"Tell me one of your silly cat stories..."
Dec. 9th, 2025 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI had quite a bad setback overnight, so at the moment I feel about as bad as I did on Saturday. This is not merely infuriating in itself, but it also means that (barring a miracle) I'm not going to be able to help at food bank tomorrow; I have e-mailed the co-ordinator, so hopefully she'll have time to find a substitute, but I am not happy about this because it's always crazy in there in the run-up to Christmas. I usually do alternate weeks, but for reasons of other people's availability I did last week and then was supposed to be doing this week (and not till January after that). And last week was a mad rush, so I have every expectation that it'll be the same this week.
On which note, if you want to help your local food bank but you're short of money yourself, bring in your spare bags. Honestly. They'll be welcomed with open arms. (I hear this is true in the USA as well as over here.) Food banks invariably struggle for bags, which, of course, is why I make the string ones. We do ask people to bring their own if possible, and in fact the Afghan refugees who needed the food bank while they were settling in were great because they all had shopping trolleys, which made sense for large families. But people don't usually think of that if they're coming in for the first time, and even if they're not they often forget. It's not surprising. If you're worried about where your next meal is coming from, you're not necessarily going to think about things like bags. So they're a really easy way to help well beyond the actual cash value of what you're donating.
Anyway. Yesterday, someone on one of my Discord craft servers was annoyed about something, and she wanted calming down, so she said to me, "Oh - tell me one of your silly cat stories to help me get my blood pressure down!" I was tempted to say I'd be very happy to average that out with her, but I think she's based in Finland so that wouldn't really work. So, instead, I obligingly told her a silly cat story.
This one is about Klinsmann. Klinsmann was a little ginger thugling who had only one virtue: he was punctiliously tidy in the litter tray. Other than that, he bullied other cats (except Minsky, who was un-bullyable; Klinsmann certainly did try to challenge his authority, but it never worked), got his kicks out of terrifying the largest dogs he could find, fought or raped everything that stayed put long enough, and generally made a perfect nuisance of himself. He did, at least, like humans. In fact, as it turned out, he liked humans so much that he collected them; I eventually found out he was being fed and petted at six (or possibly more) different houses. But, basically, the only sensible explanation I had for his general behaviour was that Greebo had somehow got into our world from the Discworld, begotten Klinsmann, and then departed whence he came. I'm sure the completely inoffensive footballer after whom he was named would have been horrified.
Well, my ex-husband had a guide dog. This one was his second, the German shepherd having sadly had to retire due to hip problems; this second one was a lab-retriever who apparently kept his brains in his harness - great guide dog, but completely goofy when he wasn't working. And even when he was working, he had a tendency to eat stuff he shouldn't. Guide dogs are trained not to scavenge, but you can't fully train that out of a lab mix. So, inevitably, every now and then he'd get a stomach upset; and if that happened at night, he couldn't get out, so there'd be a mess in the kitchen in the morning.
One night, this happened. Along came Klinsmann and saw the mess, and he thought: "Oh dear. Silly dog. He doesn't know you're supposed to bury it. I'd better help." And, in the finest tradition of the house, he proceeded to improvise with whatever was to hand.
That was one doormat we never used again...
On which note, if you want to help your local food bank but you're short of money yourself, bring in your spare bags. Honestly. They'll be welcomed with open arms. (I hear this is true in the USA as well as over here.) Food banks invariably struggle for bags, which, of course, is why I make the string ones. We do ask people to bring their own if possible, and in fact the Afghan refugees who needed the food bank while they were settling in were great because they all had shopping trolleys, which made sense for large families. But people don't usually think of that if they're coming in for the first time, and even if they're not they often forget. It's not surprising. If you're worried about where your next meal is coming from, you're not necessarily going to think about things like bags. So they're a really easy way to help well beyond the actual cash value of what you're donating.
Anyway. Yesterday, someone on one of my Discord craft servers was annoyed about something, and she wanted calming down, so she said to me, "Oh - tell me one of your silly cat stories to help me get my blood pressure down!" I was tempted to say I'd be very happy to average that out with her, but I think she's based in Finland so that wouldn't really work. So, instead, I obligingly told her a silly cat story.
This one is about Klinsmann. Klinsmann was a little ginger thugling who had only one virtue: he was punctiliously tidy in the litter tray. Other than that, he bullied other cats (except Minsky, who was un-bullyable; Klinsmann certainly did try to challenge his authority, but it never worked), got his kicks out of terrifying the largest dogs he could find, fought or raped everything that stayed put long enough, and generally made a perfect nuisance of himself. He did, at least, like humans. In fact, as it turned out, he liked humans so much that he collected them; I eventually found out he was being fed and petted at six (or possibly more) different houses. But, basically, the only sensible explanation I had for his general behaviour was that Greebo had somehow got into our world from the Discworld, begotten Klinsmann, and then departed whence he came. I'm sure the completely inoffensive footballer after whom he was named would have been horrified.
Well, my ex-husband had a guide dog. This one was his second, the German shepherd having sadly had to retire due to hip problems; this second one was a lab-retriever who apparently kept his brains in his harness - great guide dog, but completely goofy when he wasn't working. And even when he was working, he had a tendency to eat stuff he shouldn't. Guide dogs are trained not to scavenge, but you can't fully train that out of a lab mix. So, inevitably, every now and then he'd get a stomach upset; and if that happened at night, he couldn't get out, so there'd be a mess in the kitchen in the morning.
One night, this happened. Along came Klinsmann and saw the mess, and he thought: "Oh dear. Silly dog. He doesn't know you're supposed to bury it. I'd better help." And, in the finest tradition of the house, he proceeded to improvise with whatever was to hand.
That was one doormat we never used again...
