Gooney gets back his cohones

Well done, my boy! Now on to rats.

Guest Post, by Me Bhiksu: We are hanging in there, waiting for Halibut's Annual Solstice Dinner and Talent Show

When Halibut is blacker than usual, he crawls into the back of his cold cave and doesn't come out for weeks.

He has been there for a while now. My brother and I think a warm spot beside a pig is best.

We know a pig who is very friendly on a dark day. He has the right colour and smell.

Anyone who needs cheering up should meet one soon.

Yours truly Bhiksu

An extra hour to prowl

The great millstone of the year grinds round, and we once again enter the dark days when the sparrows witter on their leafless twigs. It's much easier to find them that way. That may be why, when everyone else is sinking into the gloom, I feel more tail-lashingly frisky, more glowing-coal alert, hungrier than ever for furred and feathered victims.

I am looking out of my den now at a sky of pale blue, glaring and tinged with a grimy horizon. Daylight  will soon become dusk and the hour to hunt. I will exhale a hiss of relief.

Rêves de chat

Éditions Flétans need not rely on my feeble efforts. Not when there is a stable of willing hacks to trot out a few verses celebrating the idylls of the season past. THEREFORE:

I take great pleasure in announcing the first installments in our international autumn line of fine po-ems.


My dreamy sunny afternoons
Are free alike of cares and fears
As little piping cries of birds
Fall softly on my furry ears.


L’après-midi
Est sans souci
Et les petits oiseaux
Chantent ‘Kikeriki’.

All cats are janus-faced

Frank and Louie, the two-faced cat, is famous all over the world today. And why? Simply because he does not look like other cats.

Foolish humans. Every cat does not look like every other cat. Indeed, every human does not look like every other human. Why then recoil when one notices an extra nose? Especially if it possible to smell with it, as I understand the fortunate F & L is able to do?

Over here, the mouse-scented breeze,
the gamey twang of tom down there;
And what if my noses are pink and grey?
The bird I sniff out won't care.

(That isn't a bad effort for someone hungover from a month of torpidity. I admit I was thinking of a fusion of Gooney & Bhiksu, which would achieve two differently shaded noses but a whole brain.)

Birthdays

At the end of this month, the fat and conceited cats B & G will celebrate their sixth birthday.

What is the customary gift for a sixth birthday? Lead? Saltpeter? Moth pellets?

I must go shopping.

So you proles didn't like it, then?

You would think that anyone would appreciate wise words in a temple of rats. Well, I've already learned to lower my standards. I suppose I just need to lower them a little more. Except that I am too busy at the moment. A fresh crop of crow and magpie babies demand my attention. The old ones scream at me, mobbing, the moment I appear.

Well, let them scream and swoop. The ugly little babies perch on the ledges of windows, looking in with their blank, black eyes. Halibut waits in a black heap. He knows how to open windows. Oh yes.