How much room can a cat occupy?

How much room can a cat use, or take up, or occupy?  The short short answer is, a cat can use, take up or occupy as much space it pleases.  No, honestly.  In the last few months Freddie has developed a smoochiness and proclivity to spread out and occupy as-of-right regardless of whatever else may be going on in the immediate vicinity.  For example, last night I was doing a crossword and Freddie left a perfectly good and warm spot on the top of the chair behind Judy to move to my chair and position himself in an impossible space on one leg and the arm of the chair.  It was an inpossible place for him to sit because he was going to inevitably slip off my leg.  No problem.  Cats have a remedy for such exigencies called claws. 

Claws are sharp devices made of the protein keratin and ususally when in the retracted position cause no harm.  In the extended position; different ballgame entirely.  I have a friend who to this day breaks out in a sweat at any mention of claws that once sank in awfully close to his family jewels!!  In my case, Freddie began to slide off my leg.  His auto-function response unfurled his claws which he (again, automatically) sank into my uncovered leg to arrest his sudden gravitationally induced slide to the floor. 

I yelped in pain.  It made no difference.  I could have howled like one of the Baskerville's watch dogs and it'd still have made no diference.  Once the slide was arrested Freddie was happy.  He nocholantly adjusted his perch and life (for him) just carried on.  I was rueful, Freddie was comfortable, end of story.

Here's another example.  This is the top step of the back door steps.  The top step is actually quite a large area and you can see that he takes up quite a bit of space.  Why would he chose to sit exactly slap bang in the middle of the available free space.  Probably for the same reason he spends so much time licking his bum.  Because he can. 

I'd hoped to have a camera on occasions like this....

On Monday 24th I caught the InterCity bus from Gisborne to Napier at Wairoa.  I was travelling through to pick up my new work car.  Uh huh... I know.  Travelling by bus to pick up a work car... right.  Sounds perfectly sensible.  Anyway, the weather had been horrid, raining for several days and nights after weeks of incredibly hot humid days when we were shifting our furniture and so on.

I have travelled on the road between Gisborne-Hastings for more than a decade and had noticed that on the Napier side of Putorino significant waterfalls occur following periods of heavy rain.  Previously, every time the waterfalls were clearly visible I never had a camera with me but the 24th was different.  I'd decided to take my Canon SX130 to take pictures of my new car before it got too dirty or dinged from stone chips or other detritis.  As it happened I took no pictures of the car on the day at all, but that's another story for another time perhaps.

The bus stops at Putorino for the driver to have his break (as prescribed in the Land Transport regulations).  Once in  the hotel I quickly realised the queue for anything suggested that by  the time I got a drink or anything else it'd be time to get back on the bus, so, I walked outside and looked in amazement at what I saw.  Using the camera's very capable x12 optical zoom lens these are the pictures I took from the steps of the Waikare Hotel at Putorino.  I am looking north (to the right) back towards Wairoa.

This picture was taken at 11.45 am and is not the clearest because of the rain and mist.

This view affords a better perspective looking towards the road into the gorge heading down to the bridge before it follows uphill to the right .  Further round there would be another four or five other waterfalls from farm dams up on the plateaux of the hills.  On other occasions the view has been spectacular but only glimpsed because I've been driving!  I'm promising myself to pack the camera in my briefcase more often from now on.

If only I could bottle the scent

In 2009 I had the privilege of experiencing the scent of some lillies at HB Prison Medcial Unit  where the staff had bought a colleague some flowers as a mark of their care and concern following a death. 

I still remember walking into the area where these flowers were sat in a a vase; their scent was heady and impossible to ignore.  Every time I walked past the area where the vase was situated it was as if it was for the first time.  The story behind acquiring some of the bulbs is lengthy but I obtained four from a nursery in the South Island; they cost $5 each with freight extra.  I'm planning to give then four years before diving them if the containers can cope.  This is their second year since planting and this year we got two leaders with about five flower heads on each leader. 

What follows is a series of pictures taken as I walked round the table in the house where we're living.

This first picture is of a highly fragrant asiatic lilly that Judy picked from another plany we'd brought with us when we moved.  The deep pink set off the lovely creamy white colour of the other lillies.

There's even some incredibly prickly red roses Judy added for additional colour contrast.  I had to move a lot of stuff out of the way because this is actually a quite small table and I was trying not to show too much of the cheap plastic jug the flowers are sitting in.  We had only a dim idea of where our flower vases may be; they're in a box some where...

This view demonstrates all the lilly flowers yet to open.

We found the scent inside could be a little on the overwhelming side after a few days.  As cut flowers, lillies last for ages and I think most people enchanted by the scent tend to get their noses a bit too close to the stamens.  As a result it's common to see folk walking round with saffron coloured spots on their noses or clothes if folk get that close as to brush against the open flowers.

Truly, if I could send samples of the scent I would.

House - done and dusted.

On my way back from the dump having deposited enough flax leaves to choke up a couple of hundred lawn mowers this morning when I received a call on my phone from the lawyer attending to the conveyancing.  The sale was completed and funds disbursed electronically shortly after midnight.  Hurrah.  That's another chapter in  the book that's completed.  Time to rest on our laurels and consider what's best for the future over the next few months. 

Do birds really eat oranges?

I was talking on the 'phone to my sister in Inglewood  yesterday when I mentioned there was an orange on the back lawn and walked over to have a closer look.  On closer inspection I started to laugh because this is what I saw. 

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I'd have said birds didn't eat oranges.  Well they apparently do because here's the evidence.  Susan wanted to know if there was much of a hole in it.  Under other circumstances I'd ahve said yes, big enough to back a trailer into!   I sat the shell on something solid and took one other picture to see if I could show just how much the bird didn't eat.  This is the result.

This should have been enough vitamin C to last this bird for the rest of its life!

The Telephony Issue - updated

To all the detractors of NZ Telecom.  Hang your heads in shame!  In less than four hours Telecom managed to only give me one pleasant but practically unintelligible Phillipino woman to converse with.  I had the phone on speaker-phone so Judy could listen to it all...  After that I was assisted by very helpful New Zealanders (one male and one female) who walked me through the process and the countless questions to establish that I was who I said I was.  After that irritating admin' stuff - plain sailing. 

In short, I had my phone line and broadband transferred and working by later that afternoon.  What could I say but TELECOM ROCKS!! 

Remember my gripe about neighbours?

There were lots of reasons the various neighbours that lived in the small house across the shared driveway gave me grief.  Booming stereo and 12 - 15 hour parties.  Stereo played outside at a volume that would have entertained the stands at McLean Park Napier.  Bad language used as several forms of speech, that is, noun, pro-noun, verb transitive, verb intransitive, adjective...  In total, just a general lack of consideration for anyone else.  Michael Laws recently made a remark about 'feral' Maoris in an article.  On the face of it it seems an entirely derogatory way to describe people but, when I paused and considered the literal meaning of the word 'feral', it was entirely accurate. 

Of course it goes without saying there are feral types from all races and social strata, and happily feral individials are the exception and not the rule.  But my word!  When you meet a feral individual you quickly appreciate how such individuals produce an effect on others who in short order also become feral.  True?  Well, that's what I've observed so far.

Back to the "neighbours".  Stereos.   Parties.  Fighting.  Feral visitors who hurled things on our roof and at our fences.  On and on it went.  What about noise control?  Well, I felt after our second or third foray with after hours noise control that they just weren't interested.  The council wrote to one of the tenants and that improved things slightly but only for a week.
There were times I fet like burning the house down just to be rid of them.  But what really disgusted me most was the plight of the poor elderly woman living on her own on the other side of these creatures.  That poor woman was trapped and tormented in her own home for the last remaining years of her life.  The disregard she was subjected to by these people was shameless and contemptible.

Finally, after six to seven years the remaining feral Maoris in the house left for Masterton, or so I heard from my neighbour out in the front house.  What is it about Masterton that attracts such types I wonder?  My colleague working at Masterton gets all the really ugly antisocial intra-familiar violence at the Masterton Court, poor woman.

Anyway, not only was it my opinion that these people lived a lifestyle without restraints, but they also lived a lifestyle that had a lot more in keeping with lawlessness as existed in medieval times particularly in terms of what they did with their household refuse.  Here's some examples of what they did not take with them...

 This is what was left in a car port where the boozey parties were held and the stereo sat out here somewhere probably not too far from the stash of dope and practically endless supply of beer.  God alone knows where he got the money from to pay for it all.

 Here's another view of the detritis left after a group of feral Maoris quit the tenancy for other parts.  The fellow that lived here changed his ways after he was seriously assualted and hospitalised during the night about June 2010.  The rumour was that it was a "hit" paid for a by a disgruntled parent of a school-kid who had been expelled for taking cannabis to school that he'd bought from the drop-kick living here.  I don't know whether the story is true or not, but what I do know, is that after he was hospitalised his whole demeanour and conduct changed.  The boozey parties stopped and there were no more streams of late night comings and goings in noisey cars.  Hurrah.

 This was the view that greeted me one day when I looked over the fence.  I looked in disbelief!  This was in 2010 for crying out loud!  Goodness only knows how many months of accumulated household rubbish was here but the rats and mice must have done nearly as well as the feral cats that lived at or near the premises.  There were plenty of feral cats that reproduced at an alarming rate.

And this is what the rear of the property looks like....  overgrown with piles of rubbish interspersed through it.  Yesterday (10th January) before I left the property for the final time, I looked over the fence and nothing has changed.  It is still the same even though the property owner has been and mowed the lawns.  He hasn't been back since.

On the other side of this fence about five meters away was our bedroom.  Do I need to say more? 

Am I glad to be gone?  Huh!  Is the Pope a Catholic?