Fighting the devil
I like animals.
As with every rule, there is an exception [though I never quite understood that rule – does it have an exception too?].
I refer of course to Cat.
That little fucker is really getting under my skin, and I know full well that he is doing it deliberately.
Cat technically is Herself’s cat and he knows it. He climbs on her lap and lies there purring as if butter wouldn’t melt. She loves him. She couldn’t possibly see any harm in him. He is sweet and loving and cuddly. She thinks the sun shines out of his arse.
She doesn’t see the other side of him.
Well, actually she did on one occasion. He loves climbing onto my keyboard and fucking up the entire system. I swear he has learned every fatal combination of function keys and is working up to formatting my hard disk. Anyhows, one day he got carried away and climbed onto Herself’s laptop. She was of course on Farcebook [Herself thinks the Interweb is Farcebook] and before she could stop him, Cat had entered a huge string of garbage and had posted it to one of her Messenger contacts. It at least gave her a glimpse of Cat’s Dark Side.
His latest trick is the hotpress.
The hotpress is in the bathroom [naturally] and apart from containing clothing and a load of strange things, it also contains the central heating system of tank, pressure gauges, taps, valves, pumps and loads of piping. This piping vanishes down to the space under the floorboards which is a hell of a large space. It’s only a few inches deep at one end but at the other end there is about three feet of headroom. In other words it is ideal territory for an exploring cat. And if he goes down there and can’t climb out again there is fuck all I can do except look forward to the stench of a putrefying cat corpse.
From the first day he arrived he showed a keen interest in the hotpress which was made all the keener by my refusal to let him in. Now the little fucker has discovered how to open the hotpress doors. He lies on his back and scrabbles at the base of the door like a coal miner picking at a rich seam, until the door opens. And here is the strange bit – as soon as the door opens, he fucks off. I know for a fact that he is doing it just to piss me off.
It is now part of life here. I pass through the lobby, look into the bathroom and there is the hotpress door wide open again. I close it [otherwise it blocks entry to the bathroom] and sure enough – two minutes later it’s open again. I have even seen him in action when he thought I wasn’t looking. A quick glance around, a scrabble on the back and as soon as the door opens he fucks off with a grin on his face. Do I need any further proof that he is the devil personified?
I am mulling through my alternatives.
I could put a stiffer latch on the door [at the moment it’s one of those magnetic things], but I don’t have one handy.
I could put grease on the floor where he lies down.
I think my preference though is for a strip of metal along the bottom of the door. There is a handy power socket nearby for the heating pumps.
It would be no problem to connect the two?
How about a little contraption that, as soon as the door opens, throws a bucketful of water over him?
Won’t hurt him but will let him think twice about opening that door again?
Will also teach the devil that you are God and see everything 😉
That is so elegant in its simplicity! Trap set.
Actually, while I was setting it Cat tried [twice] to rush past me in an attempt to go down to the foundations of the house. Each time I hauled him out by the tail which didn’t please him. He is a persistent little fuck.
Obviously, the hotpress door is a distraction. Probably just trying to get you away from your computer long enough to try out some new hotkey combinations. 😉
Good luck, and thanks for the read.
Welcome C.F.! You could be right. There is something inherently evil about that animal and I wouldn’t put it past him.
Grandad,
When I was 8 years old, my dad surprised me one day with a Siamese kitten that he paid $32 for at the local pet shop. Of course, I loved that cat, but it was crazy and mean. It would swing on the back of the rocking chair and wait for our unsuspecting dog to wander by and then pounce on him, he would attack other members of the family, but his fatal flaw was ruining my mother’s brand new custom made curtains. I came home from school one afternoon to the news that the cat had gotten out somehow and could not be found. I spent 2 days knocking on every door in our neighborhood looking for that cat, but he never turned up. Fast forward eight years when I was 16. One night before taking us out for dinner my dad had to stop by his shop in the warehouse district and low and behold the fattest Siamese looking cat I’d ever beheld sauntered down the street. I said, “Hey look at that cat; it reminds my of the one I had.” My entire family busted out into laughter and my dad said, “Well, that’s because it is!” My mom had threatened to kill it unless my dad took it away while I was at school and he turned it loose in the warehouse district. Needless to say that cat lived well off the wharf rats down there. Not saying you should do anything like that, but hey, I can’t help it if you get any ideas.
Welcome Dog Lover! Our Cat is exactly the same. He has a scratching post and a scratching mat. Both are unused and in pristine condition, while all our furniture is beginning to show signs of wear and tear. His favourite spot is the back of an armchair, where he actually has to squeeze past the scratching post to get there. Did I say he was evil?
Maybe I’ll sneak him down to the village on my next trip. The bugger would probably find his way back though……
When I was a lad, my mother bought a Siamese cat (well, it’s posh, innit), and it used to chew holes about 2″ diameter in everything. Towels, blankets, upholstery, clothes, whatever. I blame it on the trauma brought on by being named ‘Gaylord’. I mean, fuck, who wouldn’t chew holes in everything having to live with a name like that?
More importantly for the British speakers among us, wtf is a hotpress??!
(a gadget looking like an ironing board on steroids for the pressing of trousers….? )
For fucks sake!! Do you people not know your own fucking language? HOTPRESS
When did a cupboard turn into a press?
Around the same time a couch turned into a sofa turned into a settee, or a sitting room turned into a lounge.
Well, according to your link, GD ‘Hot Press’ is an:
Irish term for an airing cupboard.
So it’s not English at all, it’s an Irish version of English.
I have to admit, I’ve never heard the term ‘hot press’ referring to an airing cupboard before. If you asked me, I would have said it was one of those electrically heated trouser presses, which would have been a guess, but an informed guess. And what’s a cupboard got to do with presses anyway? Where on earth did you lot come up with that?
Funny old lot, the Irish….
‘Tis a well known fact that us Irish speak English a lot gooder than what the English do. That’s why we get all those fucking Spanish students cluttering up the place every summer.
Anyways, have you thought about the word “cupboard”? “cup” + “board”? Does that make sense?
As with a lot of things, a cupboard is an evolution. A word given to an item which has evolved, but it’s name remained unchanged.
A cupboard was just that a board where you stored your cups, either on hooks or small shelves. The first evolution was to put sides and a top onto the board, rather like a Welsh dresser.
Later doors were added and so what we recognise as a cupboard came to be.
The name was then used to refer to any storage unit with doors.
There was a similar evolution with beds, a bedroom was basically a sleeping cupboard. Imagine if you will a four poster bed with wood rather than curtains around it, this also evolved through the four poster to the bedrooms of today.
I rather suspect you dropped of somewhere during the first paragraph so Shhh goodnight granddad.
“Purifying cat corpse”? I guess the cat deleted your t. 😉
Free proof reading, seeing as it’s Christmas(ish). 🙂
Bugger! Thanks. Actually it was my smell-checker this time, and not the cat. Everyone is out to get me today…
Maybe this is what’s happening.
“During atmospheric changes, cats are said to act strangely and may seem uneasy, even tearing at cushions or carpets, it is said during these episodes that a cat is “raising the wind.”
The truth of the matter is that a cat has a superior nervous system and by the condition of its fur, it can sense approaching changes in the weather before humans can.
The electricity in the air causes a cat to rub their ears and lick their fur. When a cat washes herself in her usual manner, there will be fair weather, but if she sits with her tail toward the fire or licks herself above the ears, bad weather is on the way. If a cat licks it’s tail, there is rain in the forecast.”
Given the way the weather is in Ireland, you might get the whole lot in a couple of hours.
http://www.mustlovecats.net/Cat-Mythology.html
Gotta learn their lingo.
You might own a dog or horse, but you will never own a Cat – a Cat owns YOU!
Dogs have owners but cats have staff, and I speak as one of the staff!