Category: Animals
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Waiting for the rain
After a prolonged wet spell, when we yearned for the simple protection of a veranda over our heads, so that we could enjoy the outdoors in relative comfort, May turned dry and the friendly builders installed both frame and glass panels of the Simplicity 6 system. Plants in their outdoor pots began to wither before…
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A musing on a silhouetted vignette
We sat together, my beloved and me, in our warm upstairs room, looking up over the hills behind the house, as the cat, bemused, looked back at us from its perch on the windowsill. The setting sun fired the sky through the dark clouds, and we thought, this is our life here, here in our…
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We have a ‘slow worm’ resident in our compost
This limbless lizard certainly lives up to its name! When I lifted the old carpet section laid out on our compost box, I revealed this fellow. I ambled back to the house, retrieved my phone and ambled back. He was still there, looking around with his little eyes. I don’t actually know our slow worm’s…
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A place in the sun
We are all getting older, Kali cat and us, losing a few of our wits along the way, but still enjoying the sunshine. Kali is especially good at seeking out, and finding, the warmest place to recline, stretch out, relax. Yesterday morning, before she found this sunshine-warmed hammock, I spent hours clearing Harry Hymer, our…
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When the entire garden is open to explore . . .
I could never feel right by embarrassing her, except by relating the tale, but we have never seen a cat in such excited ecstasy before, and when she’s happy, well, she drools. Three months on, and since we’re finally settled in our permanent home, it was time to introduce Kali cat to the garden. As…
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A morning enchantment
A roe deer was a welcome visitor to our garden at dawn today, and she looked directly at us while I fumbled for my phone camera, bringing it into play only in time to catch her white bum! So I looked for the closest image around that reflected just how near she was to the…
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Those life requirements . . .
I’ve been thinking about our cat’s life. She exhibits Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs quite faithfully: food, warmth, hygiene, affection, play. What she doesn’t have in her life, as she’s equilibrating to a restricted bungalow existence, is adventure. But this weekend, this weekend, we open the window and let her out into the greater world.…
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Halfway to happiness
Moves and transitions are rarely easy, and when you don’t understand what’s going on, and why you’ve been displaced, it must be even more disorientating. We’re now about halfway through the adjustment phase, when Kali cat is allowed to ponder the great outdoors, but not to explore beyond what her eyes can see. It’s fair…
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The joys of cat-speak
Our cat is very talkative, as Bengals seem to be. She has a variety of vocalisations, and she’s perfected the art of disdain as well. The body language of a cat with her back turned to you is pretty obvious. But what might a deliberate and prolonged yawn actually mean? It may, of course, be…
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Love and devotion . . .
What else is there, when you’re fed and warm, but to be enjoying the moment? Kali often curls up on our laps in the evening hours, happy with the company of our warm and comfortable bodies, as she snuggles in for a long snooze. In cat years, she’s probably about our age; her hunting exploits…
Roads to Joy 