Panda meets........

.........alien being over Great Tartan Wall.


Close encounters of the furred kind.

A Family Purrsuit

Cumin now has a professional name, Phillida Laterly, as she enjoys sorting stamps with my husband

The Shortest Day

The most wondrous place to experience the full depth of autumn has to be Central Europe. Canada and the USA may be grander and the hues more dramatic, but let me take you through the rich, damp leaf-cushioned floor of the Vienna Woods, or the fairytale forests of Bohemia and Transylvania, scented with pine burning stoves, the mountain cottage with a chimney sensing the heavens with an anointing of smoke.
There’s something dreamlike about taking a tram in Vienna, hearing a musician play from an upper window, somewhere out of reach, and watching the august, leafless trees blur by. Then travelling home through the frost-hardened fields of Niederoesterreich, your head covered and warm, but your nose catching every nuance of smell through its cold tip. Homecoming means a ceramic log stove with a humidifier scenting the room with cloves, its heat giving the feather quilts the fragrance of Christmas. Your Sunday walk takes you through misty cemeteries and Heurigen, you dodge rotten apples on the pavements and anticipate festive tables strewn with chestnuts and dried russet leaves.
Tonight is the shortest night, but it is mid year. As I hurried to the station from work, I could hear a solitary blackbird somewhere high on an office window ledge. I stood briefly and tried to locate it, and as I did, heard a busker in the subway playing one of Mozart’s pieces for violin. For a split second I closed my eyes, imagined Demel’s café and a walk to the tram from the Hofburg. My nose twitched in anticipation, seeking out the smell of a wood burning stove, and the smell of spice.
So tonight I baked a pumpkin pie, mit Nelken, Ingver und Zimt, and later I will disappear to another world under a feather quilt. But tomorrow I will wake to a S. Pacific autumn, where the leaves hang resolutely on the trees.

Braveheart

In the last week I have watched our kitten’s sense of curiosity, fascinated. She is so brave and nosy, and her capacity to learn knows no bounds. I wish I had the same ratio of courage that she has in her tiny tiger frame – now let’s see, multiply her 1 kg of boldness by 100. Not bad!
It makes me think. Why is it so easy for us to lose our sense of adventure and desire for the unknown? For a kitten, of course much of it is so that they can make sense of any dangers in their environment. But I am entranced when she looks at rain coming down the window. I wonder how her brain processes that; or coming face to face with a huge cat for the first time. She dealt with that by kissing his nose and then purring; an object lesson in “loving your enemy”. All quite magical really.
This afternoon, using the struts of our dining room chairs as a climbing frame, she encountered Mr “Huge as a Panda” cat almost nose to nose. He seems to be falling under her spell too. I suspect the heart shape marking on her side is the sign of things to come.

In the land of the giant panda puss

however interesting the scenery...........




..........a girl simply needs an exit plan

Successful recipes

I have never been a mother, but on the worry barometer, the last three days have come pretty close. Our rescue kitten, Ms Ginger Fireball Rocket has had me lying awake fretting. Our much beloved Snr Soppy Tom Cat has been grieving his sister, meeping strange conversations, not eating and generally looking miserable. I have felt like I was turning greyer every day.

On Saturday night, Ms Kitten’s spay wound started to look odd. I bathed it with veterinary supplied antiseptic wash, left over from a fight wound of Snr Cat and it started to look better, then worse, then better. Tonight I took her to the vet. It was much worse on the inside than the outside and had come close to being very serious. I felt terrible. I had no idea. It would appear she was sick when we collected her 4 days ago. The vet was marvellous and has re assured me she will recover fully. He also weighed her – just over 1kg. I was thrilled. Four days of troughing her victuals has really plumped her up. That and lounging in a very comfortable basket next to a mini radiator, with three meals a day, en suite litter tray and room service.

Like the recipe book says, “leave in a warm place until doubled in size.”

Take one shoelace

and apply 200 g of ginger kitten