peteashtondotcom

My cat died this morning. She was ridiculously old and quite frankly it’s amazing she lasted this long but hey, y’know. My cat died.

Her name was Tiger. This was because we were very young when we named her. Originally there were two cats, Tiger for me and Sparky for sister Lucy. Tiger and Sparky. Never let children decide anything. I think we got them in 1982 when we were living in a Village outside Portishead, which makes Tiger 19 years old. Bravo, old girl.

Tiger and Sparky were farm kittens. They were born under a shed and their mum wouldn’t bring them out for a good few weeks. I remember going back to the farmer to ask exactly when they were born so the vet could get the shots done and he didn’t know. He also didn’t know why we’d want to give them shots. For a long time they lived behind our boiler, scared to come out. Occasionally when we came home we’d see them standing startled in the middle of the kitchen before they dashed back to their new home. When the gas ignited you’d hear this little yelp and scurrying of feet, and you’d laugh, because you were a kid.

Eventually they braved our company and started shitting all over the house. Farm kittens are pretty feral things, but they grow out of it. We lived on a main road (it was one of those villages that consists of 100 or so houses along a B road) and a few years later Sparky was run over. I remember being cut up about it at school that day, even though Sparky was Lucy’s cat. Tiger then became ‘our’ cat although even now, a decade after I left home, I still secretly thought to myself that she was mine first.

Tiger liked to hunt things. We backed onto a couple of fields and then some woods and every morning there’d be a dead rodent, or half a dead rodent, inside the back door waiting for us. I think this meant she loved us. Later, when I got a chemistry set and starting thinking about science, I dissected a few of them and kept them in vinegar filled jam jars in the garage. Years later, after I’d been a city boy for a bit, we had a mouse problem in our flat. James, my flat mate, had only recently moved from the country and was fine with clearing the traps but I got all squeamish. Funny that.

We them moved to Croydon and took Tiger with us. This was when she started to loose it. At Portishead she had the run of the hills with little competition. Suddenly there were many more cats in a close vicinity, including one bitch of a ginger who would come into the house and steal her food. It later turned out she was breeding kittens in the run down shed next door and I felt bad about throwing apples at her, but Tiger was crap at protecting her food. She’d get into fights and loose and once a our neighbours kitten sauntered in a started eating her dinner with Tiger just standing there, bleating like some kind of wimp.

At Winchester, the third and fourth houses, she lost it even more. Again, there was a nasty ginger next door and her territory shrank further. She became a house cat, pretty much. A lazy thing to be stroked and fed. Maybe that’s why she lasted so long.

Last year she started smelling pretty bad and acting up so Mum made her sleep outside in the wood shed during the summer. During this time this ancient old beast turned feral again and got her spirit back, so much so that this winter she’d wreck the kitchen overnight and cover the surfaces in fur, meaning she had to go outside again. Not that she seemed to mind. Back to her roots as it were.

Funny thing, on the way back home on the tube today I started thinking about how she would stretch up the cupboard doors when you were preparing her dinner and make a god-awful racket and then, when the food was put down she’d sniff at it and ask for something else. I don’t often think about her, not like that anyway.

Tiger will be buried in her favourite spot in the garden this evening with full honours and all that. For, after all, she was my cat.

Okay, she was our cat.

He Was a Crook - Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary of Nixon. [via LMG / MeFi]

Blogger goes Pro. $35.00 (£23) a year for a bunch of added features. I’ll admit to being tempted but there’s no sign of a comments feature, which is what I am really after.

Here’s the first of too many photos from our Xmas hols in Texas. This is a small hill I liked a lot.

The ridges are formed by volcanic rock seams which have eroded slower than the surrounding earth making that wonderful effect. I really wanted to climb up it but, as with most things out there, it was much bigger than I anticipated so sitting and staring at it with binoculars had to suffice.

Blackberry Flag,
Jane’s Chocolate Addiction, Tribe Called Fudge… Metafilter’s on form!

The photo down below a bit is my redneck impression taken half way up a mountain just after Xmas this year. Dad’s actually gotten around to writing about it a bit more than me, plus he’s got some good photos of the mountain in question up.

Still want one…

Bettie Page - on a mug! (Not UK based, unfortunately, but what the hey!)

My periodical cackhandedness with public transport continues.

On deciding to get a bus rather than the tube home last night after a few drinks with work chums, but not that many, honest, I promptly fell asleep. Sensing no time passing, not even a dream, I was naturally rather surprised to be woken up by a chap informing me it was the end of the line and time to get off. Not recognising the surroundings I asked as to where we were, speculating it might be Stratford, the next tube stop down from Mile End. No, he said. This isn’t Stratford. This is Ilford, mate!. Realising I didn’t know my way around I acquired directions to the London-bound bus and made my way there. So, this is Essex, I thought to myself. How… pleasant.

Not having more than 20p to my name and a 2 zone travelcard, I was ready to plead with the bus driver to let me off the full fare, but it turned out someone else was engaged in dialogue with the gentleman, albeit it a more aggressive and confrontational manner than I myself was planning, and I managed to get on with a mere flash of the card. Realising the time was now 11.30pm and Kate, who was staying the night in Birmingham, was expecting a phone call about 5 hours previously, I called her. “Where are you?” “I’m in Ilford.”

On returning home much later I made a sandwich and lay on the sofa listening to the radio. And promptly fell asleep. Waking at 3.00am-ish I manhandled my way into bed and woke up feeling rather rough this morn.

Ho hum…

Here’s a map of London for those not familiar with it’s works. I live close to Bethnal Green and work half way between there and Marylebone.

Jetlag sucks, but it can’t dampen my good mood. No sir.

I’m back from my holls, nicely rejuvenated and ready to get on with stuff. Nice and easy does it.

Sorry about the silence. I didn’t want to advertise the fact that we’d be away from the flat for a while. Details possibly to follow.

It’s over. Thank heaven and all the little piggies. Bring on 2002. Yes, it’s a mere, construct, but these things are important, psychological-wise. Let’s go!