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.

Good meaty nourishment

Originally published 27 October 2010

Another gag recycled from 1981. The original tagline was “Ah yes, Wiskas is good meaty nourishment alright!”, echoing Wiskas’ cat food’s slogan of the time, but it got changed to something less libellous this time around. I’d like to point out that Wiskas does not contain any of the ingredients mentioned, unless theres yet another food labelling scandal pending which we don’t know about yet…

Cow

A joke that was topical six months ago when I wrote it, and still keeps on leaping into topicality as foodstuff after foodstuff turns out not to be what we thought it was. Tesco's lasagne, IKEA meatballs - even the Queen's dinner at the Ascot races turned out to contain horse. And I'm left worrying what all the fuss is about.

I am one of those disgusting people that eats meat. Let's face it, it is in its basic state a dead animal - so long as it's not poisonous and fairly palatable I'm not too fussy what it is. We've been eating horse for years now and we're only upset about it because we now know that's what it is. For me it's not a health issue, it's just one of labelling.

If I was a cat I'd be more worried that among the ingredients listed on the side of a tin of cat food is something called 'Ash'. Mmmm, that sounds tasty.

Blee!

No cat likes cold food straight out of the fridge - for a start it just doesn't smell right - but some cats are more fussy than others.

Gizmo, our daft hand-me-down tabby cat had most of his teeth removed at Christmas. Heaven knows what he had been eating before he came to us, but I have a feeling it must have been mainly sugar. Anyhow, he's now mainly toothless, apart from one single lower canine which he uses to affect a sneer now and again, and this means he's on soft cat food. Sometimes Linda forgets to cut up his food for him, and he's left with a solid cylinder of pate to try to work his way around. His answer to this is to seek me out and then mew persistently until I deal with his plate.

Christmas viewing

Forget the turkey, if BBC America isn't showing the Doctor Who Christmas special on Christmas night there's going to be an international incident...

•They are, at 9/8c, whatever that means. What is that in mountain time?

This is what they want

It may not sound appetising but it's what most domestic cats hunt and eat. Sparrow flavour wouldn't be eaten - it would just be deposited on your bed as a present.

Moo!

Anyone that has tried to feed a cat will know they can be very food-faddy. Indeed there are several brands of organic catfood now available in supermarkets for people with more money than sense. Cat's don't care if their tuna has been caught by line from carbon neutral boats - they just want it to come in the gravy they're accustomed to and from the right shaped can. My cats won't eat anything from a can that is taller than it is wide.

Here's Jones announcing a food fad regime that is no more stupid than most of the ones you find in the Sunday supplements.

The mystery of the missing background

I didn't realise that I'd forgotten about the background in the last two panels until I started on the colouring.

The sound effect 'Gronff' is one I've borrowed from The Perishers, (see previous entries). Of course nowadays the accepted sound effect for cats eating is 'Nom nom nom' but that seems far too polite to me.

The Perishers, written by Maurice Dodd, Drawn by Dennis Collins. 1968.

Splap!

Just one question. Why do cats do this? Answers on a postcard, please, as they used to say...