lost words

One of Billie's many achievements this week is to have eaten my Thesaurus. A book which for a writer I'm sure you can appreciate is both useful and important. This is a disaster, an ill fortune, wretched, a bitter pill, unfavourable, a raw deal, a calamity and the worst. She is unrepentant, unregretting, without regrets, unashamed, willfully disobedient and contumacious.

Oh she  looks all sweet, adorable, lovable, congenial, winsome, angelic, appealing, irresistible sitting here with her new pal teddy from the charity shop 

but let me tell you butter does melt in her mouth and I know because she's stolen it off the table.
 

Pocket is annoyed because he said he uses it in the writing of his new novel. What is it called? I ask. Purrrsuasion he replies. I think you'll find Jane Austen has taken that title I tell him. He ignores me as usual and says there is an alley cat in it called Captain Wentworth and a slightly elderly female cat and it's bound to be a best seller like his other books.

Rocket thinks it's all a load of nonsense. But then being a lurcher he's a thief too. Lurcher means thief in Romany and Rocket is so complicated that he'll only eat his food if I put it in an empty cat food pouch and then he thinks he's stealing it. He doesn't usually like to eat out of his bowl so you can imagine the  rod for my back that I have made.(foul my own nest, dig my own grave, be responsible for my own downfall.) At the moment he tells me he's learning Spanish as one of my daughters has told us she has fallen in love with Galgos. Galgos are the Spanish greyhound.

Hola I hear him say to Pocket Como estas? Te amo. Pocket glares at him and threatens to take out his other eye if he doesn't revert to being a dog who is not bi-lingual. Woof woof to you too he barks which being a cat sounds more like one of his wounded mice.  

We assume that the sun will rise because it always has he says changing the subject and staring out of the window.  That's David Hume - the method of induction I tell him. He ignores me. The sun not rising is also a possibility he informs me as he saunters off to finish Rocket's breakfast.

Normally Billie will have already eaten the breakfast but now she is galloping through the room as someone has just entered and she's very excited. Oh my god it's like living with a bull the person says. I know about that Pocket tells us - I've run with the bulls in Pamploma. I was faster than them. Rocket looked impressed. Is that in Spain? He asks - do the Galgos run with them too? Later I see him running round and round the garden as if in training.

Not  casting aspersions at my nasturtiums

I love this poem by James Wright

a Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

to welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That w have come.

they bow shyly as wet swans. they love each other.

there is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

and nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

and the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.