Diverse Ramblings

Cat Bathing As A Martial Art

After several days of the cat wandering around the house, Michael was cuddling her and he was quite disgusted by her smell.

Right, cat, he said, tomorrow, you, me, BATH.

This reminded me of a brilliant article I read many years ago in the early days of the Internet, when browsing the net was still a new thing, and all the action happened on the mailing lists. I tracked it down, and made Mike read it.

Cat Bathing as a Martial Art, by Bud Herron.

Undaunted, the next day he continued with his plan.

He filled our big washing bowl with warm water and Radox For Men Shower Gel & Shampoo, and I stationed myself with my camera a few feet away.

Surprisingly enough, there wasn't much complaining from the cat.

She just sat there looking bedraggled and curiously like Puss in Shrek, with a look of "I'm innocent, promise, I don't deserve this!" on her face.

Mike rubbed her and scrubbed her, and then rinsed her off in the shower with some more warm water. Then he rubbed her with a towel but that didn't dry her very much.

He released her, a sorrowful little creature with wet fur.

I felt quite sorry for her, because when my hair is wet after I wash it, I feel cold, let alone what she must be feeling, completely covered with wet fur.

So after quashing Michael's suggestion to use my hairdryer on the cat because I was afraid of burning her, I cuddled her to make sure she stayed warm enough while she dried off.

She was remarkably fluffy for the next few hours.

Now she's starting to whiff a bit again, but I think we have a few days' grace before she starts to pong badly enough to warrant another bath.

Mind The Gap

I got the bus to Qormi this morning, and I saw something interesting on the bus stop, rather reminiscent of this. And suspiciously close to this.

Now all I need is for the buses to actually run when the signs say they will.

Fancy some fungus?

One of the perils of starting a new life in a new place is the inevitable uncertainty of settling in, of dealing with new people and new practices.

The other day, I was walking home from the local bakery when I saw a vegetable truck parked by the side of the road, so I decided to act like a grown-up and buy some fibre. The vegetables and fruit looked quite appealing actually - clean and shiny, and there was even some pre-packaged mange-tout. Quite an up-market greengrocer's truck, more like something you'd expect to see in a tourist area (which our village most definitely is not) but I'm not complaining.

There were a couple of people ahead of me, and I saw that they were telling the greengrocer what they wanted, and he was selecting, packing and weighing the produce himself. OK, thought I, this is not like the guy who services my Mum's street, where the women pick and pack their own vegetables - maybe he doesn't like people touching his stuff, and to be safe I'd better just do like the other people are doing. The last thing I need is an irate greengrocer shouting at me.

I wanted a week's worth of an-apple-a-day, and I knew from past experience that this is about a kilo. The tomatoes and the mushrooms also looked good, but I couldn't remember the Maltese word for mushrooms (faqqiegħ, so I found out later). Oh well, it's not like anyone speaks pure Maltese anymore any way...

So when it was my turn, I said "Kilo tadam, kilo tuffieħ, u kilo mushrooms".

He gave me a strange look, but at the time I thought it was just because I said "mushrooms". I later realised that in actual fact he was surprised at the penultimate word.

He weighed a kilo of tomatoes for me, and then a kilo of apples, and then to make up a kilo of mushrooms he had to make three trips to mushroom crate...

That was a lot of mushrooms. My little engineer's brain hadn't made the mushrooms-are-much-lighter-than-apples-therefore-much-lower-density-equals-much-greater-volume-when-buying-by-weight connection.

I was too embarrassed to say that I had made a mistake and that I didn't really want all those mushrooms, so I just took them.

Michael's jaw dropped when he saw the two big bags of mushrooms, and he has teased me ever since, and he's even got my in-laws teasing me.

And last night, we had mushrooms in our supper for the fifth time in as many days.

My Husband's Cat Is Stupid

Since we got our cat Jenny on somewhat short notice, she spent the first couple of weeks eating off two plastic dishes of ours. Michael got fed up of this arrangement because we were very short on dishes/bowls/etc, so when we saw some feeding bowls at the supermarket, we bought two of them.

I washed them, filled one with water and one with her kitten food, and reclaimed our tupperware.

Jenny saw me remove her previous dishes, and complained vociferously, but when I crouched down beside her and dabbled my fingers in the water, she stopped and began lapping it up.

A couple of minutes later, she came twining around my feet, mewling like she does when she's hungry. I figured that perhaps she didn't like the new food bowl because it was different to what she was used to, so I put some ham on top of the kitten food in the bowl, because she'll do anything for ham, and sure enough she happily ate that.

But then she was back again in a couple minutes, whining again.

Jenny doesn't have puppy-dog eyes, seeing as how she's the wrong species, but instead she has a high-pitched, highly-annoying mew that she uses when she wants something. It is carefully calculated to get on your nerves, and after about forty seconds, you are very happy to give her whatever she wants in return for not having your brain turn to mush and trickle out your ears.

So she was whining and whining, but her dish was heaped high with food. A dish she had just eaten ham out of, so surely she had got the message?

Just in case, I went over to the bowl, and picked up some bits of food and held them out to Jenny.

She perked up, and her little kitten brain said, wow, look, it's food! In a dish! Where my old dish used to be! Aaaaaaaaaah...

Then she was quite happy to stuff her face.

Stupid kitten.

Living in a new town

One of the (many) things that changed for Michael and I when we married was that we went to live in another town. Mike comes from a bigger town than I do, and we've moved to a smaller one. The pace here is definitely slower!

I've had to get used to shops being closed on Wednesday and Saturday evenings again, and it's annoying when I forget. But on the other hand, there is an astonishing variety of shops within two blocks of our flat: hairdresser, two clothes shops, ironmonger, household shop, stationery/renter-of-pirated-DVDs, take-away, petshop, two grocers, a greengrocer truck, pharmacy, bakery and a haberdashery.

Most of these are very small shops, your typical Ye Olde Shoppe types, packed to the rafters with stuff of all kinds, so we go to a big supermarket every two weeks to stock up.

Three blocks away there is a bakery that also carries various foodstuffs including canned goods, pasta, and a dairy/ham fridge and, get this, it's open on weekdays til 9pm and also on Sunday mornings, so it's fantastic on those days when we look around the kitchen and go, um, we don't have any food... heheh. Also for those times when I desperately need chocolate...

I think this last shop is my favourite out of all of them. Unfortunately there aren't any bookshops nearby, although there is one about fifteen minute's walk away down the main road. Well, maybe that's actually a good thing, given my proclivity for buying books. Don't ask me how many books I bought this week, because between finding out that Tal-Lira are now selling remaindered bestsellers, and the book fair this weekend, well... I'm covered for reading matter for a couple of months at least.

So far we don't mind living here. I'm now closer to work (aaaah) but Michael is farther away than he was, especially since now the hospital has migrated further North to Swatar. But at least he doesn't have to drive there or back in rush hour traffic, because the times of his shifts fall earlier and later than the office-hour times.

I still haven't got the hang of the roads here though, wah.

Our neighbours seem to be OK - no-one has made any complaints about Michael's guitar playing, although I imagine that none of them were pleased when last week he went out and bought a set of bongo drums for me... *grin*

The Other Woman

Michael loves animals. I can't stand them. I can barely stand people.

He wanted a dog, but I refused. I don't like dogs because they slobber and smell and require regular walks. Lucky for me, there are two legitimate reasons why we shouldn't have a dog: (1) we have a flat with no bitħa, so the dog would have to be indoors all the time, and (2) we both have full-time jobs and it would be alone in the flat all day. If we ever have a house with a garden, we'll get a dog, but for now, no.

After lots of nagging, I agreed to cats because they are low maintenance and wouldn't mind being alone at home all day. They also don't smell as much as dogs do, and they don't slobber. I still don't like cats, mind, I just find them less offensive than dogs.

Anyway, we were married all of eighteen days when Mike got an SMS from a friend saying that there was a kitten up for adoption which another friend had found as a stray and reared to the age of eight weeks. Having previously agreed to getting a cat, I couldn't very well refuse, could I?

We found a pet shop near our new home, bought kitten food, kitty litter, a kitty litter tray, and a travelling cage, and the next day we went off to pick up the cat.

I wasn't a fan of lasagne... until now...

It's been a while since I last posted... being married takes up so much time!

What is it with dirty dishes? How do they multiply so fast? Oh well, at least my hands are toughening up (can't be bothered to wear gloves).

Michael and I are getting better at this living together thing. His noise doesn't bother me quite so much any more, and his cooking is going from strength to strength *yum*. Tonight it was lasagne, the best I've ever tasted. He made it nice and creamy, with fresh mushrooms in the cream sauce, but not so rich that I couldn't manage to finish my portion (as usually happens with lasagne). I even had seconds. *burp*.

We're starting to fall into patterns, like going to the supermarket every ten days or so (Pavi on Tuesday after work, surprisingly quiet, much easier to navigate than on Saturdays).

Right now we are enjoying Friday night - Living TV has a fantastic Friday night line-up, first there's X-Files, then Criminal Minds, then Justice, and then our favourite, CSI (Las Vegas). Mike is watching TV from the sofa behind me, and I'm listening with half an ear, cuddling the cat, and catching up on my blogging. (one of the benefits of being a woman, besides the obvious benefit of not being a man, is that of having good multi-tasking skills).

Quite nice, this being-married thing.