Busyness

It has been a busy week. I would be more accurate if I said our nights have been busy, due to the superb hunting skills of our cats, and mostly our lady cat.

We have considered having a score board installed in the hallway:

Mice brought in
Mice killed
Mice brought in dead and dumped
Mice brought in and lost
Mice brought in, retrieved by humans and evicted.

This afternoon we realised we would need to add another category;

Mice deposited in shoe to be played with later.

Our ginger female has made mouse retrievable easier recently as she has become obsessed by inserting bewildered vermin inside various shoes in our hallway. As our bedroom is immediately off the hallway, and the door is directly opposite the shoes, I frequently hear her chirruping and playing with her evening companion. Large yoghurt pots are now strategically placed, with their lids, close to the shoes for the mouse to be tipped out and sealed in until one of us distracts the hunter and evicts the poor creature out of one of the windows. They live to be caught another day. Some of them choose to grip the shoe lining so as not to be chomped on. However, this is even more tantalising for our furry torturer, as the tail dangling amongst the laces gives her a real buzz. Chirruping becomes yowling interspersed with other deathly gurgles. Our house is nothing if not interesting!

Onto other busynesses. We are preparing for our imminent departure to the UK and Israel to visit a variety of elderly relatives. So far the evidence of this is a pile of seemingly unrelated items on the back bed, ready to be packed, and various diversions I have put in place to keep myself sane and avoid the inevitable (packing, organising things for the house/cat sitter etc). One of those diversions was today, I went to a fabric sale. I need more fabric like the Pacific Ocean needs more water. Open any cupboard or drawer in our house and there is likely to be a neatly folded piece of retro fabric waiting to be made into something.

The next diversion is a deep dish pie with celery, onions, mushrooms, potato, kumara and corned beef. The before shot minus pastry lid.

Diversion number three just showed up. Two cats on the desk, fighting for the woollen mat with a view of the driveway. Tabby cat with only 3mg of courage to his name is hiding from our resident pheasant. The desk gives him a cats eye view of the bird.