“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.” This one of my favourite funny quotes, by the US author Garrison Keillor. However, Garry, you are sadly mistaken on this occasion – our sweet new cats do have a function. Several, in fact. The principle one is of course to make us smile and amuse us – they are devastatingly charming and beautiful boys. Another function is that they act as a highly effective alarm clock. Unfortunately, this is an alarm clock that you cannot program, that goes off when it wants to, that cannot be turned off, and that utilises claws, tongues, teeth and sudden crashing noises to wake you.
After a week of patchy sleep on our Italian camping trip, to come home and be woken each morning somewhere between 5 and 7am isn’t ideal… but they are so irresistibly cute, as you can see from the photos. The tabby one is Louis, and he is the slightly bigger, stronger one, but still uber-affectionate. The whitish-ginger one is Leon, and he is a monkey in cat’s clothing: a mischievous imp. Both of them love to climb onto your shoulders and just sit there. Leon also LOVES to lick you, so when it is him on your shoulders, your neck, cheek and hair all get a thorough cleaning. So sweet. I put together a short collection of clips of the two at play. Check it out!
The current schedule involves the aforementioned rude awakening, which sees either one or the other, or both of us heading down to the barn room, hyper kitties in tow, to entertain them for a while and try to take the edge off their mania. This can take some time… Usually, by around 8:30, they have their first crash of the day and pass out in a bundle together on someone’s lap. They take a number of naps throughout the day, which is understandable given their output when awake. They have only 2 modes: stationary, asleep mode and 9,000 miles per hour up and down the stairs mode. Their original home was smaller, all on one floor and crowded, with 11 other cats, 1 dog, 3 kids and husband and wife, so our house, and especially the staircase, is heaven for them.
Beyond playing with our new puddies, we haven’t been up to that much since our return home. The day we set off on the trip, the weather turned fairly bad in the Dordogne – cool, cloudy and rain. Lots of rain. Rain that proceeded to follow us east across Europe over the next few days from the Alps to Italy and back again. In the Dordogne though, it was even worse and it did not let up until the day of our return. On Thursday though, our first full day back, skies were clear and it was 25 degrees. We caught up with Sharon and poor Oscar, who is currently banished from our house until we can get him used to the cats and vice versa.
Over the next couple days, temps climbed steadily, peaking at just over 30 yesterday. We enjoyed our customary Margaritas by the pool on Friday night. Well, actually, they weren’t quite our usual recipe (tequila, cointreau, lime juice, dash of OJ, dash of sugar) – they were even more feisty. I had a dangerous flash of inspiration while in Cattolica last week, at our hotel bar. The lovely hotel manager poured us a limoncello each by way of digestif and it occurred to me how nicely the Italian drink might work as part of an enhanced Margarita: the Cattolica was born! (Patent pending). We substituted lime juice for lemon juice, scrapped the sugar and OJ and added limoncello (and slightly less cointreau). The result is really rather lovely – very similar to the Margarita really -but they hit you like a sack of spanners! We had 2 each on Friday and were all quite pissed. Most fun.
Saturday was the really hot day so, after our early start and early play with the kitties, we went out by the pool to get some sun and have a swim. We had decided to have an impromptu BBQ, so invited over a new English friend of ours, Keith (see earlier entry) to join us that evening. Cooking was the usual joint effort and a Cattolica each got us started with a bang. Fortunately, we didn’t go crazy at all – we are still feeling the effects of being run ragged so lack the stamina at the moment, and Sharon and Keith both wanted to catch the final of “Britain’s got Talent”, so it wasn’t a late one.
As predicted, the sudden heat-wave led to the inevitable storm. The skies clouded over last night and this morning we got some fairly loud thunder and some torrential rain. This sliced about 10 degrees off the temperature so we are having an indoor day. This evening, we are off to dinner at Mike & Jean’s place in Brantôme (they were the previous owner’s of this property), which should be nice. We’ve not been to theirs before so looking forward to seeing it. Just hope the kittens behave themselves while we are out….