“Look, it’s for your own good!”
“maow”
“I’m really not trying to poison you”
“MAOW!”

Negotiations with elegant black cat were not going well.

After a rush Saturday night trip to an emergency vet followed by a tense Sunday waiting for her to be looked at by a second vet, turns out all the dozy mouser had wrong with her was grass stuck in her throat.

Cats are deceptively fragile machines. As previously discussed, Rumpole fell foul of a piece of string. Holly tried to better her with a piece of grass. Doubtless, Rumpole will attempt to regain her title of most-pathetic-moggy by injuring herself on a fluffy towel.

Anyway, Holly had no trouble taking the antibiotics cunningly crushed into her food and even liked the anti-furball stuff I was to paste onto her paws for her to lick off.

At First.

By day two, applying the paste required the use of oven gloves and a vice, and resulted in a “dirty protest” style smearing of brown gunk all over the kitchen.

I’m sure there’s a reason why i haven’t turned them into slippers. I’m SURE there is.

“the … um … rack over there.”

“hmmm. I’ll have to ask the supervisor. One moment, sir”

I blinked and pondered again.

“Really? I mean, it’s usually straight-forward. I hand you a pack of batteries and some money, you keep the money and give me back the batteries. If it helps, I don’t need to give you the batteries?”

“One moment, sir”

Shopping is usually To Be Avoided but as I required a new ironing board, I had no choice. When I bought a new kettle, I discovered a surprising problem. They are all essentially the same – cold water in, boiling water out – but you have to choose one and only one, so what criteria do you use? If you’re me, you fall for the hype – count the features and pick the biggest number, even though I have no use for any feature beyond the Boiling Water one. I ended up with a kettle that provides mood lighting for the kitchen. This is only really effective when the kitchen is dark i.e. when I’m not in it. I feel guilty leaving it on just for the cats to enjoy the pretty colours and so it’s an almost entirely redundant “feature”. Is something still a Feature if you don’t want it?

Choosing an ironing board proved even harder. I need it to be flat and a bit spongy. In many ways, a plank with a towel over it would be ideal. Fiona helpfully talked me through the options.

“You’ll need a taller one”

“Er … ?”

“So you don’t have to bend over so far. It’s better for your back. And it could do with being wider.”

“Um … ?”

“So you can do more at once”

“Ah. Oooo what’s THAT? Do I need one of those?”

“No. That’s a steam generator.”

“Doesn’t my iron generate steam?”

“No… well, yes…. but… look, you DON’T need one”

“But … the shiny?”

“shush”

Off we went to Argos, filled in the form with the bookie-size pens and went to the counter. On the way, I spotted the aforementioned batteries.

“That’s fine, sir. I’ll just ring that through for you”

“Excellent. So can I have the … where are you going?”

“I’ll just need to check in the back. One moment, sir”

“For WHAT, exactly? You’ve got my batteries in your HAND!”

“One moment, sir.”

Finally getting home, I went Iron Crazy. I gots the flattest stuff you ever did see. I even ironed some hankies, just for the flatness.

The, in my opinion, unnecessarily three-dimensional cats have started shuffling nervously.

No autographs.

YouTube is chock full of UOGB (as we afficianados call them) clips. I recommend “Fly Me Off The Handel” and the “You don’t bring me flowers”. Now, I wonder how much a ukulele is … ?

We all know it.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you sneak a glance. I was reading my Metro news today, starting as usual with the Nemi cartoon and happened to spot my horoscope. WOE!! alack and alas!!! this weekend promises Aquarians “a tricky moment to negotiate in relationships”.

Panicked, I checked Beloved Sophie’s horoscope to find Pisceans are also due for relationship issues this weekend. Gadzooks!!

Just as I was looking up the number for the Samaritans, I spotted that Cancerians are headed for a “relationship shake-down”, Scorpios are warned not to trigger off relationships that are in a “volatile state”, Capricorns need to take care of someone’s feelings and Ariens have to “get serious where love is concerned”.

So either half the population of the globe is going into a relationship disaster zone or, as I said above, horoscopes are bollocks.