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.

the owl and the pussycat

 Apart from the fact one is dry and one is wet here are two different owls

Above a perfectly clean barn owl at the wildlife hospital who is in for rest and recuperation and below this dear tawny owl that I found sitting in a puddle.

It just doesn't seem to have stopped raining and this poor chap was waterlogged. Their feathers are not waterproofed which enables them to glide silently through the night but he just couldn't get back off the ground. I picked him up (painfully as I wasn't wearing gloves and had forgotten how tightly they grip on with their sharp claws) took him home and dried him with a hairdryer. Later when it got dark and had stopped raining I put him back in a branch of a tree just where I'd found him. In the morning he had gone so hopefully he recovered.

Here are the two pussycats,Nancy above in mid washing session I think or mid demanding for her third breakfast and below the superior Pocket.

Cats, he informs me, obey no commandments, have no ideals and do not experience guilt or remorse or struggle to better themselves. Yes I say I've certainly noticed you have no guilt when you dig your claws into friends who might have popped round for a quiet cuppa.

Forgetting he said, is the greatest source of freedom a person has. Who said that? I asked. I've forgotten he chortled. But I do know that man is the most blighted and frail of all creatures and more over the most given to pride.  That's Montaigne I answer with pride. I forget he purrs. But I do know that where of one cannot speak there of one must be silent. That's Montaigne again I say still with pride. I am silent he replied and so should you be.

In the next door village the starlings have been murmuring  every evening from 5.15  or 17.15 in modern time. I have found it impossible to capture it on film as there are hundreds of them swooping over the trees and the meadow. But what a joyous sight.

Rocket tells me he's forgotten everything and what time was supper?

You can't have a blog without a picture of a hedgehog. Here's one at the wildlife centre perking up as Spring is here so they say. I have a family of them in my stable and someone is certainly awake as all the cat biscuits I put down every day are gone by the next. (tha cats assure me it's not them even though they are their biscuits.)

The daffodils think it's Spring anyway.

My daughters have been applying for new jobs and have spent ages concocting C.V's. I decided to write my own should I need to apply for another job.

See below.

Job Application.

I am applying for this job because

I can cry in ten different languages

and know how to stroke the tail of a dove

without altering its flight path.

I can decline all tenses of Latin 

in one breath

I can send out your correspondence in Haiku

or sonnet form

I am experienced in appreciating woodland fauna

and can name seven different species

of the ranunculus family.

My strength is my good telephone voice and

I can impersonate a jackdaw calling to its mate.

I can sew a hair shirt

and know the correct temperature of coals for

walking barefoot on.

I can tell when it's going to rain by the seaweed 

method

or observing cows lying down.

I can bake humble pie

and eat it if necessary.

Linda Coggin

the darkling crows

Although the magpies have gone I do have a rook, a crow and a raven in my shade tunnel. Collectively known as the crows. Sounds like the title of a new book. None of them can fly properly at the moment which is why I was given them but they've palled up with each other and there is no squabling. They sit in a row on a branch then scuttle away when they see me.

 Because they all came to me as grown birds they are quite rightly not used to humans and still hurry away in spite of seeing me with the plates of food I bring them. I was so used to M.Magpie coming when I called and sitting on my head that part of me would like them not to be so fearful but that won't help them when they get back into the world of birds. I don't want them to be like Moses's  wife and be a stranger in a strange land.

  Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck Pocket tells me. Ah you've been studying the Dalai Lama I say but he tucks his paws in and tells me that those who play with cats must expect to be scratched. Cevantes? I query but he's already excluded me from his line of vision by shutting his eyes.

Here he is spouting Charlie Chaplin who purportedly said that he who feeds a hungry animal feeds his own soul and wouldn't I like that? I told him he'd already had three breakfasts and had just polished off Nancy's who sits there unbothered. Nancy has the softest fur ever - like stroking fog. The raven is a similar size to Nancy now and still has growing to do. Unlike M.Magpie it will never swing on the bird feeder like he used to do. In fact the bird station has been taken over by a colony of sparrows - hundreds of them swing on the peanut feeders and there is no room for the darkling thrush that used to visit or the woodpecker with its glorious red plummage. Once I saw a sparrow hawk sitting on the stones underneath the feeder - a strange sight as I've not seen one at rest nor so near a house. I expect Pocket has been on patrol and scared it away. The sparrows seem unbothered about either of them.

I read the news today - oh boy. I thought this hedgehog might have broken into a Beatles song - about a lucky man who made the grade. When I change their papers I make sure there are no harrowing or fear mongering headlines or gaudy photos - which is difficult as most of the papers people kindly bring in are Daily Mails. And talking of hedgehogs did you know that a group of hedgehogs is called an array - but as they are solitary creatures in the wild it would be unlikely to have the chance to see an array of them unless they were round the back of the bike sheds having a smoke.

When I toyed with writing a book about a rook, a crow and a raven Rocket awoke from slumber and told me that outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Who told you that ? I asked. When he said it was Pocket who denied ever hearing of someone called Groucho Marx I decided to go in search of an array of hedgehogs.

Have planted the sweet pea seeds for the summer flowering. They have avoided being eaten by mice and are now sporting long shoots which one day will support an array (not of hedgehogs) of pink blooms.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

when frost was spectre -grey,

And Winter's dregs mad desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted night

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death - lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full- hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,

In blast-beruffled plume

Had chosen thus  to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around.

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good -night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

new beginnings

Who we are and where our life leads us is yet unwritten but what we choose to let go and what we chose to begin is ours only.

I am learning to let go of dear Scout who died just before Christmas.

We knew that sometime it would happen - the heart doctor had warned us her heart would give out any moment but she had an extra few months after being carefully monitored at the heart hospital. After taking 21 pills a day she seemed rejuvenated.

She won the hearts of everyone who met her. She was loving and wise which I imagine we all hope to be and she definitely waited for me to return from getting the papers to walk up to me, stand behind my chair and literally die. So my only consolation is that I was with her and it was quick and peaceful. Grief is the price we pay for love.

As Mary Oliver writes

to live in this world you must be able to do three things:

to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and when the time comes to let it go. To let it go.

RIP dear Scout who lived for nine years - a long time in the life of a wolfhound.

Although Rocket seemed quite depressed it seemed to be of no consequence to Pocket. Slowness opens the way to wisdom he told me. Ah you've been reading Montaigne I say. He ignored me and told me he had a lot of slowness to catch up on and would I be quiet. Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length he  burbles on. My I say, Robert Frost as well as Montaigne but he just stretched a paw and reminded me that his third breakfast was yet to come.

Meanwhile if Pocket and Montaigne's theory is right Rocket is going to be very wise which is not a word I would have used to describe his personality. When Scout died he walked up to her lying on the floor, sniffed under her tail and walked away. I guess we all handle death differently. I did notice Pocket tried to cheer him up by sitting on his nose which he wisely said nothing about - always aware Pocket might take the other eye out and he wisely waits his turn if there's a bowl of milk around.

Meanwhile in the stable most of the hedgehogs seem to be hibernating. Some heavy breathing comes from the hedgehog house and when I put my hand into the bag of straw that was in there I met with a bunch of prickles as I was about to toss some into the duck house.

Anyway dear Readers - we all wish you a Flappy New Year and I leave you with this poem by Rumi.