pocket's book club

I will consider my cat Pocket. Cats are not social creatures, they don't need friends nor long for their absent owners any more than they'd fetch a ball.

They adapt to human ways but they don't adopt human ways - or so you'd think.

Pocket however announced to me that he was starting a book club. "Really?" I said "what books are you reading?" We're starting off with The Great Catsby, then Bleak Mouse and Paw and Peace. "Have you read them?" I enquire but he proceeds to wash his ears as if he hadn't heard me. "My - Scott Fitzgerald, Dickens and Tolstoy - that's quite a collection - did they all have cats?" More than likely, he replied. Cats help you see the world . He gives his whiskers a tweak. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Thoreau? I ask but he is now shutting his eyes in a lazy manner. It's not what you look at that matters it's what you see. "That's Thoreau. Is he part of your book club read?" He sighs as if what had that to do with cats and visibly looks at his forepaws to see if they are clean.When I ask if he'd considered A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Cat by James Joyce he jumped off his book and without a backward glance head butted Rocket and purred loudly in his ear.

Maybe it's his loud purring or Rocket's tendency to bark loudly at strangers on the track that has effected my hearing. When I went to the post office to collect a package from the cook shop that had been delivered there by a delivery service that was not Hermes (now Evri but still as bad) the woman asked me if it was a DVD. No I replied it's a cheese grater. She looked at me as if I was mad. "I said Is it DPD?"

And the other day my neighbour knocked at the door, looked down at Rocket who was wondering if to bark loudly at her and said "have you walked her?" I thought she knew Rocket was a boy but I still launched into a long explanation as to why I was waiting to walk when the other fifteen dogs that all live on the track had been taken out because Rocket would bark loudly at them and tug furiously at his lead and it was very tiring. She also looked at me curiously and repeated her question "Have you water?"

Nancy is not part of Pocket's book club because obviously she can't read but has been watching Crufts on the TV. She suggested that there should be a Fragility Class for lurchers like Rocket rather than an Agility Class, where by you damage yourself on everything, even something not there. Also a class for being a twat for no reason, demonstrating complete lack of intelligence. She thought there surely must be A Best on Couch prize and if so Rocket would win it. I had to point out that lurchers weren't recognised as a breed at Crufts.

Two hedgehog sisters about to explore the wide world outside and hopefully make babies.

An amazing tulip that looks like a peony called Tulipa Dreamer.

 

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry by Christopher Smart.(1722-1771. Sometimes he was called Kit or Kitty by his friends.)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.