My name is Ronnie Harrison apparently and, for a cat, I have a remarkably fine command of the English language. If you don't agree then please keep your opinions to yourself. I'm a cat. I don't engage in pointless argument. It's such a waste of energy and usually involves a loss of dignity, both of which I abhor.
So, last August I was born in Somerset and was happily enjoying life with my mum and siblings when SOMEONE decides it would be a good plan to put cute photos of us on facebook. The next thing I know I'm being stuffed in a box and driven all the way to a place called Norfolk. My new 'owner' (ha ha, that always makes me laugh - as if anyone could OWN a cat) had seen the aforementioned pictures of me and, after a few glasses of something called 'wine', had decided to adopt me as a pet.
Anyway, life here isn't too bad I suppose. There are three two-legged animals in the house; I think they're called humans or maybe slaves, I'm not sure. Two are fairly big and weary looking and the other one is small and quite frankly a bit too noisy at times. I don't do noise. I'm rather finely-tuned you understand, and also it interferes with my sleep. The small one always wants to cuddle me but his lap is too small and not awfully comfortable, and if you can't be comfortable what's the point? The older lady one has a nice squishy lap and a fluffy dressing gown so I tend to go to her most of the time. She is also the one who feeds me so I need to keep in her good books.
I normally start my day around 5 am when I go upstairs, meow a lot, scratch the carpet (works every time) and jump up on the lady's face. I can tell she's really pleased to see me because she always uses the same greeting, "Bugger off, Ronnie".
Once I've been fed I go outside to go to the loo. I'm a martyr to my bowels, I don't mind telling you, but find that a nice bit of grass from time to time helps keeps things regular in that department. The slaves tend to disappear during the day so I spend my time lying under bushes, annoying the hedgehog Rocket and catching flies. Our neighbours are nice too and one of them has even built a lovely little house up in a tree for me to sleep in. Nice touch guys!
Sometime during the day I go back inside and sit on the dining room table for a bit. I get a great view of the bird-table from here and also like to make sure that the rest of the family gets a fair crack at sharing my toxoplasma gondii. It's good to give something back I always think.
Later on, depending on the weather, I might come back in and see the humans and then it's time to think about settling down for a well-earned rest before the whole hectic business starts again the next day. It really is a cat's life.
If you enjoyed this post you might also like http://normalfornnorfolk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/if-pets-could-talk.html or just click on the label 'Ronnie' below for more feline frolicks!
I write this sitting alone, Bryn having stormed off in an impressive 8 year old flounce, muttering incantations and the usual stuff about this being the worst day of his life etc, etc. What could possibly have happened to cause such an outburst? Has a close relative died, the cat been told he has a incurable disease? Are we moving home and forcing him to leave all his friends behind? Perhaps I have banned TV, football and ipods for a year? No, my crime, dear reader is this. I put a tiny sliver of cucumber and a morsel of tomato on the plate next to his cheese sandwich. NEXT TO, you understand. Not IN. Not even TOUCHING.
I really don't know how I ended up with such a fussy eater but no doubt it is my fault. As someone who will try any food and enjoy 99% of it, it just doesn't really cross my mind to not like something. OK, I prefer some things to others, and the time I tried sheep's brains was not my finest gastronomic moment to date, but I survived and apparently it's very good for you.
When Bryn was tiny I did all the right things. I slaved over Annabelle Bloody Karmel's toddler cookery book and rustled up fish pies, fruit compotes, rice puddings and the like. He ate most things as long as they were fairly mushed up as babies do. Then, one tea time when he was about 18 months old I was happily spooning homemade food into him when he turned to me and uttered his first phrase. "Broccoli, off!" Stupidly, I took the broccoli off and never put it back on again and that, I suppose, marked the beginning of the end of my wholesome eating regime and also the start of my son trying to boss me around!
The thing is, as a busy mum, you just want to make sure they eat...something...anything. Fill them up so they sleep through and you don't get any calls from social services. I can remember being very reassured by a friend whose first born ate anything. She told me she would look on in disgust at the parents feeding crisps and chocolate to their toddlers as she smugly thought to herself "Well, Sam has just eaten shepherd's pie with cabbage and carrots followed by fruit salad." A few years on she had another child, a girl, and soon found that she became one of the crisps and chocolate brigade, just desperate to get something into her daughter.
Anyway, my eight year old appears to be fit and healthy. He would cheerfully eat nothing but cheese sandwiches, on white bread of course, but I do manage to get chicken, carrots, parsnips and fruit smoothies into him too. I do hope that one day he will eat a more varied diet, but if not at least he could get himself a place on 'Freaky Eaters' long with those poor souls who eat only potato-based products or jam sandwiches.
I have just found myself singing Happy Birthday to our cat Ronnie who is a year old today. This was at Bryn's insistence, you understand, and not something I would have freely engaged in otherwise.
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| Ronnie as a cute kitten |
So, what has our little feline friend managed to accomplish in his first year of life? Here are a few of the highlights for you.
- He is pretty good at playing the piano and is often heard tinkling on the ivories late at night. Whilst this can be disconcerting it is not as alarming as his sister Coco who has learnt to turn the TV on and is apparently partial to a bit of late night viewing.
- He has managed to clock up 8 visits to the vet's including two anaesthetics, an operation, an endoscopy, several shots of steroids and two courses of antibiotics. Sounds like a normal night out in North Walsham to me.
- He has eaten approximately 30 kg of dried food and 600 pouches of meat but still prefers to chomp on rotting sparrow entrails and flies or to steal leftovers from the hedgehog.
- He is very helpful when it comes to wrapping presents, as I found out at Christmas. Even though it is August we are also still finding stray baubles which he knocked off the tree and rolled under sofas or behind furniture. They are currently sitting on the mantelpiece and will probably stay there until we decorate again in December.
- His best trick to date was jumping in a bowl of pea and ham soup and then proceeding to re-decorate the lounge with it.
- He is a handsome, affectionate, funny little chap and I hope he will be with us for many years to come just with fewer visits to the vet's.
...and so, having spent a week exploring out west we are now back on home turf. The car still doesn't start unless you roll it down a hill, which was great in Wales but not so much in Norfolk, and I have a mobile phone which makes me look like I've just stepped out of 'Murder She Wrote', but apart from that we had a great time.
The journey home was uneventful but tedious, especially once we hit King's Lynn. That winning combination of a dearth of decent roads and a plentiful supply of caravans conspired to make the last 40 miles slow and frustrating. I worried at one point that I might not make it back in time for the start of term, reminding me of the situation a couple of years ago when several colleagues were absent at the beginning of the Easter term due to the volcanic ash fiasco. Somehow I don't think the Head would accept the excuse that I was stuck in East Rudham behind a Ford Ka trying to tow a five berth caravan.
For Bryn and I our first priority on arrival was to find Ronnie. He seemed reasonably pleased to see us in that inimitable nonchalant feline way, but distinctly more underwhelmed by the reunion than we were. Then, after a quick check of the post to make sure there wasn't anything exciting like an inheritance from a long-lost great aunt or a flyer about a new offer at Lidl, it was time to tackle the washing. What you need to know at this point is that before we went away there was already a massive mountain of ironing sitting there staring at me. I did what was absolutely necessary for the holiday and left the rest. As the laundry fairy doesn't seem to have made an appearance this week it is, as you would expect, still sitting there. The trouble is now there are three loads of washing at various stages of dampness waiting to join that pile.
Then, about an hour ago people began to say they were hungry. I'd forgotten about the whole meal thing to be honest. I would love to say that I managed to produce a delicious pasta dish in seven minutes from scratch, or that I got a nutritious fish pie which I'd prepared last week out of the freezer and had it on the table within half an hour, along with fresh runner beans from the garden. What actually happened was that I began searching through the cupboards and fridge, desperately looking for something I could feed to my family which didn't come ready prepared with its own penicillin. I didn't have much luck to be honest. Meringue nest, kidney bean and marmite surprise anyone?
I have been following the 5:2 eating plan for a while now though nowadays it is more 6:1. For those of you not familiar with this strange mathematical diet the idea is that you 'fast' on 2 days a week and 'feast' on the other 5. Now, by 'feast' they mean 'eat normally' which is where confusion and self delusion can creep in. I can't speak for fellow 5:2ers, but I find that my willpower is just fine on fast days, in fact I almost enjoy them. Must be all that Baptist self-denial I used to indulge in rearing its ugly head. No, it is the feast days where I have to be careful, as I try to convince myself that 'eating normally' involves a Full English (for readers abroad that is a cooked breakfast and not some excruciating waxing technique), 6 Big Macs washed down with full fat coke, plenty of chocolately snacks and an evening meal of takeaway and a bottle of wine. I am exaggerating a bit but nevertheless the temptation is to over-indulge on feast days, thereby undoing all your good work.
Last week, when Prince George was born I was on a feast day and had been into town to buy gifts for my son's teachers as an end-of-year thank-you. Here are extracts from the cards we sent to school.
Dear Mr Brooklyn,
Thank-you very much for all your hard work this year. Bryn has really enjoyed being in your class. You are lucky that I decided to buy you some red wine as a gift. I don't much like this particular alcoholic beverage and therefore the bottle is still intact.
Best wishes etc ...
Dear Mrs Pottersby,
You really are the best classroom assistant ever and Bryn loves it when you work with them. I have to apologise about the poor gift offering this year. You were meant to have a bottle of Prosecco but it looked so tempting yesterday evening that I just had to open it - needed to wet the baby's head and all that. Also, sorry about the champagne truffles. I think you'll find there are only a couple missing.
Enjoy the holidays etc ...
It's true. I can resist everything except temptation!
The Sleepover MUST have been conceived of, named, and the phenomenon perpetuated, by someone who isn't and never was the parent of a 6-16 year old. Having someone else's child to look after is a very different 'bouilloire de poisson' as the French like to say (it's true, I've heard them) to caring for your own offspring.
First comes behaviour and discipline. It's easy with your own child because you know what works (no sweets, no pocket money, having to watch 'Dickinson's Real Deal' on repeat), but what do you do if the guest is misbehaving? I have spent five hours every day, for 40 weeks each year, of the last 17 years of my life with classes of 30 teenagers in front of me, but two mutinous eight year olds can terrify the living daylights out of me.
Next we face the dilemma of feeding them. My son is the fussiest of eaters but at least I know what he WILL eat. I recall one young lad coming to ours for the first time so I thought I would play safe and give them pizza. As I served it up he informed me he didn't like cheese. So, I offered him a mushroom omelette. He said yes, so I made one and he didn't like it. Concerned that the poor boy was going to starve I found some burgers in the freezer and cooked one for him. He began to turn his nose up again when something inside me quietly snapped and I said in my best, calm, teacher voice "Eat it". He did. It turns out he was vegetarian. Not any more he isn't.
Finally we come to bed-time and sleeping. My tactic is normally to keep them up quite late in the hope that they will sleep once they go to bed. This sometimes works but not always. On a recent sleepover my husband and I were woken by two shadowy figures looming over our bed at 1am like two of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Lord knows where the others were - probably installing the self-checkout machines at Sainsbury's) asking for a drink of water. Armageddon very nearly arrived early that night, but I kept my cool, lay back and thought of the day (or rather, night) when it would be some other parents' turn to return the favour.
I don't know if this is normal behaviour but I spend quite a lot of time when I'm at home talking to our cat Ronnie. I occasionally talk to my son and husband too but I prefer Ronnie as he doesn't answer back or ask me for money.
What if he could though? I wonder what he would say if he was given the power of speech for a day?
The first thing I think he would do would be to complain about his name.
"Why did you call me Ronnie? It is such a stupid name. All the other cats laugh at me and make fun of it. That's why I never come when you call me; I'm just trying to pretend it isn't my name. Why couldn't I be called something a bit more butch like 'Brad' or 'Tyson'? It's so embarrassing at the vets when they call out 'Ronnie Harrison'. It makes me sound like a gay porn star. The other week there was a gorgeous Burmese babe there called 'Skye'. I think I was well in with a chance there until she heard my name and then she just laughed.
...and that's another issue I would like to raise. Even if I had got lucky with Skye it would have been a pretty disappointing outcome as I DON'T APPEAR TO HAVE ANY TESTICLES. What was that all about? One day I'm wondering around, strutting my stuff and feeling 100% male (despite my stupid name) and the next I wake up and there is definitely something missing. Rastus next door has still got his because I checked. How do you think I got those awful cat bites the other week? He was not impressed and called me a weirdo. Said if I touched him again then I'd really know about it.
Oh, and one last thing, can you get me some decent food? I know you try your best with that really expensive posh stuff you give me plus the occasional bit of liver or tin of sardines, but what I'd really like are some dead flies and birds innards mixed with grass and maybe a bit of my own poo? Thanks."
It has often been said that your best parenting is done before you actually have children and I for one hold my hands up to this accusation. Before Bryn was born I was determined that he was not going to have a dummy and that he was going to be well and truly breast-fed. Both of those assertions lasted approximately a week, though to be fair the breast-feeding thing was rather out of my control.
Next comes food. My child was going to be the one eating lots of fruit and veg, asking me for hummus and organic, unsweetened yoghurt in the supermarket and turning his nose up at white carbs and processed foods. He was going to be brought up firmly, with strict routines, no shouting and limited TV.
Forward a couple of years and he is a toddler. I am out in the street screaming like a banshee and stuffing him full of crisps and sweets in an attempt to calm him down because he is overtired on account of staying up to watch The Exorcist last night. It was following a similar scenario (by the way Social Services I lied about The Exorcist) that I gave myself the nickname 'Asbo Mum' and I have done a pretty good job of living up to it ever since!
No, on the whole Bryn is very little trouble and we get on really well. However, one day a few months ago I had clearly done something to upset him as he did not speak to me for ages. He broke his silence to inform me that he was looking for a new mummy on ebay. When I asked how much money he was able to bid and could she make chocolate brownies like mine he said "£1.76" and looked a bit crest-fallen. Needless to say he decided to stick with me, for all my faults, but at least I now know how much it would cost to replace me!
If you ever find yourself in this part of the world (i.e. If your Sat Nav has broken down) then you may find you need some help with understanding basic phrases. Here are a few you may hear when out and about.
- Yew nart frum roun hair? - You haven't yet lived in Norfolk for 40 years.
- Thassa roite noice traactur yew gort thair - I like your farm machinery.
- Get orf moy laand - I think you are trespassing old chap.
- Ah yew gunna warch Naarch? - Will you be attending the next Norwich City Match?
- Oim garn up tarn. Yew cummun? - I'm going into the city. Would you like to accompany me?
- Dew watta bare? - Would you like some alcoholic refreshment?
- Moy hatta loive! - Goodness me! (my heart alive)
- That tayk bout an aar. - You'll be travelling for approximately 60 minutes.
- Oi doont loike nunna that forrun muck - I only eat English food.
- Oi hint gotta naarfak axunt- I don't talk like a yokel.
I normally start my day around 5 am when I go upstairs, meow a lot, scratch the carpet (works every time) and jump up on the lady's face. I can tell she's really pleased to see me because she always uses the same greeting, "Bugger off, Ronnie".
