CatDonna's Cats

Very, very jet lagged.

Some of the more interesting/cuter cats I met along my jolly travels thus far.

Southampton


Cat belonging to husband's friend's neighbour. Sleepy little fella with car phobia and a dirty nose.


This is Ginger! Belonging to another friend of the husband's [it's getting confusing, I know].
You gotta love her expression.


I dunno if I'm stereotyping here but Ginger, like most tortoiseshells, is very chatty. And bossy. She kept talking to me. Kept telling me to do things. "Open the door dammit, I want in!" "Now I wanna leave, get your butt here and let me out!" "Pay attention to meeeeee" etc.


This is Fred, husband's friend's other cat. Handsome boy. He hardly ever appears though. Both Fred and Ginger are indoor-outdoor cats.


London


Super friendly, super furry cat. He never failed to look me in the eye and meow loudly in greeting as I passed by. Then he would come along, purring, for cheek rubs and strokes.


He's no wuss though. Check out the ragged ear.
Homeboy's had a few good fights in his time.


This is Scoot, who lives with our London friend.
She was adopted from the Battersea Home for Animals about a year ago and she's approx 5 years old now.


She's shy and wary with strangers, but warms up if you take the feather toy thingy and make an absolute fool of yourself with it. Trust me on this one.


Brighton


Another lovely little fellow. Friendly and chatty, purring and rubbing against our legs. Unlike the London cat, this guy was too excited to stay in one spot and pose for pics.


To be fair to him, though, he was probably just trying to keep warm.
The weather that day was pretty cold, with strong winds and sea spray from the beach next to us [Brighton, as you know, is a seaside resort city thingamajig]. We were surrounded by the sea almost everywhere we went. Lovely.

I have lotsa other pics of the wonderful UK in summer but I won't post 'em up now because YOU DON'T CARE, YOU DON'T CARE, DO YOU. Cads! *takes pen and stabs stomach in self-pity*

Heh heh.
I'll probably do it tomorrow.
Have some cute doggie pics to post too.
It's getting late. Night.

CatDonna

Just returned to Llanstadwell [West Wales] after a 10-hour drive from Brighton [Southeast England]. It's pretty much from one end of the UK to another.

I'm going to try and summarise everything into one post. :P
My nugget updates as I call 'em.
Wish me luck.

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Two calls from SP my catsitter: one funny, one not funny.

The first call:
"Your Pip a bit siao siao* one. One day she's nice, next day she's nasty, and on the first day she runs away from home. I have to postpone her sterilisation at the vet's because she became very aggressive, for your info. Don't worry, I'll get it done next week."

This is hilarious coming from a highly experienced cat rescuer and foster. SP has dealt with pretty much the entire gamut of feline behaviour. I wonder what crazy, "very aggressive" shenanigans Pip must have come up with to give SP second thoughts about going near her.

"And there's another one, this naughty cat who beats up Teddy and likes to vomit. He loses his temper and SCREAMS at me when it's time to put all the cats back in their room... All your other cats are very nice and easygoing, it's just these two are so temperamental... His name is Doe? He and Pip are siblings?! [Shocked silence] Oh I see. Runs in the family huh."

*siao: a term from the Hokkien dialect meaning "mad", which is very apt for Pip

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SP's second phone call [the not funny one] was to inform me that another rabbit of mine, Thimble, died suddenly.

We were in Wimbledon [West London] when we heard the news. The husband and I were quite morose that night.

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We were at Southampton's High Street when we walked past a tabletop dancing club called "For Your Eyes Only". Oh, the sleaze!!!

Two doors down was a Far East cuisine restaurant that cheekily called itself "For Your Thais Only". Oh, the grease!!!

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Okay okay, you heartless readers, I know you don't care about me or my holiday, you just want the CAAAAAAAAAATS.

Tsk! Fortunately for you, I have taken many cat [and other] pics that I shall be very glad to post for your pleasure, tomorrow. I promise!

Eh, I've just returned from a 10-hour journey after one week of hurtling from Pembroke to Poole, Southampton, London, Brighton and back here. Be nice. ;)

So. A picture post tomorrow.
For now, I can really feel the fatigue weighing down on me.
Off to bed.

CatDonna
ps - Just to say that my notice of resignation ends 21 June. Which means that I am now officially unemployed. Huzzah!

The moon over Pembroke Dock. If you squint at the left of the pic you'll see a ship: the Irish Ferry.

This is the night view from my bedroom window.

Tomorrow morning, we're going across the Wales-England border to Southampton and Brighton. Then it's back to North Wales, this time in Bangor, and we'll return to Llanstadwell [and broadband] in about a week.

The husband's family and friends are liberally scattered in diverse places, and the wife has to follow.

I'll try as much as I can to update whenever there's a connection available.

Lots of love
CatDonna

*drumroll*

The pics I owe. Here they are!!!!!!!!


After this pic was taken, he came over and licked my hand and smiled at me with his puppy dog eyes

The Staffordshire Bull Terrier I met at Haverfordwest. He's so friendly and cute I wanna wrap him in a DFS plastic carrier and smuggle him home.


On the wall

Mr Black Cat, about 11 pm, Llanstadwell cemetery. Creepy kinda cute.


In a shady corner out of the wind

Mr BC the next day, same venue. Not so creepy and mega cute.


Llanstadwell church is about 1000+ years old


Another view: along the estuary

We're staying next door to the church at the vicarage. You can see it in the second photo if you squint [sorry, the church kinda blends in with the scenery], the largish, victorian-looking double-storey house near the centre of the pic. It's pretty, isn't it?


We go to the beach quite frequently.
[Notice I'm wearing a string bikini? Thereby hangs a tale. Keep reading.]


Cliffs and sea: This is Dale West

Today the waves were good for surfing: about 8 to 10 feet high and they just CRASH on you. Rip currents are common here and they can really suck you out into the open sea.

That happened to me today... I was happily paddling with the waves and before I knew it, I was swept out quite far away. I was out in the freezing cold, deep seawater, with waves crashing on my head and pushing me under every few seconds. I could hardly see my pals on the beach [they were tiny specks] and the water was too choppy to call for help.

For a moment, I really thought this might be the end. It took a frighteningly long time to swim back until I could feel the sand under my feet.

I went back and my friends told me they did see me go under and get swept out by the tide. And like the true buddies they were, THEY STOOD AROUND AND TOOK PICTURES!!!

*mutters under breath*

Best of all, the waves were pounding so hard my bikini top AND bottom got yanked off, and it happened so many times I gave up adjusting my bits. Yes, I was a NUDIE-RUDIE ON THE BEACH HAR HAR!!! Thankfully I didn't actually lose 'em, they just all slipped down and looked embarrassing on the wrong parts of my body. Heh heh.

Good old British summers: unpredictable. The past few days have been cloudy, wet and cold. It's a nice change, though.

It's about midnight here so I'm off to bed. Good night all.

CatDonna

Last night I dreamt that I'd gone back home and Pip gave me her usual greeting: circling my feet and mewing/whining in her special kitten voice for me, getting ready to jump up for a cuddle.

So when I woke up I called my trusty catsitter SP who gave me a brief outline of what's going on in the House of CatDonna during my absence:

• Hazel and Fiver are growing too attached to Pip, who's also being over-protective of them. When SP opens the door to their room they won't come out to play with her, and they keep hiding behind Mommy. SP is going to separate Pip and babies very soon; H+F need to be more independent, and Pip needs to re-integrate with the other cats to regain her sanity.
• I'd left a note for SP to help me put Lucie and Boonie up for adoption on the Catwelfare site [for the third time, woohoo] but SP can't identify them from my written descriptions [is my English so bad, oh dear]. So she won't put up anything as yet, and I'm going to mail her some pics from my blog. ONCE I GET BROADBAND ARGH ARGH ARGH
• SP thinks my three rabbits have lovely personalities [I was in rabbit rescue/fostering before]. That put me on an immediate guilt trip: MUST spend more time with the bunnies.
• I called my mother as well [who checks on my place once in a while] and she mentioned that Teddy seems to be living on top of the fridge now. I suspect Doe must be bullying Teddy terribly, now that we're not around to stop him.

I miss my dogs too. Over here I see lots of people walking their poochies, and I wish Singapore had such wide natural spaces for me to take Rusty.
Compared to this place, Singapore sucks big time for dog-walking.
Bishan Park's full of parasites, there are too many people at the beach, and the reservoirs aren't exactly pet-friendly.
Does anyone have a nice place in Singapore to take dogs out? Drop in a comment and let me know. :)

CatDonna

Just to let you all know, because of the cost and lousy connection I'm not able to reply much to comments, or even to read other blogs for too long. So I may seem pretty quiet for the time being until we get the dang broadband. But I'm reading all comments and occasionally peeking at other blogs, too - gotta keep myself updated with the Singapore cat blog scene hey? ;)

Some little surprises in store for ye lovely folks! *evil laughter*

Love
CatDonna

Latest: I've tried, but it's really impossible to upload pics with this connection. We're getting broadband in a few days so if you'll bear with me, I'll get all the text out of the way first and then we'll have lotsa picture posts. Deal? Yeah. *shake pinkies on that*

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Today we went to the city for some shopping. The "city" being Hwllfordd aka Haverfordwest, although the town centre was pretty quiet and small.

Still, we managed to run our errands and stuff. I bought a cool bikini! And I'm actually getting tanned/burnt here! Summer is truly upon us all.

Going swimming again tomorrow. Hopefully we'll get the beach all to ourselves. We're thinking of going to a particular little bay called Dale West, surrounded by cliffs and not too accessible. Watch this space. :)

Some interesting things I want to share.

• We came across a poster of a Manx cat that looked EXACTLY like Teddy: a bob-tailed ginger tabby! The husband says Teddy is now officially a Manx, to anyone who asks. Prestigious, ok.
• The mystery of the black cat is solved. The mother-in-law says one of the neighbours has a black cat that used to come over to our orchard almost everyday for, um, private business. He still drops by once in a while. I tell you, if this is Singapore there'll be another Everitt Road saga by now. But my parents-in-law aren't bothered, they quite like the fella.
• Today we were waiting for the bus when a HUGE swarm of insects came buzzing near us. There were easily a few hundred of the little critters. The husband thought they were horseflies but I, with my special x-ray vision, had a feeling they were something else. I was right: we were standing right next to a swarm of WASPS and we didn't know it. Better still, about five of them boarded the bus with us. It was pretty tense on the bus, I tell you.

Finally I leave you with this lovely incident.Today in town I came across something that's banned in Singapore, and I, the naughty and rebellious Singaporean, was so happy that I took a picture of it
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A Staffordshire Bull Terrier*!!! [Banned in Singapore, but a popular breed in the UK. Why? Because THEY'RE SO GENTLE AND GOOD WITH CHILDREN.]

*The pic was supposed to be here, sorry. Umm, try to imagine one for now?

I know this is a cat blog but I REALLY, REALLY love the different breeds of the bull-and-terrier family. Bull terriers, American Pit Bulls, Staffordshires... I've had opportunities to get close to them [I also own two bull terriers] and I haven't met one I didn't like.

It really is a pity about the whole bull-and-terrier issue, and not only in Singapore: the legislations, the indiscriminate breeders, the false assumptions about these lovely animals.
Doesn't the situation sound VERY FAMILIAR???
In this sense, dogs and cats have a lot in common.

Sometimes you really wonder just how well-informed our high-level decision makers are.
And in the end, the animals suffer.
*switch off melancholy reflective mode*
Nonono I'm on holiday, I shall think happy thoughts. Isn't he SOOOOO CUUUUUTE!!!!!!!!!

Love and [sun]kisses
CatDonna

++Update++ I've just come back from a late night walk where I played with Mr Black Cat. It turns out his current fav chill-out place is the churchyard next to the vicarage, where we're staying.

Yep, that's right: I played skritchies alone with a black cat late at night in a cemetery.

It was fun [and Mr Black Cat was a sweetie] except at one point when he suddenly stopped playing and STARED at the gravestone I was sitting next to. FOR THE LONGEST TIME.

As if someone was beside me... *cue spooky music*.

Anti-climax: It turned out that the someone was a shrew that Mr BC later caught and played with, but let go after a bit. Heh heh.

Was intending to take a night shot of Black Kitty with gravestones and the moon in the background but that would be a little too creepy. Maybe a day shot next time, then.

A couple days ago, I received an urgent sms from SP who is currently catsitting at my place. I forget the exact words, but basically Pip disappeared [we didn't even know when she took off]. SP searched the whole level and couldn't find her; Pip was probably hiding behind a neighbour's potted plant laughing herself silly.

Thankfully Pip tired of the game and appeared when SP, in a last-ditch attempt to get her back, started to call her name.

Some observations from this little incident that was related to me via sms:

• Pip must be getting REALLY sick of living in close quarters with Hazel and Fiver, so I hope the weaning process ends soon
• I never knew Pip actually responded to her name, all the while I thought it was just my voice she came running for
• Hey, what do you know? Maybe Pip misses me, or thought I'd run away from home and she had to look for me, like one of her babies

I miss Pip. And all the cats. But maybe Pip the most, because she's closest to me in her own strange little way.

Yesterday I took a walk round the village [yes, it's all villages and small towns here; the closest city is Hwllfordd or 'Haverford West' in English, and it's not only unpronounceable, it's a 45-minute drive away, and this is a very long parenthesis].

Past the sheep pens, the pig farms, potato fields and the estuary, when allofasudden I met the spitting image of Teddy!!! Sooo cute!!! Except he had more fur and a long tail, and honestly I didn't like the cold, snobbish glint in his eyes when he glared me off his territory. Dang Persians.

Teddy would never do that, he has the softest golden round eyes and the gentlest little personality. [The husband read this part and chipped in: 'He's not the spitting image of Teddy. Ted is much cuter and friendlier.' Amen.]

I also saw another cat with a collar and bell on; it was sitting on a second-storey window ledge enjoying the last rays of the setting sun. Its owners probably were staying in that house for the summer [we were walking past some holiday houses facing the estuary], and they were sitting in the front garden playing guitars. They looked like middle-aged hippies. The cat had the cutest look on its face, like it was thinking Yeah you can make all the noise you want my dear hippie people, I'm happy just chillin'.

So fun. :)

Summer is lovely here. The days are long: the sun rises at about 5 am and sets after 10 pm.

There's a black cat with a plush long tail that hangs around the area. I don't think he's a stray [I haven't seen a stray at all!], but we're living on his turf, and he comes round in the evenings to see we're not causing trouble.

Due to genetic differences, the cats here tend to be larger and furrier, with rounder faces and full tails. Teddy would fit in well here [except for the tail]; Boonie and Lucie would be regarded as exotic, and Pip would be mistaken for a space alien because she looks so oddly different. Ha ha ha.

When it's over
That's the time I fall in love again.
- Some strange old song

It's over! I finally managed to hand in my resignation, tie up loose ends with duties and responsibilities, finish all outstanding work and clear out my desk in the space of the past two weeks.

So on Friday 2 June I finally managed to walk out of the office knowing full well that I owed them nothing. Nothing! It's well and truly over.

That was about 4:30 pm or so and by 9:30 pm, I had cleaned the house*, given instructions to the catsitter, packed my suitcases and left Singapore with the husband.

*My husband laughed derisively when he read this line. Tchah!

I'm typing this at my in-laws' residence in Llanstadwell, West Wales. Woot!

I originally had plans to pay Fat Eric a short visit and congratulate him on his Catolympic achievement, since Walthamstow wasn't too far off from Heathrow. But despite my plans I well and truly ran out of time to prepare anything or contact anyone, let alone update this blog. *bows head in guilt*

Anyway, Fat Eric and Mommy, if you're reading this CatDonna says hi from Cymru!!! *waves wildly* Maybe we still can meet, who knows, although I'm not too sure of travel plans at the moment so can't promise anything.

This is my first time on holiday when I haven't actually got an itinerary. I only know I'm here to slack around a bit.

I'm going to be here until the end of the month, and unfortunately because my in-laws still use a dial-up internet connection, it's going to be near impossible to post pics. Also, my time allowed on the computer is... limited, I mean, I keep getting called away every other minute and I guess it is UTTERLY RUDE AND OBNOXIOUS TO SPEND NINETEEN HOURS TRAVELLING ACROSS THE WORLD SO THAT YOU CAN USE SOMEONE ELSE'S INTERNET CONNECTION. [I kid you not. 19 hours of my life gone like that. Dammit I want my 19 hours baaack!]

I'll update whenever I can, and torture all of you with badly taken holiday photos once I return to mine humble domicile with that lovely invention called broadband.

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In cat-related news, I've decided to put Hazel and Fiver up for adoption.

Boonie and Lucie are still up for adoption if anyone's interested.

Please help me spread the news can? Interested parties, please e-mail me. I'll get the catsitter [Siaping for those of you who know her] to screen potential adopters and I'll follow up once I get back.

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Lotsa love to all!
I'm so glad that phase of my life [ie my soon-to-be-ex job] is over.
Now I can fall in love with life again.
*grin*

CatDonna