home is the huntress

Posted 31 August 2008 By mac and has 9 comments.

Aliss – a most *excellent* cat
Originally uploaded by ramtops

Aliss has been missing in action for … well, who knows. We said goodbye to her on the morning of Friday 29th when we left for geoffcampbell’s annual Summer Camp, and there was no sign of her when we got home again on the Monday.

And no sign at all since then. Having lost Moo only last week, I didn’t know how I could cope with losing another so soon, but I had a very bad feeling about it.

I woke at about 7:40 this morning, and stumbled into the bathroom, and while I was in there I heard a “miaow”.

“Could it be?”, I wondered, and hurtled downstairs with no dressing gown, no spectacles, to find a rather irate Aliss, standing beside an *empty* food bowl. I called up to perlmonger, but he’d already heard her himself.

She’s consumed large quantities of Whiskas, had several cuddles, and a brief but pointed discussion with Iggy, so things are returning to normal. She’s very thin, so I wonder if she may have been shut in somewhere, but she seems none the worse for her ordeal, praise $deity.

Pass the fatted calf, if you’d be so kind.

tagged: cats

clearly, I need a bigger desk

Posted 27 August 2008 By mac and has 4 comments.

clearly, I need a bigger desk
Originally uploaded by ramtops

Bada is very clingy since we’ve been away, and this morning she has decided that Iggy should keep her company.

This is fine and dandy, but I wish they would do it SOMEWHERE ELSE. And don’t tell me to move them – do you think I haven’t tried?!

tagged: cats

Project Pig 2008

Posted 21 August 2008 By mac and has 3 comments.

Project Pig 2008
Originally uploaded by ramtops

For those attending Summer Camp, here is this year’s gammon.

tagged: food, gammon "summer camp"

for my old age

Posted 20 August 2008 By mac and has no comments yet.

A USB heated shawl. Perfect.

tagged: shawl

RIP Moo

By mac and has 23 comments.

Pepper, the prettiest cat *in the world*

Frappant Eastern Spice, known to us as Pepper, or more usually, Moo.
27/9/99 – 19/8/08
killed by a car

Officially, the prettiest cat in the world. We’ll miss her more that I can say.

tagged: cats

Costco gone to the dogs

Posted 19 August 2008 By mac and has 1 comment.

We nipped – or popped – to Costco at lunchtime. I needed to buy a large chunk of pig to do my traditional Summer Camp gammon, and we also wanted some other bits and bobs.

And their stock was dreadful; NO Beurre d’Isigny. NO kabanos (perlmonger’s standard lunchtime fare). NO shallots onnastick, or even loose.

But they did have pig, which is now cooking gently in coca-cola, a recipe which has no business working, but patently does, given the way the denizens of Carmarthen fall upon it on an annual basis.

And we got part-baked baguettes and duck breasts and 48 cans of cat fud and parmesan and oak smoked cheddar and some interesting round bread with serrano ham and emmental chiz inside which might be nice for lunch.

The gammon almost went into the huge cast iron cauldron that ccomley brought me back from France. But not quite. So I covered it with a tin foil hat, and weighted the lid down with two bricks.

And the bastard thing has leaked coca-coalesque steam, which has run over the hob, down the front of the oven, and under the cooker and dishwasher. Deep joy.

It’s in the oven now.

tagged: shopping

turning bears inside our

Posted 18 August 2008 By mac and has 3 comments.

I have what some people might consider to be an unfortunate penchant for kicking teddy bears.

I was quite amused to discover this chap, who turns ordinary stuffed bears inside out and re-stuffs them. The result is a collection of quirky little monsters.