Paws for thought...?

oops...

2009-06-10T07:31:00.002Z

...I've been taken severely to task for that last post, by Maurice at No.1.

Maurice is a very large, grey cat who is heavy on his paws, suffers from arthritis and can't move much. He asks how I could possibly have neglected to notice that the 'unrealistic' grey cat in Act II of Falstaff is him?! He looks up and about and purrs when necessary; it's a real star turn and not so different from mine, except that he doesn't bite anybody. He is deeply offended by my comment on his acting ability, and I am obliged to offer him a full and open apology right here, right now, because he is twice my size.

One thing makes all of this even spookier than I'd thought: in one scene, Falstaff is wearing Tom's slippers. Big leather flipflips, and quite unmistakable. I don't take them with me, that's for sure, so I can only assume Maurice pops round to get them before his helicopter arrives half an hour after mine (he's on stage later).

My COS is very uncomfortable and is asking how come director Richard Jones came snooping down our cul-de-sac to research his production when we don't even live in Windsor?!?

Pawstaff at Glyndebourne...

2009-06-07T13:13:00.006Z

Questions are being asked. So, after much consideration, I have decided to come clean and tell you about my new starring role in Falstaff at Glyndebourne.

If you attend, you will see a ginger and white cat curled up on the bar in The Garter (well, where else would you expect me to be?), responding happily to Falstaff's expert ear-tickling, biting Pistol and somehow restraining itself from helping itself to toad-in-the-hole pub grub. It is not electronic. It is not a glove puppet. It is not "animatronic" (whatever that means). No, no. It is ME. You can just glimpse me in this photo, behind Pistol's shoulder on the extreme left.

And in act III, I am in the window, watching the antics from a position of perspective that only a cat can take. We don't count the large grey windowseat cat in act II, of course - that one just isn't realistic...

The question I am being asked, mainly by my chief-of-staff, is: how do you do it? "How can it be that when we set off for Sussex, you, dear Solti, are on the bed in the land of nod, and when we return many hours later, you're waiting at the door, meowing as if you've never seen a bowl of Iams before? If that is truly you, how come you get home before us?"

Ah, CoS, what you haven't yet seen is my private helicopter. If you ever bother to look up from your computer screen, you might have a little surprise.

The minute you and Sir Tom are out the door, I spring into action. I clean my fur and whiskers, brush up my tail-suit and prepare to pounce into the 'copter awaiting overhead (and there was you thinking that the noise came merely from living under the flight path! teeheeheee). We whizz to the South Downs in a trice, landing safely on the Glyndebourne estate beside the alpacas and the dromedary where Gus greets me in person and the beautiful Danni presents me with a bowl of the finest organic double cream. Darling Richard gives me my notes from the previous show and makes sure I am happy with all my moves, and Vladimir never fails to offer his congratulations and words of zen-like wisdom.

I am then escorted to my dressing room, in which my contract stipulates that I require the following:

1. A platter of fish;
2. A sheepskin cushion on the couch;
3. A fresh rose for me to take home to my lady cat pal, Scarlett the long-haired tabby (a gorgeous girl, you hear me?)

Do I suffer from nerves, you ask? My dears, one must suffer for one's art. Sometimes I let off a little steam by offering to go on mouse patrol in the house and kitchens.

And sometimes one must do without thanks. There's no curtain call for me, although Christopher Purves, Dina Kuznetsova and Adriana Kucerova are pelted with cheers, whistles and stamping. Ah, er, no, said the powers that be: we have to pretend that you are a mechanical cat, otherwise we might be accused of politically incorrect cat-training! I pretend very well: only one critic bothered to mention - specifically and pointedly - that I am ginger. I think she guessed the truth. See line #5 of her review.

The upside is that I can leave early. While my dear colleagues are singing their socks off in that mad fugue, I am being flown home in luxury; there is plenty of time to give my beloved Scarlett her rose and have a goodnight nose-nudge before I slink in through the catflap and go back to being...well, Solti. Who else?

Felix Miaowndelssohn

2009-05-11T13:55:00.002Z

Anyone with a mild case of Mendelssohnfunk after R3's intensive weekend is encouraged to visit a certain kitty food site where a competition is taking place to find the cutest kitten. At a princely 9.5 years I am too old to enter, rather to my annoyance. Solti and Mendelssohn were a good mix, once upon a time.

Stand by for the Felix Kitten Factor contest...

Hmph

2009-04-25T10:23:00.003Z

The Guardian runs a gallery today of ten championship-winning cats, seven or eight of whom are the ugliest creatures I ever saw in my life. Left, one of the more presentable specimens, a Maine Coon job with serious fuzz. There's also one who looks like a leopard, with whom I could reasonably envisage sharing my garden.

As for the others - honestly. I spend hours keeping my moggie fur in good nick, eating sensibly (perforce...) to keep trim and being told I'm the most wonderful, beautiful, adorable and generally best cat on the planet, and then they give prizes for these? And call it 'lifestyle'?! No wonder the human world is going to the dogs.

Springtime for Solti

2009-03-29T10:22:00.002Z

The elephant in the back yard

2009-03-28T08:40:00.002Z

This amazing story appeared in The Independent yesterday. My CoS is still chortling over it and wondering if anybody has yet optioned it for a film. There might be issues about getting heffalumps that can act, surely? ...oh...CoS says they are very intelligent, "more trainable than cats". I am not sure how to take this. Anyway, here we go: Mystery Solved Of Elephant In Belfast Back Yard.

A mystery Belfast woman who cared for a baby elephant in her back garden during the war years has finally been identified.

The ‘elephant angel’ was Denise Weston Austin, who was one of the first female zoo keepers in Belfast Zoo.

Along with her mother Irene, Denise took baby elephant Sheila in to her north Belfast home after it escaped an order to euthanize some of the more dangerous animals at the zoo.

Nine lions, two tigers and a number of bears and wolves were killed on the orders of the Ministry of Public Security because of fears that they would escape and threaten the public if the zoo was damaged in a German bombing raid.

Earlier this week the zoo - which is celebrating its 75th anniversary - launched a campaign to find the mystery owner and, through a surviving relative, have found more information on her identity...
Read the rest here.

What the...

2009-02-02T12:52:00.002Z

I can't get through my catflap because there's a load of white stuff outside it. What DO they think they're doing?! What IS this? And why won't my CoS kindly make it all go away? I tell you, it won't do. It is icy on the paw-pads, it's wet and horrible when it melts and I can't see any plain earth to, um. Apart from anything else it's b****y cold.

Signed,
Unimpressed Feline with Strong Views, East Sheen

A pooch for a president?

2008-11-10T09:19:00.004Z

After all the fuss the other night, in which my sleep was seriously disturbed by human yelling and snuffling in front of the TV at some unearthly hour of morning, things have just got a whole lot worse. The New Household Hero, aka president elect of a place 3000 miles away, has announced that when he moves house he is giving his kids...a dog.

I ask you.

CoS's paper of choice, the Indy, has a selection for our NHH to choose from here. Personally my CoS favours the mutt pictured left, which bears the daffy moniker of a 'Labradoodle' - she cites the fact that a cross-breed is appropriate since the NHH is himself bi-racial. I think she just thinks he's cute. The Labradoodle, not the NHH, I mean.

...oh. Really? NHH is cute, I'm told. Labradoodle less so. My loyal CoS will stick to her favourite felines, otherwise she will find that I am a very cross breed indeed.

i-Pawed?

2008-10-19T16:58:00.002Z

There's this thing called an i-Pawed that plays music through headphones...and apparently it's dangerous for cats. Peering from atop a heap of papers on the desk into CoS's computer screen, though, I read this article from The Guardian which purrrrports to tell us about it, only to discover that it doesn't say *how* i-Paweds cause us injuries and is really more about dogs swallowing knickers (well, what do you expect of a dog?!).

Still, with the food They give me at the moment being severely deficient in the calories department, I may soon be reduced to that myself. grrr

Bad-tempered tiger!

2008-10-03T17:14:00.003Z

Gloomy news about attempted tiger-breeding at London Zoo...well, of course they need more space. Big Ginge and I could have told you months ago (as we licked our wounds) that two stripy cats roaming the same four gardens simply doesn't work. No wonder our big cousin is bad-tempered.

CoS says it's awful having to share a bathroom with strange males even if you're human, so there you go.

"Pussy Versus Printer"

2008-09-25T18:03:00.002Z

I've been forced out of a deep slumber by my chief-of-staff in order to share with you this priceless video. CoS says she is glad that such things happen to cats as well as to her...

Eine kleine update

2008-07-04T14:10:00.002Z

Mrrrw...I am in trouble for not blogging. Keep up the good work, says chief of staff, but it's summertime, so who wants to work anyway?

So here's the latest. The garden is a building site, Big Ginge went missing for several days and came back minus part of his tail (don't ask me, guv, but it does put the 'ow' back into 'miaow', hargharghargh...), and chief of staff keeps asking me stupid questions about people called Scarlatescu, Hartmann and Monti. Honestly. All I ask is a little bit of fish now and then.

Our favourite bear is back!

2008-05-24T07:49:00.003Z

Golly! Michael Bond, aged 82, has written his first new Paddington Bear novel in 30 years!! and the good news is that the Peruvian predator (not) still eats marmalade sandwiches despite Marmite's best efforts. Read all about it here.

On hearing the first...oh, really?

2008-03-09T22:27:00.004Z

My chief-of-staff has had rather a long week and today she came home announcing she'd heard the first cuckoo of spring...on the Upper Richmond Road West, drifting through the forsythia blossom and the South Circular traffic outside the primary school. Either this birdy, in choosing such an environment, was living up to its name, or all those Hungarian biscuits have made my c-o-s go a bit cuckoo herself.

As for me: I'm biding my ti-ime, cos that's the kind of cat I'-im. Perhaps it will flutter into our garden. And then [sharpening claws] we'll see.

Meet my valentine!

2008-02-14T23:22:00.003Z

So just when I thought I was getting too long in the incisors for this kind of thing, along rolls a mystery Valentine - all the way from DENMARK! Well, people not too far from here have told me that the Danes are HOT, but I didn't know the meaning of the word until I saw my secret admirer in the fur...

My new best friends...

2008-02-07T23:28:00.000Z

...are named Leontyne Price and Regine Crespin. Soulmates indeed! Listen and purr.

My page on Catbook

2008-01-20T15:50:00.000Z

I am pleased to announce that my Chief of Staff has set up a new page for me on the feline arm of Facebook, known as Catbook - naturally, the site's most significant feature. Find me here and stroke me!
prr

Solti's medal

2007-12-22T14:18:00.000Z

Reading Emlyn's comments about my generous distributing of the prizes without paying any compliments to myself (see comments on JDCMB Awards list), I have decided to award an extra medal to the one and only person who really appreciates me around here.

Natalie Dessay a des chats!

2007-12-22T12:46:00.000Z

Mad props to Opera Chic for informing us that Natalie Dessay has CATS, something that my chief-of-staff scandalously neglected to discover during her own recent interview with this stunner of a soprano. Watch her talk about them here, on the marvellous French website Tele-Animaux - going straight into my Bookmarks in its own right.

Worth a new Guinea or two

2007-12-18T17:47:00.000Z

In a 'lost world', lurking in the forests of New Guinea, scientists have discovered a species of giant rat, pictured left.

I am now trying to persuade Jess to investigate cheap flights out there, including cat transportation.

Bearing it all

2007-12-05T12:25:00.000Z

We knew that Knut, our favourite polar bear, who's celebrating his first birthday, would be a good singer. It's the German Lieder tradition, of course.

And in sunny London, the artist Mark Wallinger has just won the Turner Prize by dressing up as a bear. Watch his interview with The Guardian here.

A wake-up call from your cat...

2007-11-07T08:10:00.000Z

Thanks to Brendan for sending us this!

Cats and books don't always mix

2007-10-21T19:23:00.000Z

Apologies to my chief of staff (she's busy celebrating my namesake's birthday over at JDCMB, so while her attention has been snaffled...)

I've been ill

2007-10-10T17:54:00.000Z

So They dragged me off the nice cosy bed and into that beastly cat box, then up the road and into the dreaded White Coat Room where the Man in the White Coat got out a thing Jess calls a thermometer and...no, I can't bring myself to say what he did with it. It was HORRIBLE and I told them so in no uncertain terms. What humans don't realise is that cats carry knives. Even a third nurse called in to help could not keep me back...So, yes, it was bad news, but I got a fish treat back at home and I'm now on the mend and being entertained with my dear staff-member's favourite Youtube videos of dead performers.

I particularly like this one, taken from a documentary about Richard Tauber, which includes Schubert's Serenade and some home movie footage. I adore the scene where he and his family play with lion cubs. Jess cries over the Schubert, even though the guy seems to be in his dressing gown.

Cat power

2007-09-21T22:35:00.000Z

At the top of the stairs, I am the boss. I am higher up than everybody else. Anyone who attempts to pass me or remove me must bear the consequences.