Old cat / new tricks : Part 2

I'm pretty sure I'll never get used to not having a dog about the place. Recently, the aching absence has been amplified to 11 while the Cruft's Dog Show happens. Girlchild and I are emitting more than our usual ridiculously excessive cooing and ahhing and nawwwing sounds at the clever cute cuddly canines on the telly each night. 


Whilst Her Imperial-But-Geriatric-Fluffiness remains unimpressed.

Perhaps that's why she has stepped up her campaign to drive us all insane.

Or perhaps she's just losing, at speed, every last one of the few remaining marbles she brought with her from home.

Anyway, she has moved beyond mere random night yowling. 
Now her daily schedule includes random day-time yowling.
Plus some very specifically-timed blood-curdling screeching and mewling.

You see, apparently, at unspecified hours and minutes, an invisible but truly hideous disgusting filthy beastie spontaneously materialises in our apartment and exudates in HER litter tray. So, after her initial attempts to intimidate it by flinging granules of cat litter in as many directions and as far as her regal restrictions allow flinging at all, she is compelled to gallop throughout her domain, bewailing her consternation at the horror that has befallen. 

And the caterwauling continues until a two-legged minion rids the queendom of the invading stench monster and restores smoothness and order to the now-crunchy floor of the royal restroom.

She even seems to have taken up the once decidedly doggy duty of attempting to murder us with toxic gases. 
Of course, she'll never admit to it.
Or forgive me for telling you.
But we have recently been subject to ruthlessly unforgiving bottom purrs.
Audible ones.
Room-clearing quality.
Indeed, I have begun to feel quite guilty for all those years of dog-blaming-and-shaming. A great many attacks may well have been stealthy feline subterfuge. 
Sorry, puppies.

One further addition to the patrician daily calendar is the making of insistent, persistent, and particularly clamorous demands of whichever kitchen hand is first to rise. Clear and repeated commands are made that the door to the great beyond be opened to facilitate a morning promenade. However brief that promenade may be.

Indeed, on mornings when nobody has roused by daybreak, she makes the long trek to the servants' quarters, sounding reveille all the while, leaving no room for doubt about her needs and desires.
With summer approaching, I've began fashioning a small silken eye-mask — acceptably elegant but impenetrable to light.

But, last week, the chief-cook-and-bottle-washer had small revenge.

This happened.





It doesn't snow at home on The Rock.

Never, in her eighteen years, had she witnessed anything so distasteful.

I really shouldn't have laughed as much as I did at the indignant foot shaking.

And with her hasty U-turn, the kind thing to do would have been been to let her back in the door she'd just egressed.

But counterattack is a dish best served cold!