things to do on a wet day

Mostly this, but only after a little high-energy galloping about and occasionally looking forlornly through the cat flap to see if things have improved any. Scooter isn't allowed out yet, and has only tried it once, by mistake, as I was hanging washing out. Finding himself in the back yard was a very unnerving experience. I had to send Millie into the ferns to find him and fetch him out, and he hasn't made a second attempt so far.

He does love his bear.

Instead of lolling torpidly on a chair, I've been reading other people's blogs. What an entertaining lot you are!

After Love Those Cupcakes' latest post and resulting comments about visiting cats, I remembered something from way back in the '60s, when I lived with two young cats in a rather haphazardly-converted first-floor flat of a grand old house in Edinburgh. ('Haphazard' as in kitchen sink positioned too high to wash your feet, but too low to wash your dishes. Very odd.)

I had gone away for the day, leaving the (very high-up) sitting room window slightly open. When I got home, a kindly neighbour came out and told me that he had found my kitten in the garden, and as I wasn't home, had taken the liberty of getting his huge ladders out, and climbing up to post the kitten through the narrow opening at the top of the window.

Mystified, and knowing that my youngsters had been left shut indoors and couldn't get out of the flat without my help, I went in, to find two bemused and saucer-eyed cats sitting on either side of a very worried-looking little kitten whom none of us had ever seen before. Kind neighbour was mortified.

I don't remember the story's ending, but it must have worked out ok, as I didn't end up with three cats that time. That madness - and more - came later.

But - cats, ladders, and kind, ingenious people... have a look at this: Cat-Ladders. Amazing, but like so much cat-related stuff, death to decor.

My cats use the back yard bench and shed to elevate themselves to patrol and dominance height, but I suspect that Millie would love her own ladder, just for the hell of it.