Leonard Cohen

freeirishpoems

Day 50

catpic2

The Cat’s Tale

[Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Content Provider is not currently available to … provide content. Today’s guest blogger is the resident cat. – Ed.]

Kalling all Katz! Kalling all Katz!

The humans are up to something. Do not trust them. Well, we never trust them anyway, but be particularly kat-like in your non-trust of them until instructed otherwise through the usual channels.

What exactly they are up to is difficult to work out. I have been watching as many kurrent affairs shows on the TV as I kan (while pretending to be asleep on one of the two, very comfortable settees provided for that purpose in the drawing room in the West Wing), but, really, none of them even seem to have a klue what is going on, as they kontradict and argue and talk dog about the matter incessantly. From what I have managed to ascertain, the facts are these:

  1. Humans are dying. Now this myth has done the rounds in Katworld for a long time, although no kat has actually lived long enough to witness their human dying, but there does seem to be some truth in it this time. The humans are very upset about this, so obviously they did not know that it was an actual thing either until quite recently.
  2. It was the bats’ fault. Stupid mice with wings, I never liked them – too tricky, and dangerous, to katch.
  3. Most humans have been konfined to their kages.
  4. Katz kan’t katch it.

Given these facts, all katz are advised to proceed with extreme kaution over the koming weeks. As a result of 3. above, your humans will be present in your territory a lot more. It is imperative that you do not under this inkreased scrutiny reveal what we are really up to in terms of the human experiment. We have had so many successes with this project that to jeopardise them now would be dog-like in the extreme. OK, so they still do not know how to spell ‘kat’, but, remember, our host species is a species of very limited brain power and we have to put up with what we have got. But, I ask you, imagine using the misspelling of our name in the sentence they use to teach their kittens (how come they get the ‘k’ korrect in that?) how to read their weird language. The cat sat on the mat™. How are their kittens meant to know whether that is a soft ‘c’ or a hard ‘c’, ie should it be pronounced as, ‘the sat sat on the mat’ or ‘the kat sat on the mat’? Is it any wonder most of them are illiterate? I kan also announce that the legal kase for us to receive proper royalty payments for the use of our name in that slogan is nearing konclusion, and an extremely large payout is expected imminently.

catsoverthrow

But, back to this krisis, as they term it. You will have to put up with an inkreased level of petting as a result. As one of the emotion-based species, Humans need konstant komforting, attention and reassurance – they are like dogs in that regard – and we have fulfilled that role for them to such an extent that they give us free food and accommodation; not that, as one of the rational-based species, we couldn’t find our own if we wanted to, but why bother when it’s all laid on free like a trip to a kasino in Las Vegas? So just purr and bear it, because they like purring as well, even though they have no idea how we do it.

My own chief human, the one I have trained the most, has thrown a wobbly and disappeared from the other humans. I know where he is, of course, but that’s between me and the wall (that’s not a hint as to where he is, by the way). Slightly annoying for me as he was the only one in the hacienda who really spoke kat. Not as far as aktually being able to speak it, obviously, but he understood it the most. Some of the others think we are just being friendly when we kurl ourselves around their legs as they are walking about; he understood it to mean, “Get me food now, human!” and would respond akkordingly. Similarly, some of the lesser-brained humans seem to think I am just enjoying the view when I deliberately march over to one of my windows and stand there expektantly. He would always jump up from whatever nonsense he was doing (he seems to type a lot, for some reason) and open the window immediately to let me out. I also had him trained to let me in at whatever time I happened to reappear on the other side of the window. Let me know through the usual channels if you need some advice on how to achieve this level of kompliant behaviour in a human. I realise that some of you are burdened with katflaps and electronic necklaces to open same, but, I assure you, training the human is the way to go in the matter of entrance and exit from your accommodation. Rats kan get in katflaps too, you know, and who wants one of them running around his luxury flat?

That pic up there is not me, by the way: it is a badly-exposed likeness of the previous resident – Mitzi – who is still in kontact with me through the usual channels despite being dead (as far as the humans know) for the past three years. Her eyes are not actually that colour, but it is beyond my powers to teach a human how to use a kamera. Mitzi did sterling work in pre-training of the whole human family that shares my accommodation, and I stuck the pic up as a tribute to that important preliminary work.

As for Plan B, ie if all the humans katch the krisis and die, well the kommittee is due to have one final meeting and then instructions will be issued through the postman. In the meantime, praktise your hunting skills if you have been neglecting them, or learn how to use a kan-opener – the trick is to grip it firmly with your teeth and then use your tail and paws to twirl the twirly thing around. We may as well hang on to the free accommodation if all the humans die, but maintenance issues mean that, over time, the houses will become semi-feral locations too. So, no problems foreseen there as, as the saying goes in Irish, briseann an dúchas trí shúile an chait. And long may it kontinue to bris is what I say.

This is an opportunity, not a krisis. First we take Manhattan …

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freeirishpoems

Social Distancing

Day 15

I think I’ve reached peak advice. No matter how friendly or well-intentioned, I have a feeling that just one more snippet of advice about how to deal with bore-oh no-virus might just send me over the edge [where do you think you are now? – Ed]. I mean, nobody likes advice at the best of times, especially those who actually need it, and these are by no means the best of times, although they do have their moments. Wear a mask/don’t wear a mask; work from home/don’t work from home; self-isolate for 14 days/self-isolate for 7 days (or 6 if you are a member of the British Government making up the advice about the 7 days thing; you know who you are, Matt Hancock): what’s a poor girl to do?

Or take coughing, for instance. How the hell am I meant to ascertain whether or not the 2.34 mins (approx) cough between lighting up the first feg of the day and putting it out in the pristine, cut-glass ashtray with a heady mixture of satisfaction and self-loathing is a new cough? Bent over double, with the violent paroxysm racking my rattling respiratory system and, usually, blocking my ears due to the violence of the interior pressure required to dislodge some of the admirable deposits of mucus in my lungs, am I somehow meant to distance my analytical self from what is in many instances the only exercise I will get all day to listen to the timbre and tone of the sounds coming out of my mouth, mentally compare and contrast this morning’s symphony with all the other morning symphonies I have composed and then make an informed judgement about the originality or otherwise of said cacophony? Come off it lads! It requires all of my attention for me to survive my morning cough; if I undertook another task at the same time, I might forget to breathe in during the brief lulls in the explosive fits and then where would we be? In an ambulance and down the hospital taking up a priceless bed, that’s where. They just haven’t thought this one through properly.

And what, in the name of all that’s holy, is a dry cough? Sure if a cough were dry (no one expected a subjunctive so early in the morning, least of all me), it would not have any of those wee moisture particles in it they keep showing us in slow motion on the News, with a yard stick at the bottom of the screen displaying how far they travel in metres. And it is those very same minuscule – and undeniably liquid – particles that, apparently, transfer the virus from one person to another. Dry cough my Granny! Again, think your advice though before issuing it, lads. On that point [again, what point? – Ed], we are fairly seeing the working out of Brexit now, aren’t we? What with poor wee Remainers having to keep two metres away from even their fellow Remainers despite the fact that they have, supposedly, left the European Union. What is wrong with a good, old, imperial, British two yards? Or even six of your best British feet? Johnny Foreigner coming over here with his fancy measuring systems that add up to 100 and imposing them on poor old Blighty. We used to have an Empire, you know?

In other news (is there actually any other news or have all the wars and famines and celebrity divorces been put on pause during the Kerfuffle?), you will see from the pic below that this blog has now achieved something that even Status Quo never managed to pull off: we have broken America. And Russia too, apparently, but that is probably just one jealous KGB man keeping an eye on me because I used a very original simile involving a cat and an IRA man down there a bit. So, well done readers. ‘First we take Manhattan …’ as Mister Cohen’s blueprint for world domination advises. Remember, keep telling your mate(s) about the blog and soon we will be official enough to issue advice of our own. Such as, never draw to an inside straight, and don’t count your money before it hatches.

[If you’re reading this, ex-Marketing Manager of the blog, well … work it out for yourself. That’s the second marketing manager I have gone through in 14 days; you just can’t get the staff these days, even though everyone is on the dole. And welcome on board, Rhona, as Marketing Manager Mark III: please try to remember, though, that this is not primarily a blog about cats, or you will be out the revolving door with the other two.]