Princess

This girl is a cat of cats.

She is proud.

When she lived in Melbourne, and her owners brought a dog to the place, she went underground.

When there was bullying which spread to Catland, she went bush and stayed away from food and water in a dry violent cold autumn time. Back then, She who began this blog after all those events, found Princess, noticing the little comical white nose & gorgeous colours at the back of the house up lane while doing Bush Regeneration work.

That was when Her old world fell apart which is Some Story. It was at that time Princess came to stay with Her and was a comfort indeed as worlds became more isolated.

Somewhere there are photo's of Princess as a kitten. She's being cuddled by my niece, a kitten herself back then and now a young woman on the edge of a career and many possibilities.

The miouw of Princess is hoarse and coarse, and still she loves it when folks stop and talk to her.

My sister works with old folks and she says that Princess sounds like an old lady these days, but Princess doesn't care. Warmth and love and care and gentleness are all that she deserves and finds.

She sleeps in the bathroom, it's easier to clean and whenever anyone goes to the loo, that way she can creep upon a lap.

Princess Ariel still spends some time on the front verandah on sunny days and she goes to the front fence to speak to her many friends when they call her name.

Me, I'm trying to remember the Princess age, she must be close to twenty recently.

When these wintery days are too cold or too windy, our Princess will stay in our warm bathroom on her little electric blanket. It's true that she'll have a bit of a throwup sometimes and so fresh towels must be constantly supplied but who cares? This gal is a miracle of survival.

It's more difficult for her to clean herself, her tongue isn't so raspy as it was when she was a younger cat and so she has a special brush. Her bright fur is still glossy.

She definately needs her cuddles every day.

When she goes to the verandah in recent times, she understands at last that not all cats will attack her.

When she lived Up Bush, She was being attacked and His cat also attacked Princess. It was a place of dire luck

These days, Princess finds her spot on the Verandah. Stanley, Sylvio, Ballanchine, Grace and Tabs all establish their own individual spots on our wide verandah and none of them attack her, our Princess, our old one. Some times Princess will hiss at them and say a bad word or so and the younger cats will retreat a little. They know she won't attack them.

We have a peaceful home.

However the cold can get to the old bones and the wind is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes Princess stays inside and lets She change the towels and the poo box and then she scratches on her branch brought inside and yawns a bit, & she rests her old bones and dreams dreams which cause her to purr.

So many people love this old cat.

Updates

Checking The Back Yard: Our Roof, Our Tabs, 

I was too tired to go looking for Tabs last night. She hides out in a shed at the end of Daigon Alley if she's having second thoughts about coming inside with the mobs. Sometimes second thoughts are caused by one Black Tom. Not allowed inside at night himself, he'll sometimes prevent Tabs and Scrap from coming inside here. Maybe it's company he's after! Scrap and he have been friends since they were kittens and he also likes Tabs.

I had counselling again on Wednesday. Although the place I go is a short distance, I was worried about being late and RAN for the bus. Not far. The pain knifed into my joints immediately and I was reduced to a hobble. Yes, I've run a few times lately, when the Big Wind came and I had to fetch frightened cats, and every so often I run a bit or dance for the joy of this beautiful place. (Odd, dancing doesn't cause as much pain as running, though both usually demand some recovery time.)

Anyway, one of the boys from the White Goods Store next to the bus stop held the bus for me as I hobbled the last few yards and the physical effort that followed has ensured a few days of pain and limitation.

Not having the wherewithall to look for Tabs and Scrap bothers me much more than the lack of movement at home and round about the place. After all, I have the computering and I have the writing and study work and I can always catch up on the house work later.

Yesterday I pushed a bit more physical effort as I dug out an infestation of Onion Weed which is amost awful weed. Every bulb sends out a multitude of smaller bulbs and one has to try to get each tiny bulblet out as well as the major plants now getting to the flowering stage.

(In times past, when I worked at Bush Regeneration Up The River, a major annoyance was the number of gardeners who'd drive up our way to secretly dump a Ute Load of Onion Weed from their gardens! You can imagine what that feels like after you've carefully and gradually worked around areas with most natural growth so that the most determined weeds such as Farmer's 'Friend', Compton Weed, Privet, Lantana, Morning Glory, Erhata, Paspalum, Tradescantia, Flea Bane, Turkey Rhubarb and so on are finished off bit by bit, only to find an onion stinking pile of That Weed, which is The Worst because it's so difficult!)

(Bush Regeneration is odd work. You can work for years on your various patches but if you speak of the work, people are puzzled. It all happens so gradually that they honestly don't see the difference. Successful Bush Regeneration means that eventually, your place will look as if no other hand but God's has ever touched the place. For the educated eye, it might be compared to cleaning layers of dust from an old landscape painting. Suddenly, after much work, the Bush reality is crystalline, pure!)

Because last night was the night for the Green Bin, I also trimmed back the Marguerite Daisy which has become so large that it's reduced the space available for the two different Lavenders growing on either side.

As I trimmed, there was a light furry slap on my wrist. I looked down to see Stanley's little quizzical face.

'Excuse me, but WHY are you messing with my hidey hole?' he said quite plainly.

I tried to tell him that with thicker Lavender, the hidey hole will be eventually much improved and that made me realise I'll have to harvest the Lavender blossoms for those bushes to grow thicker quick enough for the little ones to maintain their secret spot where they can examine the street and watch for their friends.

Stanley was very gruff with me last night.

I didn't have a camera in the Bush Regeneration days and I haven't yet got into the habit of photographing my work here yet. I must say though, that if anyone has an Onion Weed Problem, then dig it out gradually and persistently and throw it into the Green Bin, not into the Bush or the garden next door. An application of Roundup early in the growth phase will help, but it must be remembered that Onion Weed Bulbs grow very deep and the poisoning may spread to more delicate flowers. I lost a season of Heartsease that way!

Princess reports that even if she needs a little more rest than she needed in the past, she likes to get out and about as often as she can. OK, so She has to carry a Princess to and fro across the street but any suggestion that Princess can no longer climb the Mulberry Tree is a lie. Princess has an obligation to Mick because Mick's been in Hospital and needs company so it is the duty of a Princess such as she to keep him company as he sits and recovers on the back veranda! Princess remembers Hospital and even if it helped her Get Better, Mick has her sympathy.

Lawn

 'What Lawn, Pray?' (Balanchine)

Slowly but surely, the diachondra lawn is taking over centre front garden. 

Diachondra is a mass of round small leaves, a soft and comprehensive ground cover, which grows in many of our local bushlands. 

I’ve been slow with the garden here. When I work I use Bush Regeneration techniques, weeding around the plant which is central to the pattern, taking out the weeds before they go to seed and so on.

 

I’ve named the main lawn weed here ‘Sticky grass’. The long tall seed heads are sticky and the weed itself has a deep solid stubborn root.  It’s much more difficult to reduce than erhata which we called Bush Regenerator’s weed Up The River. Erhata also has small sticky seeds, the kind which stick to the hem of one’s jeans and then the weed pops up along the trails we walk. Jay, who taught me Bush Regeneration, told me that she’d found secret Special Weed plantations from following erhata trails.

 

I’m glad that there was no ‘sticky grass’ up the river. It’s a nightmare to shift.

 

In late summer I collect the whole plants with seed heads and throw them in the Green Bin. As the plant reaches the seeds into the light, it’s also easier at that time of the year to pull the entire plant. The rest of the year, it’s a matter of patience to pull and dig out by the roots the sticky grass that turns up through the diachondra and at the edges. So, especially after rain when the earth is softer, I’m out at the front for hours on end pulling stubborn little weeds.

 

Two of the cats have become fascinated with this phenomenon. Stanley, believe it or not furiously digs the sticky weed and doesn’t do this on the diachondra. He’s loosened several clumps of the sticky and can make it easier for me to pull.

 

Sylvio attacks my hands as I work, either biting (the hand that feeds him) or pushing my hands into position to pat Sylvio.

 

I don’t weed for very long if Sylvio is around and I do spend more time at it if Stanley helps. As for Sylvio, the only way to get much gardening done is to shut him in the Spare Room.

 

I told Anna about all this yesterday when I was showing her the lawn.

 

She suggests an essential difference in outlook between the two cats.

 

She says Stanley wants to be human and Sylvio wants me to be more catlike.

 

Could be something in it.

 

We went to see Princess Ariel across the road. She’d removed herself. She didn’t want company. She spent the day on Jos’s roof as it turns out. Jos called this morning from work, said that it’s getting colder again and maybe I should bring Princess back. I’ve just returned from looking for her. As it happens I can’t climb the Mulberry Tree to get to her on the roof.

 

I’m supposed to give her her medication. I guess I’ll try again a bit later.