Black Doggerel

Squish gets his own post today. My microwave died, so I'm having to reheat things in saucepans - this is a major pain in the arse, and today I fucked up and switched on the wrong ring on the cooker. So my saucepan's sitting there stone cold, while the ring next to it is quietly setting fire to the potholder and unopened packet of instant custard powder that happen to be sitting on it.

Okay, I wasn't asleep or in the bath or anything; I would have noticed before burning the whole building down. But Squish noticed before I did, and barked furiously at the kitchen till I went and discovered my smouldering cock-up. GET THAT DOG SOME CHEESE.

The snow is all gone now, and I don't expect to see it again this year. Damn, it was fun while it lasted, though. I also learned that Squish, while he likes snow on the ground and snowballs, is terrified of snowmen. I sort of knew this already, but I thought that was a one-off. It's not - we came across two snowmen in people's front yards this week and both of them freaked him out considerably.

( Squishy! )

i know it's not much of a snowman - we really didn't get THAT much snow. It still terrified my special spotted dog. He couldn't decide whether he ought to attack it or run like hell. In the end he compromised by trying to bark it to death from a safe distance. I love my freak dog.

that's better.

Either the heat is slightly less brutal today, or walking to Mum's was the exact right amount of exercise to kick my system into functionality; I feel better than I have for weeks.

I am sick of feeling so crappy all the time. Trying to do something about it. I doubt I'll ever have the motivation to eat a truly healthy diet, but I went shopping last night and started work on a slightly less unhealthy one.

And I am cooking. I am cooking RIGHT NOW. It is a sort of vegetable stew, with carrots, chickpeas, leeks, cabbage and celery, all held together with either mushed canned tomatoes or canned ratatouille - I haven't decided yet. And bacon. Big chunks of pinky-gold smoked bacon, dirt cheap because they were the tail-ends that wouldn't fit neatly in the slicer. But a lot more vegetables and pulses than bacon.

The celery is even organic - admittedly only because Asda had run out of bog-standard celery, but it still counts.

(argh, pissfuck, the thrice-damned onions burned while I was typing this. Oh well. It'll add a nice chargrilled flavour. Or something.)

Also included: the remnants of a bar of dark chocolate flavoured with chillies that neither I nor my mother could bear to eat as is. I've had it lurking in the kitchen cupboard for months waiting for just such an opportunity. I might add in some cream of coconut as well, and turn the whole thing into a sort of fusion ersatz mole.

...I remember now why I used to enjoy cooking.


Also, arse. I've put everything into the biggest pan I have and there's no room for the fucking chickpeas. (I soaked those last night and cooked them by themselves this morning, because if you cook vegetables for as long as it takes to cook chickpeas they dissolve.) Hopefully there'll be room for them when the vegetables have cooked a bit.

NEED MOAR PANZ.

Edited to add: Further notes on cooking: This flat does not possess a smoke alarm, although the council have visited twice, expressed concern and promised to return and install one at some unspecified future date.

However, the spotted dog does appear to possess an inbuilt smoke alarm. As soon as the pan reached scorch point, Squish started yowling and indicating that I should visit the kitchen. I love my weird dog.

Any dog might find a quarter of a dropped Big Mac on the pavement and eat it. But only my special spotted snowflake Squish would find it and then whine at me till I picked the lettuce off it for him.

Squish is scared of the long line/harness combo. He did all right the first day or so, but he becomes visibly deflated when I strap the harness on him, he freezes if the long line touches his legs and he refuses to run after a ball on the long line - even if it's only a few feet.

*sigh*

what I'm doing for now is just putting him on the line, making sure it's not wound round any legs, walking away from him and calling him for sausage (which he's doing remarkably well still). I'm hoping once he gets a good physical sense of exactly what his limits on the long line are he'll start to use them instead of gluing himself into the heel position as soon as I clip it on.

any suggestions or insights would be MOST gratefully received.

Squish has decided that he can no longer listen to the Doctor Who theme tune without howling. Which means I can no longer fall asleep listening to my collection of Doctor Who audio dramas without being woken by both dogs doing the timber wolf chorus every time a new track starts.

Bugger.


also, only 5 days till the Xmas special!! it's the one bright spot on my horizon right now...

So Squish had a River moment this morning. First walk of the day. We're going down Woodbury Avenue when he suddenly freezes and starts whining and barking. It's not his usual "OMGSQUIRREL/CAT/STRANGE DOG" happy fun alert bark, it's a scared bark with a snarl in it. His little hackles are standing up and he's refusing to move forward. Squish is prone to be unexpectedly frightened of odd things - the kid with the blue gloves, the wheelie bins moved out of position, the unexpected bag of grass clippings, the snowman plushie in the hedge - but this is the first time I haven't been able to tell what he was reacting to. There was a family with a pushchair across the road and a woman in a loud black and acid-green tracksuit behind them - it could have been one of them but they were well outside his usual reaction zone and he's never been scared of people or pushchairs before. It looked more like he was staring at a spot in the hedge across the road. Utterly baffled. But Squish's panic made Spike start barking his head off, so I turned and went round the block the other way.

We passed the same spot coming back in the other direction, and Squish was a little apprehensive but not scared. He looked like he was looking for the Scary Thing but not finding it this time. Still utterly baffled.

In other news, I seem to have buggered my left knee and can only walk slowly and painfully. Walking slowly and painfully has, in turn, made my lower back all stiff and painful. Happy happy fucking joy joy.

There's something weird in the air today. Afternoon dog walk - Spike kept barking randomly at nothing and walking round with his hackles raised. I could hear some of the neighbour dogs doing it too.

Early evening dog walk after the first half of supper just now (dog supper is in two instalments now, because Squish expects feeding at eight and Spike can't eat during kitten zoomies and I don't like to feed just one dog - so I split it, and if Spike's too busy at eight he just gets twice as much at midnight).

Squish found something in the long grass. I don't know what it was - I could tell it wasn't a cat and he was too interested for it to be a grasshopper. Spike caught his interest (Spotted McBird-Dog always spots things first) and we all went to check it out. We got to the spot they were pointing at and - nothing. They lost interest when we got there. We went back to the path.

When we got to the short grass by the houses Squish started barking at a wall. Angry guard dog barking. Squish. Never. Does. That. He barks to back Spike up when Spike decides it's necessary, or he might yap at squirrels or free range cats in excitement but he's never done angrybark at something on his own initiative. Spike was as baffled as I was, because once again there was nothing there.

The cats have been quiet today. Too quiet. Way, way, way too quiet. They've done just enough climbing and leaping on things that I can see they're not sick, but apart from Shona slashing hell out of my leg while I was eating breakfast (blood running down my shins - damn cat!) there's been nothing.

Creeeeeeeeeepy.

Grrr. It's not 11am yet and between them Spike and the kittens have sent the water bowl flying twice. Arseholes.

I have an old manky towel that I keep expressly for sopping water off the floor - I just drop it on the puddle, leave to soak, then hang it on the radiator to dry (even switched off, the radiator's a good drying-spot). Cassie likes sleeping on it while it's lying wet on the floor. Cats are weird.

Spike's cat-stalking modus operandi is to single out one cat and tune out all the others. I've noticed that, although he'll do it to any of them, he prefers the two striped ones. Squish just barked at Cassie for playing in the laundry bag, which he's never had a problem with before. Dogs are weird.

And I'm bleeding. Normally I feel so bloaty and emo that I know it's coming, but this time, nothing - I didn't even break out in zits. Obviously all these fruits and vegetables are good for something. Maybe that was why I developed the sudden houseproudness and diet-consciousness? Hormones are weird.

Am now going back to catching up with the hogwarts_live backstory from before I started reading. Am up to October 2004 now. archivedubh is a great resource for silent lurkage but, annoyingly, its friendslist only goes back 100 entries, so getting the full backstory requires reading a pageload of concurrent tabs with the character journals. It's a marvellous way to keep amused while supervising dogs and cattens - much better than physical books or TV shows which need paper bookmarks and pause buttons every time I need to go sit on Spike for a moment, confiscate a cat toy from Squish, stop Elda from chewing the linoleum or pick a kitten off the top of something it's about to knock over. Such a joy!

ETA: Ratatouille. Garlic-infused aubergine is the food of the fucking Gods, but next time, fry the onions and garlic a bit first. Everything else is perfect but those are a bit too crunchy.

Also, peppers are a fucking awkward vegetable. Life's too short to skin the little bastards before adding them but the skins are a huge pain. Bah.

I could have sworn I checked the utility room before shutting the door. It's a good thing Spike and Cassie are so on top of their jobs; Elda and Callette were only trapped in there a couple of minutes. Spike was particularly chuffed about getting to use the "Little Timmy's trapped in the well!" routine - daily suburban-pet life doesn't afford him that many Lassie opportunities.

He probably shoved the kittens in there himself. I wouldn't put it past him...

Cat videos of the day: Cats In Bag 2 - The Revenge!

Yay cat toys! (Ten e-points to anyone who guesses the soundtrack)

The second one's a bit dark, but it's the Big Hit Cat Toy of the day - an unripe plum. I don't buy cat toys because they have stupid inflated prices, and my experience with Mum's cat Maisie is that average cat will be curious for five minutes and then ignore toy forever. Admittedly the kittens would probably get more value out of them than Maisie does, but when they can get just as much value out of an unripe plum, a feather, a laundry bag or a cardboard box, I'll go with the free stuff, thanks.

Plums are problematic, though; Squish can't resist stealing them.

There is a kitten about to climb onto my keyboard. HELLO CALLETTE!