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Treacle's diary. Extracts from the blog of a feline secret agent.

Saturday August 28. 9.00 - 11.00 hours
The serpent
9.00am. Am getting worried about junior female staff member. She is reading a cat magazine, or pretending to, but furtively studying me over the top of it. Have run a quick check, and am not a.) Clawing curtains/sofa/her leg b.) eating spiders c.) grooming my intimate parts. In fact am sitting quietly but becoming increasingly uneasy about the looks I am getting.

9.30 Junior female staff member has left the premises. Has she been turned to the dark side of the force? There was something verrrry fishy in that look she gave me as she left the house. I shall be on my guard.

10.45 My worst fears have been realized. Female junior staff member has become an agent of the enemy. She cornered me in the bathroom and attempted to torture me by forcing some blunt, evil-tasting implement into my mouth. Naturally I resisted, and whilst escaping shredded her silk blouse and inflicted some other minor injuries.

11.00 Sitting on the roof , licking her blood off my fur and brooding on the perfidy of humankind. It occurs to me that perhaps female staff member's ctivities might have been an attempt to provide me with some form of dental hygiene? No, ridiculous. My fangs are in excellent condition, and I floss regularly. With mice.
 
Saturday August 14. 4.00 - 5.15 hours
Cat Chess
O4.00 game begins

04.13 Tadpole moves on to her garden wall. Tadpole lives in the next street, and is only eight months old. Still, she should know better.

04.17 Thought so, Butch McAngus has got the drop on her by moving to the roof of the garden shed.

4.20 Butch looks up and sees me on the branch of the neighbour's apple tree. I'm looking nonchalant, but inside I'm grinning like a cheshire cat at this neat bit of anticipation on my part. I've got Butch -and Tadpole- covered. Check!

4.30 Very slowly, so as not to show any embarassment, Butch flows over the garage wall and out of sight. I decide to shift my position as well - into that patch of long grass under the old garden table. It's sunny there too, might as well catch a few rays while I am at it.

4.55 See Butch slinking in through the hole in the neighbour's fence that he thinks only he knows about. I move across to cut off his retreat. Poor Tadpole is still sitting on the wall, wondering why no-one else is playing. Amateur.

5.12 Butch is sniffing around the base of the apple tree trying to work out my last move. Unseen, behind him, I'm circling the rhodendrons, moving in for the kill. The secret shadow is about to score again!

5.13 A sudden purr behind me. I sit carefully, and start grooming behind my ears. It's that faux persian from up the street, the blasted sugarkin! Where did she come from? I perform a lightning assessment. My escape route is cut off, Sugarkin has the high ground, and by the time I turned, she could have removed the ears I'm now so carefully grooming. It's checkmate.

5.14 Give Sugarkin a look of ineffable hauteur. Did she not know that the game finished at 5.10? I was ahead on points at that time, so properly, it's game to me. I try to make this plain in my manner as I stalk past on my way back to base. Sugarkin watches me go with inscrutable eyes, but as I pass, there is just a suggestion of a feline snigger.
 
Thursday, August 5. 10.00 hours
Life in the fast lane
Every now and then I am required to leave HQ and take charge of a peculiar metal box on wheels. This is kept locked at the back of the garden along with two defunct bicycles, a hosepipe and a mouldering rolled-up carpet that contained a small family of mice until I discovered them in residence.

The interesting thing about this box is that it makes the scenery slide backwards at an alarming rate. This would be frightening, if I were the type to be frightened, and I can understand the nervousness of the staff as we set off. I am less worried because my superior status means that I am given a further crash-proof box for extra security, along with my own blanket and a small bowl of crunchy treats.

I don't like leaving headquarters unguarded, so I tend to complain quietly to myself while I am in the box. Out of consideration to the staff, I keep it down to the point where they can hear themselves think, if not actually talk.

After ten minutes, I am getting bored and a bit frustrated, and start throwing myself against the sides and lid of the crash-proof cage. Oh, look. Hit the cage just ...here, and the catch slides back a bit. Let's try that again. Wow! I've popped the lid. At that moment female junior staff member gives a cry of such horror and desperation that I know something really nasty is going to happen.

Too late to get back into my secure shelter. I dive for cover under the feet of the male junior staff member. Damn! A less than perfect decision. I keep getting tangled in some metal bars that he was resting his feet on. There is a loud screech, and a violent jerk. A bang, and everything goes still and silent. I've managed to stop the scenery moving. Staff seem dumbfounded with shock and admiration. I notice that I have been sick over the male staff's socks in the excitement. In retrospect, those crunchy treats were a mistake.
 
Tuesday July 28. 8.00 - 14.00 hours
Home alone
08:00 HQ remains gloriously empty. I curl up in the sunny patch on the bed, secure in the knowledge that no-one is going to erupt from under the sheets like a surface-to-air missile once the alarm sounds. Yes, the junior staff have gone off somewhere, leaving me to run HQ in peace.

09:00 Saunter downstairs, and decide which of the five trays of food is most to my liking today. Settle for the tuna with rabbit. Enjoy eating my breakfast without needing to keep a weather eye out for sleep-stunned junior staff treading on my tail as they stagger around looking for the cornflakes.

09:30 Leisurely wash, then its off upstairs to catch the sun as it moves by the bathroom window. This window is usually covered by a frilly curtain for some unknown reason; probably connected with security.

11.15 Emerge from the laundry hamper wherein I have now made a silky nest of shed fur on an already soft cashmere sweater. Without new clothes being added or taken out, I've finally got the hamper smelling precisely and gloriously of me. Now its off to the lounge to sit on the windowsill, observing the mixture of humanity and caninity going past on the pavement. One day, I swear, I'll figure out bicycles.

13.15 Am curled up in the dent that the hairy junior staff's backside makes in the sofa, safe in the knowledge that he will not absently-mindedly sit down and crush me. Suddenly I hear a dreadful sound. I know those footsteps. No! It's the junior staff, crashing in with suitcase and rucksack, making sickening cooing noises as they look for me.

What the devil are they doing back already? There's still two days food in the kitchen - why don't you two just turn around and shove off somewhere? Oh no, this is embarrassing. I'm about to get hugged.
 
Tuesday July 21. 13.00 hours
Dirty war
Now, the junior staff are responsible for the bit behind the house, but MY territory also takes in the gardens of the houses on each side. So when doing my morning patrol the other day, I was rather distressed to find that some feral tom had put scent markings down in a seed bed next door.

Naturally, I dug over the offending scent, and rather vigorously added my own. That night he did the same. And to show what a big cat he is, he stropped his claws on the side of one of the yuccas. (Alarmingly high, but don't tell anyone that.)

Of course as soon as I saw this I reciprocated, though the seed bed is starting to look somewhat cratered, and I stropped my claws even higher up the yucca. Unfortunately, I got higher up the yucca by balancing on a flowerpot, and when that tipped up, I clung to the yucca, and brought that and its pot down too.

Yesterday morning neighbour put lots of evil smelling scent containers around the garden, evidently in an attempt to stop my excretory scent bombing. To show my contempt for such manouvers, I crapped on one of them. Then I shredded a dahlia or two to ease my distress.

Oh dear. This morning, feral Tom was showing how much better he could shred dahlias when neighbour charged out to throw a pot of coffee at him. Sadly, he skidded on one of my less subtle markers near the kitchen door, and apparently broke something when he went over. The good news is that whilst the very hot coffee partly exfoliated some seedlings, a good dollop hit the Tom. The Tom has vanished, hopefully never to be seen again, and now I'm scratching over some earth where, as I recall, there were daffodils growing in the spring.

Oh yes, there's some of the bulbs coming up now ..
 

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