08:56 – Barbara is due back this afternoon. Colin and I will celebrate. I will admit that I rewatched some stuff while she was gone. The final three episodes of Firefly, Serenity, and the fourth series of Blackadder. Right now, I’m doing laundry. A load of towels and a load of Barbara’s work clothes. The regular dark and white loads can wait until she gets home.
I’ve been trying to teach Colin not to chase cats. I’ve explained to him that they’re really pretty much just small, incompetent, ugly dogs and that he should feel pity for them rather than chase them. But this morning on our walk, Colin noticed a cat in the bushes only a couple meters from where he was standing. He went on alert, the cat bolted, and Colin was off in pursuit. Fortunately, I locked the leash before he’d gotten more than about two steps or he’d have pulled me into the bushes.
When we got home, I explained things to him: “Look, you’re a dog. A dog! Your natural prey is large animals. You and your buddies can drag down an elk or a moose and rip it to shreds, for heaven’s sake. Your jaws can bite a broomstick in half. That pathetic little creature you were chasing is a cat. It has tiny, weak little jaws. Its natural prey is mice. Even a good-size rat with an attitude is more than a match for it. Why do you think they breed three-kilo terriers as ratters? And you’re about ten times that size. It’s beneath your dignity to chase a pathetic loser cat.” Colin seemed to understand. We’ll see.
12:41 – The theme music of the fourth series of Blackadder started with a couple bars of The British Grenadiers, one of those marches that everyone recognizes when they hear it, but almost no one knows the name of. I, of course, sang the first couple bars in my basso profundo as each episode started:
Some talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander, and such great names as these.
So I just searched YouTube for those lyrics, and got a hit. ARRRGHH. Whoever the guys are singing this, they mispronounce a significant portion of the lyrics. My favor is “toe, row, row, row, row, row”, which refers to lining up on parade (toeing the row), and should be pronounced with all long oh’s. Instead, they misspell “toe” as “tow” and then proceed to pronounce both toe and row as in bow-wow. Then they mangle “fusee” into “fuze” and manage to use the French pronunciation for “glacis”, glaw-zee, rather than the proper British, glay-siss. That’s particularly ironic since they made a politically-correct alteration to the original lyrics. We now hear “We throw them from the glacis, about the enemies’ ears” rather than the original “We throw them from the glacis, about the Frenchmen’s ears”, which doesn’t even scan. Geez.
Just be sure to also remind Colin that those pesky little cats have much larger cousins, and though not probable or even likely, some of them have been known to get loose, and recently, too. I’m pretty sure that any of them would make short work of all but the largest and most vicious mastiffs.
Give Colin his head. The only good cat is a flat cat, or a cat that’s been ripped to shreds by a BC. You’ll be doing the world a favour by setting him a quota of five cats a day, or he sleeps out in the cold.
Well, the Romans used to say that two mastiffs were a match for a bear, and three for a lion. What they didn’t mention is that a pack of wolves (or feral large domestic dogs) is more fearsome than a couple or three mastiffs, capable of taking down anything less than an elephant, rhino, or hippo.
I don’t worry about it, though. If a lion gets loose around here, I have stuff that’ll shoot through it lengthwise. I’ll kill it and let Colin and his buddies eat it.
As to flat cats, I always try to do that when I’m driving, but they’re hard to hit and I don’t really drive that much anyway. I think cats are basically disorganized serial killers, and deserve the same treatment. If I had a barn, I might keep one to deal with small rodents, but that’s about the only thing they’re good for.
OFD knows what certain people on this board who disrespect and/or dislike cats will find when they go to a certain very warm place eventually.
I read the above posts to my two feline worshipers here and they kind of smirked, as only a cat can smirk and then sidled away with their tails swishing slowly back and forth.
No, don’t bother running to the store at this late hour for cream; it’s too little, too late, mes amis.
“my two feline worshipers”
Um, don’t you have that reversed? Certainly the goddess here demands worship and tribute from all us lesser creatures. Occasionally she deigns to bless us by gifting us with the portions of a mouse – you know, the icky bits that are beneath her divine dignity to eat.
Does she chase moths? A good pal who is sufficiently deranged to like cats told me of the antics of one of his, which included chasing moths around and tormenting mice. He didn’t just kill them and have done with it, he actually toyed with them until the mouse was witless with fear.
Cats truly are evil creatures.
Hey, youse guyz need to bone up on yer ancient history. By worshiping catz, the Egyptians invented batteries and were able to raise the pyramids with flying sauces and anti-gravity machines.
We could end our dependence on furrin oil!
Hey, youse guyz need to bone up on yer ancient history. By worshiping catz, the Egyptians invented batteries and were able to raise the pyramids with flying saucers and anti-gravity machines.
We could end our dependence on furrin oil!
I made a small typo correction while the above post was being posted and got this:
“You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.”
This is one result of being the only boy in a high school typing class back in 1970 or so.