A Keg And A Key

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellows,

As I have mentioned before, our back garden is visited by many cats. But this tortoiseshell cat - Caro simply calls her "Tortie" is by far our most frequent visitor.

We are pretty sure she is not a stray. For one thing, her fur is in good condition and anyway there are far too many old people in our neighbourhood for the possibility of any cats to go without homes.

Nevertheless, she is always hungry. Such a little glutton. And as our boys think that licking the gravy off cat food is the same as eating it, we always have lots left. Caro has taken to putting it outside for this little opportunist.

She's a bit stand-offish. She will let you stroke her if you really want, but it is clear she is not really into it and is just humouring you. Nevertheless we have grown quite fond of her. 

The boys, not so much. They glower at her and sometimes there are fat tails through the glass. I don't let Jasper out at night, but if he sees her during the day he goes CHARGING at her and she very sensibly always runs away. However, here you see her chancing her arm on a daytime visit. 

As for me, my birthday continues on. Loulou and Tiger took me and Caro out to a nearby trattoria for Italian lunch. It was very nice and they were hilarious as always. Tiger apologised for the fact that he was hungover, having spent the night in Wellington getting @rseholed with his workmates. 

I told him that he needn't apologise. Quite the contrary. Forcing yourself to come out when hungover shows exceptional dedication and friendship. Then he rushed off to the toilets, "I'm not going to be sick, it's just grog-bog," he explained, unnecessarily.

This level of fuss makes me a little bit uncomfortable. But it's hard not to love it when it comes from such nice people. As for Caro and me, we were talking about the fact we've been together for 21 years now (as you may remember, our getting together roughly coincided with my 30th birthday party).

"My god," said Loulou, "if your relationship was a person it would be getting a keg and a key!" 

"And Deirdre the Dermoid Cyst would be our daughter," agreed Caro. 

Well. Maybe. But I would prefer for us to adopt Tortie instead.

S.