Post #153 - Rescue Cats: Tabitha Mary (Tabby)

I've always yearned for a kitten, despite how difficult they can be.  My brother once owned a scrawny black and white splodgy kitten (later, a cat(!) whom he named Nigel.  I think that you'll agree that it's an odd choice of moniker, but as my brother said, "he didn't look like a Dave."  Fair dos.

Back in October 2017, When Tilly was getting older and more infirm, combined with Sophie's nervous nature, I talked Mr Logic into adopting a third cat, a kitten.  Yes, with the benefit of hindsight, it was a very stupid thing to do indeed, but what can I say?  I'm an impulsive kind of person and I just love the furry whiskery beasts (despite leaving the lion's share of care to poor old Mr Logic ...)  To facilitate getting a kitten I posted on the local branch of Cats' Protection's Facebook page to enquire whether anyone needed to give a ginger or tabby kitten a loving home.

A fortnight or so later I received a message stating that a beautiful female (queen) kitten had been taken on by CP and would I be interested in adopting her?  Well, yes, of course I would.  When we visited the rescue centre which was located in someone's private house we immediately fell in love with a tiny big eared scrap of a kitten and quite frankly, most feline fans would have.

As soon as the kitten arrived in chez Logic she was trouble.  Lively and crazy she soon started to harass poor old Sophie - Tilly seemed quite oblivious to her presence most of the time.  The jumping, snarling, biting and scratching went on for weeks - Tabitha the kitten started wrecking the household bit by bit.  One particular morning I was awoken to the sound of cats fighting on my duvet and Sophie (once again!) defecated on the cover - it was truly gross.

Tabby stayed with us for six months, but quite frankly, most days were a living hell.  We borrowed a pet cage from my parents and she had to be shut in there every night because we couldn't trust her alone in the house.  Master Logic loved her, but we were struggling.  When she knocked my glass off of the coffee table for the third time in a row I decided that I'd had enough and we contacted the rescue centre to ask what we should do.  Tabitha had been well cared for, neutered and vaccinated in our care, but she'd developed a problem with her digestive transit, meaning that her stools were both runny and pungent.

Tabitha was duly returned to Cats' Protection, it was really sad and I've honestly never seen Master Logic cry so much, but it had to be so.  Apparently the rescue lady told Mr Logic that the kitten's origins were unknown and she may have been a feral creature.  Hmm.  I'm almost sure that Tabby had been a bengal or have bengal heritage, which makes for a beautiful animal but a rubbish pet in my opinion.

Post #152 - Rescue Cats: Sophie Margaret (Whiskers)

So, we come to my bicoloured friend, Sophie Whiskers.  I'd always hankered after owning a black and white cat, especially those Bloomsbury type ones, but after owning Tilly (qv) for many years, she inevitably got old and in late 2014 we decided to adopt another moggie to cope with the former's inevitable demise.  As ever, we're keen to give an unwanted animal a nice home, so off we toddled to the local branch of Cats' Protection.  We didn't meet with the woman we'd adopted Tilly from back in 2003, because she'd since left the organisation under a cloud (reason unknown), so we went to another lady who lived in the same postcode.

The CP lady had a huge extended semi-detached house full of cats and Sophie was in a cage near the door.  I'd especially requested a black and white animal and there she was, a cat of some ten months or so of age and cute as a button.  Her backstory was that she'd been left in a box outside a Veterinary Surgery in a less than salubrious area of south London.  She hadn't been spayed by her careless owners, but it's CP's sensible policy to neuter all pets because it improves their behaviour and most importantly, stops the spread of unwanted kittens.

Sophie soon settled into our house.  Tilly didn't really appreciate sharing her house with another cat, but was kind of old and crotchety anyway.  She occasionally clouted her around the head, which is fair enough really.  My puss started sleeping on our bed, but has defecated on it before, which was, quite frankly, bloody awful.

Post #151 - Rescue Cats: Matilda Hilda (Tilly)

In my previous post I wrote about how much I adore the members of the feline race.  When we moved into our first house, which 'boasted' a garden, the very next month we adopted a cat from the local branch of Cats' Protection, she was already called Tilly.  Tilly, a three-year-old (or so they thought, vets can only really make a guesstimate based on an animal's teeth) tortoiseshell female had been left behind with her brother Milo in a house after the owners moved out (nice people, huh?)  She didn't have a great relationship with her brother/litter mate, so they were due to be rehomed separately and as we only wanted one moggy, she was ideal as we didn't want a kitten rampaging through our new things.

Tilly was our pet for a number of years, she stayed home when we both worked in London and kept the house and garden pest free.  That's pretty much all you want from a cat really.  She also really liked my dad, pets usually do - he's our suburb's version of The Cat Whisperer.  Or maybe he just smells meaty?  Who knows.

Here's a picture of Tilly, aged sixteen taken in December 2016.  I've already written about her sad demise in an earlier blog post: https://faspie.blogspot.com/2018/07/post-140-my-late-cat-tilly.html

Post #150 - My Life With Cats

I've always been around cats ever since I was a baby, in fact, my parents bought a small ginger and white kitten whom they named George when my elder brother was very small and added the half-Siamese 'Evil' Eric to the brood about a year later.  Both cats lived into their teens and in addition to my grandfather's cat, Kipper, felines were always a constant presence in my life.  George had to be put down after cancer ripped through his body during the nineties and Eric got old too. 

As the years passed, another black cat, a juvenile, turned up on my dad's workshop roof during one cold winter - we couldn't locate his owner, so he joined us and was named Ernie.  Ernie liked to hide in cupboards and scare me and also took to staring at me during meals - a bit like Frasier had to put up with his father's dog, Eddie. 

I moved out of the parental home during the late nineties and didn't live anywhere which was suitable to keep a pet cat.  I did, however, own a pair of pedigree(!) gerbils whom I named Jasmine and Juliet when we resided in south-west London.  My brother and his then-girlfriend visited us one Saturday evening and, for a laugh, he decided to take one of my gerbs out of their tank to scare his girlfriend (who hated all things rodenty) As expected, this hugely backfired and she said "get that fing away from me or I'll kill it!"  Personally, I'd rather have chosen to spend an evening with both gerbils instead of her, the vacuous personality drain that she was.   They split up about a year later after he was unfaithful to her. 

Post #149 - Choir Reprise

Regular readers will be aware that, although I love to sing, maintaining a suitable place in any choir is difficult for me - I refer to these related posts:

General choir woes:

https://faspie.blogspot.com/2015/10/post-12-more-insomnia-choir-musings.html

What happened after the Easter 2017 concert: 

https://faspie.blogspot.com/2017/05/post-106-some-people-aint-got-no-sense.html

So, it's now 2019, I'm enjoying watching Glee on Amazon Prime Video and decide that it's time to get my voice out of storage.  I'm a fairly competent singer and with practice, I can improve.  So, I've heard about a singing group which meets on Monday lunchtimes and is located approximately 3.9 miles away from Chez Logic, and after a bit of finding out about what its all about from a member of my previous choir whom I'd recognised in a group shot, I contacted the Choir Director.  The Director was lovely and when I said that I had quite a lot of choir experience, was a tiny bit concerned that I may be pitching myself too low (not literally, although I am a soprano who often moonlights as an alto, so that might actually be true.) 

I went along, the church hall was located in the same road we once rented a flat in back in 2003 (that's one for the property fact fans amongst you.)  I arrived about ten minutes early, but the room was almost full, which is bizarre because in my other choir, people turned up late and it never started on time, but maybe that was because it took place between 19:30 and 21:30 and these people had jobs?  And lives.  The Choir Director was really friendly and welcoming and handed me a song sheet with lyrics on ... hmm, OK.  OK, please excuse me for being a bit of a musical snob here, but I do like to sing from a musical score as it makes working out the harmonies so much easier if you can see if the notes are going up or down for starters and whether they're crotchets, minims or triplets etc.  Also, the dynamics of a piece are totally lost without it - how would you know when to speed up, slow down or get louder? 

I did explain to the Choir Director that I had autism and it had affected me in earlier choirs.  She was duly sympathetic.  I squeezed myself into a soprano seat, as indicated, but nobody around me even said a simple "hello", in fact, the whole group seemed downright standoffish.  In my other choirs if I'd been sat next to a newbie I'd take the time to ask them their name, if they'd sung before and other such pleasantries (without sounding like a weirdo) - it's just good manners. 

Needless to say I won't be going back; it's great for people who just like to sing in a casual manner, but I like I said before, I want to improve.  Also the timing's all out of whack as the end of it coincides with school kicking out time, which as we all know is a nightmare on the roads and buses.   

Post #148 - Here Come The Girls(?)

I don't have a group of female mates and quite frankly I never have and almost certainly won't in the future, unless I'm living in some kind of residential care home with a predominant female clientele. I recall this being raised as part of my PIP Assessment interview, but hope, I'm not like normal women, well ones who go on girlie spa breaks or book those huge Gold apartments in Butlins and shriek for three days solid.  My sister-in-law is very popular in that manner, good for her I say, but I'd rather be me and not be coerced into spending money I don't have on meals out or clubs.

So, am I missing out?  Well, I guess that you don't miss what you've never had and I like having people around me who aren't too emotionally close.  I sometimes swap stories with friends, but tend to hold most of it in as I don't want any information I share to be used against me in future.  Hell, that sounds really paranoid ...

Post #147 - Quitting Facebook (well, the main account anyway ...)

I joined Facebook back in 2007 or 2008, I cannot really recall which, but it kind of coincided with the birth of my son, Master Logic, and harnessing its ability to share pictures and information across various friends or connections.  The reason I've placed the term friends in italics is, because, quite frankly, these people are rarely your actual friend, you know - someone you could really confide in and rely on.  I don't think that my main Facebook account ever even reached a total of 100 friends because I wasn't prepared to compromise and accept Friend Requests from a whole bunch of random women who were in the same year as me at school, regular readers of this blog will be aware just how awful my schooldays were and they really paved the way for not trusting any form of friendship in the years/decades which followed.

I've always experienced problems on Social Media and however hard I try, I tend to end up falling down on of the virtual rabbit holes.  Sites such as Facebook can make a person feel very lonely at times - seeing pictures of friends out and about with other people is particularly galling.  My so-called best friend from my schooldays, that is indeed the very same woman who tried to involve me in a threesome with her physically abusive ex back in the nineties, caused me FacebookStress.  Like most of the women I was at school with, she still lives in the same suburb as me and we have broken the friendship and reconnected at various points.  Anyway, she cancelled a night out with me via text and then, lo and behold, I've spotted her checking into some kind of venue with other people.  I called her out on it and guess what?  We never speak.  Mr Logic has seen her in our local Asda a few times and she blanks him.

There was also a mum at Master Logic's Primary School who knew that I was autistic and had experienced mental health issues, as she herself did, plus she also had a stepson who was on the spectrum.  She left the UK to return to her home country elsewhere in the EU and held a leaving do in a local restaurant and guess who wasn't invited?  Me, that's who.  I mean, I wouldn't have minded if she'd sidled up to me in the playground and said:

"Hi Mrs Logic, as you know I'm returning to Scandi in the next few weeks and I'm planning to host a leaving do in [insert name of chain restaurant] next Friday night.  I realise that you may not feel like coming, but just to let you know, the offer's there if you're up for it."

But no ... I saw the ensuing pictures on Facebook.  It's not a nice feeling, believe me.

This may all sound uber petty, but that's my world.  I am very suspicious of people.  Another reason I deleted my main Facebook account was that the connection to my former place of work.  I got quite annoyed when I heard about other people who were still working there and gaining promotion, which I didn't believe they deserved - some did, many didn't.  Also, some friends of friends (FoF) were total arseholes, I tended to block such people, but conversations don't make sense as a result.  There was one FoF who started attacking me on there when I made an innocent comment about children's films being layered to suit a range of audiences.  I'm not quite sure what this person's problem was, but as she was a FoF of three of my Facebook friends, she had to go.  I recently discovered that she'd accompanied a person whom I really respected, to see a comedy performance.

So, there you go - there's my reasons for quitting.  I retain an account to link to my various online games and I still like to pop into the Frank Skinner on Absolute Radio Group and keep in touch with people I actually like, but aren't connected with my former employer.