anna_wing

Three-legged Cat (TLC), last heard of in the dining-room, did not stay there. The nice, light bamboo barricade proved so light that he eventually worked out that he could actually shove it aside far enough to wriggle through (tomcats have serious muscle, specially after six months of feeding up, rest and recuperation). The Feline Drama reached positively operatic heights after that for weeks, to the point where everyone was having their meals in separate parts of the house, and food that had been acceptable for years was suddenly next thing to poison. There was protest peeing, and vomiting on the stairs, and hissy-spitty at the slightest opportunity. Lap-cat took to sleeping on the kitchen counters during the day (when I wasn't around to shoo him off) since TLC can't jump that high off just one back foot. Bus-stop Cat and Scaredy-Cat fled upstairs, where TLC doesn't go because he finds stairs awkward to manage.

Everyone was very glad when Housekeeper came home from her holiday and normal service could resume.

The current state of play is that everyone now sits like good cats waiting for their meals, and eats together in the kitchen. TLC doesn't go upstairs and is not allowed to go outside, so he has basically become the Kitchen Cat. After dinner everyone is usually willing to hang around in the sitting-room for a bit. Both TLC and Lap-cats are territorial lap-cats who want attention and my company (Bus-Stop Cat's territory is Housekeeper's room) and have a cautiously antagonistic relationship. Since Lap-Cat is much smaller than TLC, I have to be on the alert for bullying (luckily Lap-Cat is extremely vocal when he's unhappy, he doesn't just run away like Scaredy-Cat does). We're at the point where every night I sit on my sofa imitating the action of the Berlin Wall with a cat on each side, carefully stroking them both simultaneously, and ready to clamp down at the slightest untoward move. Everyone is now also using TLC's litterbox downstairs rather than the one upstairs. When I go to bed the two of them are sleeping in separate spots in the same room.

It's progress.

My next door neighbour is a great cat-lover, has two of her own, and supports a whole community of cats (sterilised, vaccinated and fed by the security guards) in her very large compound. While visiting her for dinner, we noticed that the three-legged cat (henceforth called 'TLC' for convenience' the missing hind-leg was accidental not congenital, because I remember seeing him with all four in earlier years) was covered in blood. Her vet was hastily summoned and heroically arrived notwithstanding that it was 9pm, TLC was captured, escaped, recaptured, sedated, injected with antibiotics and his several wounds including a slice along his foreleg (probably from razor wire) so deep that bone was visible, were cleaned and stitched up.

Since neighbour is currently in the process of socialising her new second cat, also a previous rescue (lovely chap but doesn't get along with the incumbent at all), I volunteered my own staff and premises as sick-bay for TLC until his wounds are healed, and he is well enough to be castrated and either adopted by someone or released back into the compound next door.

He has been in a small, glass-walled room previously only used for storage, which the landlord used as his gym, enjoying air-conditioning and a pool view. He managed to escape once, but was successfully recaptured. The vet is coming every day (neighbour is paying her bill, and I am paying for TLC's board, lodging and medication). He's a small grey-tabby and white, with yellow eyes, and a very friendly disposition, though now that he's feeling better he's a bit bored and lonely and is chewing up the cardboard sheet with which he has been supplied (he's willing to sleep in the basket now, at least).

The Beastie Boys were extremely curious at first, but because they can't really smell him, I'd guess, haven't had any screaming matches yet. The gym has also never been their territory. Lap-cat seems quite indifferent, but Bus-stop Cat and Scaredy-cat are a bit agitated. I do hope he can be adopted, because otherwise I might have to think about keeping him, and it would be tricky to integrate him with the other three, who are a solid family unit. Anyway, nothing can be decided until he has been made a eunuch and had time for the hormones to leave his system. He also needs to heal and then be de-wormed, de-flea'd and fully vaccinated.

- The dragonfruit plants are fruiting again! Two from one of mine, and so far, four from the one in the office garden.

- The spirit-occupied mango-tree also produced some very good fruit this year. It needs pruning, so I was asked by the staff to explain things and ask them not to take offence at the gardeners, which I duly did before witnesses. So no problems are expected.

- A friend with interesting multi-stem papaya plants in his garden sent me some of the fruit. It's not bad, so we'll try growing the seed. Papayas are fussy, conventional wisdom is that the bird-sown ones that grow by themselves in random parts of the garden are always the strongest.

- I've also got seed for a nice double Clitoria ternatea in a lovely royal blue from my family's garden, which are now with the gardeners. There's a fashion for using them in tisanes, which I find vaguely amusing because they have no taste whatsoever. I grew up only knowing of them as a food dye. But if you put them in hot water to extract the colour, and add lemon or lime juice, the beautiful blue colour turns into a very pretty purple. So colour-changing lemonade is now popular in restaurants.

- My yellow Marvel of Peru/Four O'Clock Flowers (Mirabilis jalapa are blooming very well, and they have a lovely scent (moth-pollinated). I love them, they're so good about seeding and so easy to grow.


I have been very annoyingly ill off and on since April. Shingles, COVID, a really nasty cough that has lasted months (charmingly referred to by my GP as "Oh yes, the 100-day cough, it's going around"). The sole vaguely positive thing about this is that I have lost 2.5 of the 5 kilos that I need to lose to get to the middle of the lowest-risk BMI category, and through nothing more than being not very hungry. I might as well have been on a GLP-1 agonist for free. I have high hopes that maintenance will be easy, because if I can get to my target weight with just the current effortless adjustment to my daily calorie intake, it should stay effortless once I can get back to my regular exercise schedule.

I still have work-related meals, far too many this week, so next week meals at home are going to be chicken sandwiches or oden. I have now found a source of decent tofu, yay. Our version of oden is made with a couple of dried shiitake mushrooms, since I don't like bonito flakes, or occasionally chicken soup, and chunks of carrot, white radish, tofu, cabbage and the mushrooms, since I dislike konjac. It's particularly nice now, in the rainy season. I'll get Housekeeper to try cabbage rolls next.

Housekeeper saved a baby sparrow which fell out of the next and couldn't fly because it had some sort of fungus growing over one eye. She made a little nest for it, and its mother kept feeding it. eventually Housekeeper just picked it up and very carefully wiped the whatever away, and it flew off! So that was good.

The best part of rainy season is that both the nights and the days are cool, and the cats spend the evenings sharing a mat in a cat heap.

Opening the door
To appreciate the rain
Cats will not go out

Tick-tock of raindrops
Falling cool from monsoon skies
Cats complain inside

Cool air washed by rain
Door open while cats dither
Mosquitoes come in

This gentleman in Japan

https://kent-hat-online-shop.com/

makes delightful hats in the shape of different kinds of bread, cakes and other confectionery. The straw French cruller beret is particularly charming:https://kent-hat-online-shop.com/items/5ee61aee1829cd3a729193ab


as is the Gothic Rose in plum-coloured felt: https://kent-hat-online-shop.com/items/5d89d4c9220e755952c27e27


but what I really, really want is this one:

https://kent-hat-online-shop.com/items/5d9414549658036ea13eb4b9

I am very tempted to order all three. Though I should at least measure my head first, the Gothic Rose is one size only...

My garden is overlooked on one side by next door's garden, which is up the slope, and thefore at the top of a very high retaining wall. Next door has a cat who lives in their garden, whether officially or unofficially we do not know. A small, delicately-built cat who sits at the top of the wall serenely ignoring the imprecations being hurled at her by my three. To insult to insult, sometimes she climbs down and back up again along some narrow branches that bear her weight but not theirs.

This morning, Scaredy-Cat couldn't stand it, and tried to climb up. Being about three times her size (he's lean, but very long), he fell with a crash, unharmed but losing his collar along the way. My other two idiots then took it into their pea-brains that he was not in fact Scaredy-Cat, but some other, intruder cat altogether, and did the whole growl and fluff thing, totally terrifying poor Scaredy-Cat, who is now deeply traumatised and hiding under my bed.

There are three crows' nests in the jackfruit tree in my garden, and several in the mango trees at the office. They have hatchlings now (no way to tell how many are actually koels, which parasitise crows). They are Very Noisy At All Times Of Day Or Night.

The yellow-vented bulbuls have as usual built their nest fully visible and within touching distance for humans, but at least this time out of leaping distance for the Beastie Boys. They have three hatchlings, which remain totally vulnerable to crows and Greater Coucals.

The red-whiskered bulbuls, having slightly more nous and savoir-faire, have nested in a different, leafier tree, a rather more secure location.

The sparrows are fledging. We found one on the ground, and put it on a convenient ledge. Its parents have found it and will hopefully continue to feed it until it can fly properly.

I had the useless kaffir lime uprooted and moved to the office garden. It has been replaced with another citron tree, making three. Tree Number Two started fruiting in December last year. The three dragonfruit plants are growing nicely, and might fruit this year.

During the last two years of lockdown and general other upheaval, the staff were inspired to put in planter boxes for vegetables and herbs basically everywhere that there was space. Our office building has a lot of unused terraces and walkways, which are slowly being colonised for horticultural purposes. So far there are eggplants, tomatoes, choi sum, lettuce, onion sprouts, several basils, rosemary, sunflowers, chillies, black pepper, wild betel, mint, Indian pennywort, galangal, lemongrass and a couple of local vegetables without English names. We may not get mangoes this year, because the tree fruited nicely last year, and they like to rest in alternate years (that's the tree with spirits in, so no-one is going to try to make it do anything it doesn't want to do...). The gardeners find it much more interesting than just mowing grass, and they get a share, so it's all good.

It is as hot as blazes, and there is an electricity shortage, so I am trying to minimise the strain on my generators by not running the aircon. At least so far (cross fingers) we have dodged any cyclones, though we still have May to get through until the monsoon proper sets in. The Beastie Boys are feeling their age, and spending their mornings lounging around the pool, or sitting hopefully at the foot of the various trees in which there are nests.

1 Working my way down the to-do list, and accumulating stuff to pack. Pre-travel PCR test and quarantine hotel at destination already booked. Should get flu shot too, just in case.

2 Yesterday I found treaure at our local Japanese supermarket: a box of Japanese strawberries at perfect ripeness, and therefore 75% off i.e. roughly the same price as the Korean strawberries next to it, at a mere 50% off. I bought the Japanese ones and had them at lunch. Yum. They really are the best. Sweet, firm, flavourful, big enough for two bites, and beautifully red.

3 https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/2022/01/05/global-journalism-reborn-what-difference-does-it-make/

I saw this, and laughed a lot. Contrary to what the New York Times appears to think, journalism from a US (or UK, or Australian, or South African or any other country's) perspective, whether left or right, is no more "objective" or "unbiased" than journalism from anyone else's perspective. The intelligent reader adjusts her assessment of what she is reading according to her understanding of where and how strong its biases are. It's like having an accent. Everyone has one. "Unaccented" applies locally and in restricted social circles only. As for the value of an external perspective, yes, there is some; certainly I prefer to read non-US media for news and analysis of the US for this reason.

In a global news market that already contains the Financial Times (now owned by Nikkei), Al Jazeera English, Nikkei Asia, the Economist, Channel News Asia, the BBC, the Bangkok Post, and even Janes Defence Weekly, I am not at all sure that those 200 million "unserved" English-speaking professionals (really? So few?) are actually short of information.

4 Collected the walking shoes from my dance shoe shop. One pair in black matte leather, one pair in two-tone matte-black and dark-brown mock-croc. Perfect and beautiful.

5 The former neighbours were decent and responsible, and re-homed the dozen stray cats they were feeding before they sold the house and moved away. Nature abhorring a vacuum, there are now at least a couple more hanging around, though I am not sure how many are actually strays. One big ginger chap apppears to be the new King of the Cul-de-Sac. He swaggers through my garden regularly, and occasionally sits on people's walls in the evening, yowling. I look forward to the day that he gets the squirrel that chews holes in my coconuts and drinks the water. The wretched rodent waltzed up the tree right in front of me the other day, undeterred by the slipper and vile epithets that I hurled in its direction. It is fat and glossy, and would make a nice meal for the cat...

The new-season red-whiskered bulbul, now adultish, has been spotted! It's still alive!

Mango season is ending, we are now getting the tail-end varieties. The freezer is being restocked with the makings of the coming year's mango ice-cream supply. The citrons on the tree are getting bigger, and one appears to be ripening, which is several months early, but what with climate change and all, seasons are no longer as regular and predictable as they used to be.

The Default Dog family outside my office building has six puppies, whom we count anxiously every day. The local stray dogs are basically urban dingoes - light brown, medium-sizd, slim, sharp-muzzled, prick-eared, often curly-tailed. What you get when you stop trying to maintain pure breeding types. Similarly, the local stray cats are basically the Default Cat (Oriental Type) - slim, long bodies, legs and tails, sharp muzzled and coat-wise mostly variations on the theme of tabby. Though there's one who looks as if there was some Siamese in its ancestry, apart from a long, ringed tail, and one that has some of the stockier, black-and-white type in him as well.

All the dogs in the city tend to howl in unison at some point between midnight and 1 am every night.

The latest sparrows have flown.

There was one young sparrow who kept fluttering down to the ground but not being able to fly up again. We suspect that it was pushed, since multiple attempts to return it to its nest (there are two, on either side of the air-conditioning unit) ended up with it back on the ground. It was unfortunately incapable of eating the rice that we offered it, and disappeared overnight, so we suspect that it was eaten by something. We are sad but unsurprised.

Bus-stop cat turns out to have a fungal infection on his skin, which accounts for the over-licking. The vet proffered anti-itch pills, anti-fungal powder, multivitamin pills and salmon oil. We got enough for Lap-cat as well, since his over-licking problem is perennial. Housekeeper's expertise luckily extends to pilling cats, and they are amenable to being powdered and brushed, so hopefully this will solve everyone's problems. Scaredy-cat appears to be asthmatic, which is incurable, but it doesn't appear to inconvenience him too much beyond alarming hacking-cough noises a couple of times a day.

We have acquired some pots of mint for tea, and are making sure to harvest the leaves regularly so that the plants don't suddenly bloom and die. I was used to mint being perennial (which it is, near the equator, I used to use it as a ground cover), and this unexpected turn to its life-cycle took me completely by surprise the first time.