Neighbourhood watch

The encroaching Spring

Return of the daffodil

Rain

Posts are going to be a bit erratic on this blog for the moment I'm afraid. My mother is very very ill in hospital and that's all I'm really able to concentrate on at the moment. I'll post when I can, when I think I'm able to and hope to get back to an equilibrium soon. But in the meantime, please excuse me if I disappear for a few days without warning. Thank you.

Be assured, Smith will continue to post on GoComics on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, whatever happens.

Why a lot of defence spending makes no sense...

So what Jones has got to do is invent herself some enemies. The kind of enemies who only live for the dream of conquering the back-right corner of the sofa.

The impregnable fortress of cushions

To be honest, there are very few things that can cope with a pummelling attack...

Where is Jones?

Remember when you were a kid and you made a fortress underneath the dining room table, behind the sofa or (Tunbridge Wells only reference coming up) the hollow interior of a Rhodedendron bush? I'm sure Bella is doing the same thing with the cushions and blankets on our sofa.

Head butts

Billy and Bella have started to headbutt us. Yes, they're actually asking for affection now. It's taken a year but they gradually turning into real house cats. (For latecomers to the blog, when we got them they were rescuse cats who hadn't had any human contact for the first three months of their life.) Maybe next year we'll even get them to sit on our laps.

Crunch crunch crunch

Actually, this is the battle of the crisp eaters at work. Walkers, if you can create a crunchy yet silent crisp, the world will be yours.

Moggo

Can you spot that I don't know how to spell cereal, and had to replace the words in the speech balloon before posting?

Do they still put toys in cereal packets? I remember a series of hillbilly dogs that came in my porridge when I was a kid, and not so long ago Nestle were putting Roald Dahl books in their cereal packets as part of a literacy programme. Now I've moved on to Fruit & Fibre and Muesli the gods of the cereal  aisle are less generous.

Chairs

This isn't just for cats - this for anyone that has had a sister.

My dad used to have that blue swivel chair when I was a kid. After seeing an episode of Doctor Who (Terror of the Autons - Jon Pertwee -1971) where the Master made one of those chairs wrap around a victim and suffocate him using his tissue compressor, I refused to sit in it for two whole years, despite its tempting swivelliness.

Five a day

Five a day is an National Health Service campaign to get people eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables. The idea is that you should eat five full portions of fruit and vegetables every day as part of a balanced diet. Some people have had problems with it. Just to reiterate, the following items are not recommended as part of your five a day:

• Orange Fanta
• Pizza
• Life Savers
• Crisps
  
  Smith is just using these mice as exercise by the way. The cat equivalent of five-a-day is to do 40 pounces a day.

The hidey game

This seems to be a universal thing with cats - they won't just play with a toy, they will deliberately hid the toy in the most awkward place they can find and then struggle extract it again. You wouldn't believe number of times I've found toy mice in my shoes that have been dropped in there deliberately and then abandoned. Every now and then I have to rescue all the lost toys under the coffee table. And of course, used tissue boxes are perfect for this game.