October Daze

Once More She Stops Me Finishing Everyone's Breakfast!!!

We are all well. She lets us come inside in the daytime sometimes.

Grace likes to stay inside mostly.

Sunshine, things growing.

She says: Delays and dentals. Sometimes only the routines around the felines were maintained, the brain was somewhat affected. Lots of photos. I'm learning the new camera.

I decided to put my Nineties Novel away for awhile, didn't have the mental space for a different research. I felt I'd have to be among musicians again, I was able to spell out the sounds of what they were about a lot better then.

Presently, I'm in the middle of a story set around an outback country school and quite happily fitting different characters to the kinds of circumstances I knew so well as a child...

Now without intending to I've begun to help some young musicians whose work I like with some publicity and pictures. It's a different world, different technologies, different history than that I began to describe in the Nineties. The Nineties characters still make me laugh but the door to that time is left unopened for now.

It's been time for gardening and writing.

Princess sometimes goes off her food when the weather's changing

It was hot, blowfly time in middle spring..

Yesterday she had a pork chop after I checked for diets in hot weather for an old cat in the Chinese Medicine Book For Pets.

Relief

Princess Relaxes Despite Heat

She has to say,

It's so hot and Anna is away on holiday, bless her. We all miss her.

We have been looking closely at the forecasted weather and the forecasts were for much more  worsening hotness.

She went down the road too far for comfort to buy some cat milk after we all requested milk when She had Her morning cup of tea.

On that day it was 41 degrees and that was much too much but all the same She went out and bought Our Special Cat Milk which helps us feel cool.

She is working with the compost bin which Anna brought because much goes Off in this weather.

The new herbs and vegetables are being watered from the washing machine.

We heard her groaning, the forecast was for more hotness and we aren't allowed to water our gardens very much these days.

Then Tabs saw Her standing out front.

'Ants,' She said, 'There are a lot of ants,' she said.

'That says it will rain,' she said.

Late in this afternoon it began to rain.

It's still raining.

It's not cool rain.

The heavens are weeping for all the injustices of our land.

We have to cry on Australia Day, Invasion Day, the day of an eclipse.

Our fancy Astrologer said, 'Look to the heavens and if you see the eclipse there will be luck!'

She looked with us all to the heavens. It was grey but we felt good all the same because some of our garden will survive a bit longer..

Princess didn't even step onto the verandah to get away from the rain.

She lay on the footpath and her fur got wet.

Then She brought our Princess inside and Princess complained but later went to sleep on the cool bathroom tiles.

chillouts

Lucibelle Loves Dyson

No choice about chilling out when icy winds and rain returned these last few days.

The Clan has various shelters outside, particularly a small dry back verandah with a few handy boxes to protect fur from nasty wind gusts.

I've wanted to clean, but this Flu has insisted that I can't quite manage that.

Vacuuming with flaming sinusses and more dentals until some basic problems are sorted?

No, not really.

Anyone who has cats and carpet is reliant on a good vacuum cleaner, and when Anna gave me a Dyson for my birthday, it made the whole business a lot easier.

In good health, while I vacuum, I play music, I put on my glasses and I'm so fascinated by the freshening of the air as well as the sharp cleanliness of the floor, I can cope with a low flying jet type scream of sound necessary to re-create a clean floor. 

The Dyson is much more high pitched than other vacuum cleaners on account of it's somewhat Super Sonic whatevers.  

(No, with a lingering Flu, I'm not even going to try and find the handbook describing the ultra technology of the Dyson though, hey, I can add a link!)

Yeh, if I'm headachy I find the Dyson a bit shrill. The strange thing is that even though the cats hated the former vacuum cleaner, they don't mind the Dyson at all.

There's one unfortunate side-effect of their tolerance to the cleansing noise. If they are all inside, then I have to keep shifting cats as well as shifting furniture as I clean.

I couldn't leave them outside on those cold days. The piteous cries from the back verandah as I trawled the kitchen for various human fuelings was simply too much for me.

They ended up in the lounge room with the heater while I went back to bed with a hot water bottle. 

The heater quietened them down. Heavens, if there are half a dozen cats in a small space, then they are going to chase each other around and quarrel after two days, little so and so's. I almost said, worse than kids before I remembered that's not quite so.

The first priority as I began to recover had to be the kitchen after several days of staggering out, preparing Instant Food, (the kinds of things I always scorned!). The room spun. I managed some thiss's and that's until I just gave up and only rinsed and put away.

Last night, I finally did the proper job on proper hot dishwashing, cleaning surfaces & floor. A bit more this AM. Overwhelmed somewhat.

I'm procrastinating by working here, but it's been nice to have done my explorations and the communications while the sun blissfully colours the room bright.

I went outside to eat my noodles and had a conversation with neighbour Ron about the garden. The first ranuncula is in bloom. A cheerful blossom, cats running, playing as we talked.

Seeya

Spring Begins

And This Is Why I Got My Camera!

I’ve recently resumed a blog whose intention is to focus on my studies and the factors comprising my real work. I hit a few misunderstandings back in the nineties and probably even earlier than that and well the work is more interesting than those misunderstandings I hope.

 

I tried blogging soon after I got the computer. It’s taken quite a long time to know where to look and to understand what this acronym or that means.  Oh yes, I’d read all the early cyber philosophy books back in the seventies. I dreamed of computers back then and Science Fiction had strong imaginings about what they would be and how they might change things.

But nothing is ever quite as we dream or imagine it will be.

 

It's disappointing that Computer Media can be so incredibly trivial. Celebrity sagas aren’t simply an occasional curiosity concerning the notable and more. They seem to have become the entire imaginative content of some people’s lives.  Even some of the trivial people who become celebs believe they are doing something more than their vacuity would suggest.

 

I’m just glad that I was brought up with a grounding in Literature, History and Real Life and so on.

 

Yes, computers were an essential part of several of my former workplaces from the eighties onwards. I fell in love with them then (as it were).  No longer did I have to re-type an entire manuscript sometimes several times in order to create the perfect essay or radio script. I remember my Seventies seminar paper for Philosophy: Ludwig Wittgenstein arguing with Bertrand Russell, his former mentor:

 

I wrote out all the relevant quotes from both parties, cut up each quote separately and spent a long time sorting and rewriting before I literally pasted onto blank paper. Yes, if something complex needs to be said, it’s far better to cook it on the computer than to write and rewrite where there is the need to correct.

 

Many great writers simply wrote and rarely corrected. That's not me at all. My first draft is inevitably raw clay requiring much work and considerable time.

 

Some of my essays and works have succeeded and the best ones developed  from notebook stage and then via much correction and polish.

 

This business with blogs and websites is thoroughly exciting.

 

Yeah, I worked on that old blog on Saturday and I’ve decided that some of the strange things that have prevented my work as well as some of what I’ve had to learn since I first became ill will go there. I’m building up to post some essays, a process I first thought might be simple.

 

(Local friend John Butcher suggested I advertise my writing on ebay!!!

 

 

Oh yes? Would people really buy an essay or a poem on ebay? I said I want to keep copyright of my work & he reckons there are so many people hitting ebay that some would just love to have and interesting essay just faxed or posted to them. Is the world that strange? I explained that I want to find a publisher who’ll push my work, and my one nibble feels pretty good.)

 

Today I have a streaming cold, not helped I suspect, by Saturday and twelve hours straight stuck at the computer. Possibly eyestrain didn’t help much…the cold seems to be going round capturing friend after friend and I’ve got to the point of conceding that I probably need some rest.

 

I’ve just returned from sitting in the front garden with a cup of tea, sunglasses and a big hat. Even with my blocked nose, Jasmine, Violets and Freesia’s were bliss (though I wish last year’s Boronia had survived). The sunshine was divine, cats were basking beneath geranium and daisy bushes purring while I thought about how I’ve managed to learn some computering a little sooner than Anna expected.

 

I liked Macintosh from our very first encounter and I especially like its visual capacity. I also did some work with my collection of photographs on the weekend.

 

I’d have loved to include some garden pics here, but the camera needs a new card and that is that, so my only new pictures are today to be detected within these words.

 

(Blossom, beautiful, beautiful blossom has begun with firstly the cherry tree down the road and today, the first plum blossom in the big yard. Come to think of it, this must mark the anniversary of my camera because it was last year’s first plum blossoms inspired me to get the camera in the first place….)

 

I’ve wanted to properly introduce the Grey Cats and to tell their story for some time.

 

While I was still trying to work out the bits and whatnots about blogging, I began a Word Manuscript about them all.  A quick look today revealed that I have a considerable editing session to complete before I post and I don’t feel up to a major editing session, O No.

 

So I’ll just include the kitty pics as a teaser for now. My head is spinning and the eyes are swimming and I’m feeling as if a lie down might be nice. So glad I rarely get a cold, I hate them. (‘Scuse me, AChoo!)  Thank Goodness Anna brought extra tissues yesterday!

__________________________

Grey Kits: From Left, Clock Wise, Grace, Sylvio, Fred, Baby, Zorro.

Cat People Proper

Stanley Brings Breakfast.

I’d call Maria a Cat Lady and I’d name her so honourably. I met her several years ago outside our local Library in the days when I could manage more walking. I’d already noticed a healthy colony of cats in a nearby building who weren’t responsive to passers by. Then several weeks later I met Maria with her basket full of cat food. She was feeding this lot.

 

I asked her about them. It turns out that Maria ranges through three suburbs, visiting each one twice a week to leave food and organise vetinary work for the on heat and the sick among groups of ownerless cats. It’s a worry when the population gets out of hand. Life on the streets is cruel and awful for all stray creatures.

 

Maria is doing something about the problem and my cats won’t be joining hers.

 

I am a writer and a communicator who owns several cats. I am not a cat lady. Not all cat ladies are mad. It’s true that some people love cats well and not wisely but there are also those who care enough to take practical steps.

 

Sarah from Up The River is one of those. She’s taken on the task of paying vets to de-sex all her little local strays.

 

Cats are beautiful and they maintain their wildness. In Bondi I worried about our local birds because there weren’t so many protective trees. Eventually I saw more of the smaller birds killed by currawongs and magpies than by cats.

 

In our suburb, cats are put off birds by the harassments of Myna birds and the fact that we back onto a very long block reaching almost to our local partially cleaned river, and all the old houses have huge trees of all description, many with branches too closely woven for cats to enter.

 

When I first moved here there was an infestation of tall Night Jasmine trees growing along the side of the fence.

 

My friend John helped me get those trees out which was good because the roots had invaded the drain and were threatening the water pipe. The trees had been a gathering place for dawn songbirds and for a time I missed the early birdsong and the lovely shading patterns in my room from the afternoon sun. Eventually I put a hakea in. It’s well away from the pipes and it’s grown fast enough to cast pretty shadows into the room again. However, it’s too prickly for either bird or cat! Indeed, it’s almost too prickly to prune enough to maintain a path past it.

 

The dawn songbirds have moved to the native tree in the street outside.

 

I’ve seen an incredible variety of bird life here, more than I ever previously saw in a suburban environment. Yesterday, a little flock of yellow winged finches escaped the back yard as I let the cats out. I wish I could identify some of the others, but the bird book went during my time of homelessness.

 

On Sunday, as I saw Anna off on the bus, we noticed two Rosellas perched on nearby wires and no, we didn’t have our cameras.

 

Bob Just, who lives in Fern Rouge, densely inhabited by both people and cats, recently sent me these pictures of Rosella Jusef, a frequent visitor to his back yard. It’s Jusef’s relatives that Anna and I had noticed happily settled on the wires above. Bob who likes cats and who has previously owned some wonderful characters, says that these days he’s taken to watering cats who wander into his yard with the garden hose (for Jusef’s sake).