Cheese, zombies, fire, cats, Leon

[smokingboot]

The game didn't happen last night because cyanidemigraine was dead on his feet. But Leon sans lj came round anyway, armed with wine and cheeses, and we ate and drank and talked. Then, because larians is a fanatic, we played with his birthday present from Bruce, a board game called 'Zombies'. And then something happened.




But to understand it, we must first go back to earlier in the day, when I was fighting the smell of adventuring stranger-cat (yes, it has turned up again) in the kitchen and conservatory. Instead of taking the shrewd advice of mitchy on this subject, I used a lethal cocktail of bleach, flowery disinfectant, tea-tree oil and ground black pepper. It worked. Now the evil beastie had sprayed against a couple of my fig plants, so I had sprayed them with tea-tree oil. All well and good; until I decided to go the extra mile and, forgetting my earlier efforts, stuffed lit incense cones into the earth around them. The word 'oil' should have been a clue, but there you go.

larians cooked Beef Wellington as a starter. We ate and enjoyed, all the time somewhat surprised at the strong smell of smoke; clearly the oven needed cleaning badly. It didn't get in the way, and we retired to comfy seats and zombies. Then I went to check that all the candles were out; the others joined me to find the conservatory full of acrid smoke. Could it be the candles? They were out. The oven? It was off. The peat under the fig plants burning merrily away in their pots? Could be...

Hot enough to have melted a nearby plastic bag, one flowerpot was glowing with a kind of determined incendiary menace. Imagine my distress when my old ficus benjaminus (Benny the Fig) slumped to one side, roots chewed through by the ever advancing hot ashes. Man, I am not good with plants, but I never burned them to death before. More important at the time (forgive me Gaia) was the potential for having burned us all to death in our beds.

We got all the offending plants outside, where larians hosed them down. Benny the Fig is dead. The others are still out there in the rain, drenched and miserable, thanks to Boot, the Avatar of Stupidity. To make matters worse, the kittens got out experiencing the night for the first time. They did not want to come back and it took me time and guile to manipulate them back into the house. I caught the demon lord, and left him inside protesting bitterly, while our little huntress scampered with delight up and down the lane at the back, into the park and the gardens of strangers, and even, somewhat ominously, round the curve towards where the great metal beasts roar and roam.

They are grown cats now. I fear to let them out in the dark, because I dread looking for them along the kerb sides and finding car-mangled messes, but their joy was total and undeniable. This is what they are made for, this is what they truly are. If I want them to be as happy as they can be, they need freedom at night.

And Leon? First time he stays over, a kitten dies. Second time, he's locked in the upstairs loo by an over-zealous handle, rescued only by cyanidemigraine's inherent criminality and a spoon. Third time, the house nearly burns down. He must think we're a little odd.




There is no smell of cat this morning. We, the house and everything in it, smell of char-grill.

Comments

Re: spraying interloping cats

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that the thoughtless twonk responsible for the spraying cat may be more reasonable about his moggie living a bollock free life once he's tried it for himself. And I won't even invoice him...