My granddaughter's cute little black cat started rushing purposefully about the sitting room last night and crashing around behind the curtains. Of course it had lost its tinkling bell collar and was pursuing a mouse: a nice chubby brown field mouse, its usual prey apart from fat water voles and the occasional sick-making shrew. This morning the corpse was laid proudly in the middle of the hearthrug, and the granddaughter removed it. I hope that she and my wife are at this very moment stuffing the cat into its cage to be taken to its real home and give us a rest from the constant violence and pools of horrible puke.
I feel the bell collar is too easy for the cat to remove. Perhaps a small automatic klaxon superglued to its head would be a better idea. Damn animal.
|
My cat has a bell, makes no discernible difference. He usually gets mice, which he consumes in entirety except for a small piece of giblets which he surgically removes from each one.
In the last week he's managed to get two blackbirds. One was a 03:30 which makes me think he climbed the tree to the nest in our garden and helped himself. That one was released, minus a few feathers sand with a bit of a gammy leg, but all that was left of the next one, which happened while we were out, was a scatter of feathers - unless the bird it's gone behind a piece of furniture to die - which I guess our noses will tell us in a few weeks time...
|
Rubbish, Armel.
Let the little carnivore has its fun! Mother nature seems to have things mapped out Ok.
Next thing you'll be advocating lions and tigers to wear dayglo jackets and carry rattles, to protect the antelope.
|
Stop being so grumpy Lud:)
There is no finer site than a cat playing, watch it's reactions and remember when yours were as fast.
Make a friend of the cat, stroke it, let it sit in your lap and feel the calmness descend.
.......if all that fails the sun is past the yard arm!
Pat
|
>> let it sit in your lap and feel the calmness descend.
I don't often go that far Pat. But although my usual mode when addressing the cat is severe and polemical, with much profanity, I sometimes admit to it that it's not all bad and allow my fingers to scratch its ears and the top of its head. It's a winsome and forgiving beast. Perhaps I should kick it more often.
My wife indulges it hopelessly. It often sprawls on her computer keyboard and wallows luxuriously in enormous typescripts, sometimes sliding them off the desk and mixing up hundreds of pages on the floor. If it did that to me I'd nail its tail to a door for three days I can tell you.
|
No you wouldn't!
I'm not that bad a judge of character, even from a distance.
Despite it all, you really quite like it, you just prefer not to admit it, so we'll humour you for now:)
Pat
|
>> Mother nature seems to have things mapped out Ok.
Except for her most wayward offspring: us. So the tiger is now a seriously threatened species, although that African gangster the lion still seems pretty numerous. Nor, in these temperate climes, are there nearly as many songbirds as there used to be, or swallows, or house-martens, or swifts, or bats. All our doing, not the work of domestic moggies.
I wouldn't really expect, or even want, the cat to give up torturing the diminishing pool of wee cowering beasties to death for casual amusement between bowls of assorted expensive mog fodder. I just wish the little brute would do it out of doors instead of bringing them in to show off, and if it must make itself ill eating them, I'd prefer it to throw up outside as a half-decent drunk would for example.
|
Binky the cat is no longer with us.
But her non-presence is felt - lots of mouse dropping in the kitchen of late.
I'm going to buy some traps tomorrow. Apparently there's a new one with glue which doesn't kill the vermin, but just sticks it to the board by its fur, so if you are a 'green' type, you can let it go, or if you're a psycho like me you can bludgeon it with a mallet.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9nGyPz9uT0
|
|
Domestic cats kill over 200,000,000 animals per year, mostly for 'fun'.
|
If they didn't, we'd be over run with rodents......do you know how may rabbits there would be?
I don't, but I bet someone on here does!
We have 3 cats and they have had only two birds in the last 4 years despite us having feeding stations all over the garden for them.
The starlings brought six chicks for a bath earlier this week...they use the waterfall to the pond.
Ginger did have a squirrell last year but we still have pleanty and at the risk of starting a discrimination dispute, it was a grey one.
Pat
|
>> despite us having feeding stations all over the garden for them.
For the cats? :-)
Ours sleeps to much these days to catch anything - she is 18.
|
|
I'm not sitting in judgement Pat, just stating a fact - that nature can be cruel.
|
I know it can Perro, we watched the Peregrine Falcon webcam on the wet Sunday a few weeks ago, but humans should never interfere with nature.
Pat
|
>>humans should never interfere with nature<<
I'll have to think on that one Pat.
|
>> but humans should never interfere with nature.
>>
>> Pat
Too late Pat, by about 50,000 years :)
|
That's a lot of animals Dog.Our ginger cat all he used to eat in the summer months was mice.
He killed a few rats also.He used to leave the rats on our doorstep as a present.
|
|
Very funny:) Not yet Dog.Lost the daughters cat she isn't pleased with me.How is the Ridge back make sure you take him for a run.
|
>>How is the Ridge back make sure you take him for a run<<
He is fine Dutchie but, at 12 years old I do wonder how he manages my 2 hour route marches sometimes :)
|
>> Why don't you get a dog Dutchie:
A nice dog will be a source of endless pleasure, Dutchy ....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WCj7S3Ha68
Ted
|
>> I feel the bell collar is too easy for the cat to remove.
Never like to see cats wearing collars. Too easy to hang themselves if they fell out of a tree for example. Collars are for vicars and dogs, not cats.
|
I agree with that Dave...no collars on our cats.
Pat
|
There used to be a woman near Notting Hill Gate whose smart turnout was completed by two or three Siamese cats on leads with baby-blue leather harnesses.
I seem to remember they didn't walk in step though but pulled in different directions cancelling each other out.
'We are Siamese if you plee-ease,
We are Siamese if you don't please...'
|
>> Collars are for vicars and dogs, not cats.
We've never put a collar on our cats. And some dog owners shouldn't wear their pets collars either - Darwin award contender:
www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Man-dies-in-freak-dog-collar-accident-20120611
|
>> And some dog owners shouldn't wear their
>> pets collars either - Darwin award contender:
>>
>> www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Man-dies-in-freak-dog-collar-accident-20120611
>>
Port Elizabeth. they are all head-cases down there...
|
Why did I think that link was going to have something to do with bondage?:)
Pat
|
Spent some time recently developing a nice herbacious border from one of my barren, pebbled flowerbeds.
First thing I sees the following day after planting is a local moggie, preparing itself and my flowerbed for a vigorous dump. Frightened away this time, but what of the future ?
Sack+bricks+canal springs to mind....perhaps tied to a bicycle while we're at it !
Ted
|
According to the RSPB: "Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide."
More here: www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx
|
|
Something is wrong! - we are not allowed to introduce non-indigenous species into our eco-system because it is downright dangerous to the "Native" species. YET, we allow virtually unfettered infiltration of non- indigenous Human creatures, tis no wonder in some parts of the Country we are going the same way as the Red Squirrel, white-clawed Crayfish and other similar species. We protect our Wild-life, but leave ourselves open to exactly the same fate, willingly!
|
|
Good post Devon boy. Some grumpy git has marked you down though..Some folk just don't get it do they. Overun.. Run over more likely.
|
Maybe you should try employing a few non british builders labourers martin, then you would se why.
Human beings have to learn to up their game to survive, just as wildlife has already done.
British human beings seem to think this doesn't apply to them.
Pat
|
>> Maybe you should try employing a few non british builders labourers martin, then you would
>> se why.
How do you mean?
Having employed British builders, I can say with confidence that they range from okay, to downright incompetent and dishonest. But to be fair to them, it is an unregulated market, they compete on price, and a lot of time is spent providing quotes which are not followed up by the customer.
|
>>builders labourers <<
The attitude to work, and more particularly unskilled labouring jobs seems to be that it's beneath the British workers.
They prefer to claim benefits, or if they have to do it, do it with a permanent grudge and scive as much as possible, have no respect for their employers and expect to collect a weeks wage for doing a days work.
Foreigners are pleased to be employed...and it shows.
Pat
|
|
MD and devonite: scrumpy overdose perhaps? It may be tempting to see the social confusions of the modern world in biological terms, but it really isn't a good idea. It just isn't, believe me.
|
Isn't that what I said but in a far less educated sort of way?
*walks off confused now* :)
Pat
|
>>scrumpy overdose perhaps?
No not at all! - I wonder how many of the folk that gonged me for my second statement in my post above, also support the first statement!
If you want to see what non-indigenous Humans can do in an "Alien" culture, you need look no further than North America, Australia, or N.Zealand. Natives of these countries have been pushed out into corners of their own lands or shoved onto "Reservations", is this what you really want for Great Britain?
At the moment you have the choice to live here or in places like Mumbai or Bangladesh, you have chosen here! why? - dont you fancy living in the other places?
By 2060 your grandchildren and their children will not have that choice, they will either be in far flung corners of this land, or living in places like those mentioned because that is the future of our cities and country. Immigrants dont always bring wealth and diversity, they also bring overcrowding, disease and poverty.
Its a great legacy we are preparing for our descendants, and I for one am glad I wont be here to see it or be blamed for it!
|
|
I can't see the comparisons with these countrys.We us in the west invaded these places.The native Americans where killed by the immigrants.In Australia they are treated as secondhand citizens.New Zeelanders are more human with the big people.What the future holds nobody knows,if we are still here as a species.Here in Europe we have created our own problems.We want the cheaper plummer or have the car washed by the immigrant.Which native will work on the land to pick our food for low wages the immigrant will oblige.People in Greece are going without food at this moment of time.Blame the cats.>:)
|
Dutchie has said it more or less. The native Americans and Australians were marginalized by European colonists who used subterfuge and violence - genocide actually - over a long period to occupy and monopolize those lands.
Anyone who thinks something like that is happening to us is on more than scrumpy I must admit.
|
>> >> Collars are for vicars and dogs ..............
"Er indoors looks good in her bondage collar! tinyurl.com/d6u9rst
|
>>"Er indoors looks good in her bondage collar! tinyurl.com/d6u9rst<<
Typical blimmin Frogs!
:-D
|
You never cease to amaze me L'es!
You wouldn't be out of place in the bawdiest of transport cafe's, would you?:)
Pat
|
>> You wouldn't be out of place in the bawdiest of transport cafe's, would you?:)
I hope I wouldn't. I try and fit in everywhere.
:-D
Last edited by: L'escargot on Thu 14 Jun 12 at 08:48
|
>> Er indoors looks good in her bondage collar
I think I once saw a vicar wearing the one with the red trim. Or a cardinal perhaps. It may be a false memory.
|
|
Our cat has never learnt that when it rolls on its back and invitates us to tickle its stomach that it should retract its claws before making a grab for the tickler's hand!
|
|
I have to agree with you Pat regarding the British worker (sic). It was only on Monday of this week that I declared to management that if we were to be graced with a sizeable job then Polish may be the way I would go. British youngsters no longer have any get up and go, very little usable strength and worst of all, no ruddy common sense. However regarding the mass immigration that we have suffered for years I don't find that acceptable. If successive governments hadn't bent over backwards to appease the Bleeding heart, don't smack 'em or tell them off Liberals, then we wouldn't be in the unrecoverable position that we now find ourselves in. The country is snip - no rhyming slang please to attempt swear filter bypassing.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 15 Jun 12 at 10:24
|
We are similar in many ways Martine, in that we tend to over-generalise and that we're often wrong.
Just like you are now regarding your comment that "British youngsters no longer have any get up and go, very little usable strength and worst of all, no ruddy common sense".
Sure, that tab applies to the few, but from my experience the many are just as clued up and hard working as we were but its finding that work in the present dire economic climate, and who wants to be a blimmin builder anyway!
:}
|
I no longer wish to be a Builder as the body has all but given up.
As for the youngsters of course there are the good and great ones too or society wouldn't survive at all, but they don't come to the fore readily. There are however still many who could do with, or could have done with, a big boot up their backsides whilst they 'grew up'. i find and obviously specific to our industry that they are, to a man, incapable of the type of works that you and I undertook as youngsters. A lot seem to think that the world owes them.
Have a nice day....
|
Since returning to the UK, we have had occasion to use the services of a plasterer, a kitchen fitter, an electrician, a plumber, a decorator, a double glazing company and a carpet fitter.
(We are currently looking after the renovation of a house for our daughter & S.I.L., as well as having had some work done ourselves.)
We live in a town with very few black or brown inhabitants, but very many Polish people.
Every tradesman we have used or contacted has been native English, as it happened, but more importantly every one has appeared exactly when promised and carried out the work well and in a timely manner.
|
|
The lads who did our fascia and some roofing work where both English born (.Native.They did a excellent job for a good price.Their advertising was poor and I suggested some changes which they are using.To be truthfull Roger I don't care what colour or nationality anybody is when they do work for me.
|
Tooth and claw - smokie
