorum) are notorious sots.

Their common device is to wait until the fruits of trees, for instance of the genus Sorba, are well fermented. Apples will also do. (Top alcholic content is achieved just around this time of winter, in fact.) Then the sozzlers descend in clouds and get on with berry-bibbing. Sometimes, if you're lucky, they will drop off the branches, infused with a delicate hint of wassail.

This week in dead animals

Here the the days are lengthening apace. The sun has returned, brought back by the sacrifice of the chosen ones, toothsome magpies. We are still picking the sinews from between our teeth, every discovery a delightful rancid surprise.

And yet the humans live in fear, as they usually do, gibbering about an Animal Apocalypse. They feel guilty about their poisonous habits, and suspect the Big Cat in the Sky is sending down a disapproving rain of fauna on their meagrely stocked heads. "Some had no eyes." Indeed.

We know what we would do with a thousand tasty birdies falling from the sky.