Flourescent Fantasy

The Mother Ship has gone all paranoid again.

She's convinced there's an elephant's graveyard of discarded kitten collars out her back garden.

I've seen her looking. She puts on her hippy, velcro-attached summer sandals (while wearing her socks - EMBARRASEMENT!!) and goes a-searching of a night.

Between you and I - and the whole internet world - she ain't gonna find them. Me and Sophia (my very masculine black cat pal - despite his poofy name) have actually flogged them to the guy next door who'll do anything for a fix. Well, I call it Cat-Entrepreneurship.

In my defense, the Mother Ship isn't exactly forthcoming when it comes to pocket money so I think sympathy kitten-wise is appropriate here. How else can a cute fur-ball like moi achieve treat-maximisation?!

And anyway boy, did I hate that leapord-skin number. But guess what, she's gone and purchased another one cos she thinks it's just "soooooo cute!" She doesn't realise that a hunter-gatherer such as I should be adorned in something a bit more well...masculine. I'm thinking more of an orange tiger number, you know?

Today, were you to enter my back garden you'd see me sporting a yellow fluorescent collar. Yes, I'm your lollipop-man cat...NOT!!

"It's for your own good babes," the Mother Ship insisted. "With the nights fair drawing in, I want you to be seen."

I give this one three days. Watch this space....

Your sneaky, wee pal, The Milt xxx

Orange Paint and Crap Collars

"Maybe we should change your name to Houdini," the Mother Ship declared last night.

"Well, let's face it my scrawny skinny-necked little one...you've managed to loose TWO kitten collars within the last three weeks...incidentally these cost me a bloody fiver at a time - the fancy collar and the tag with your name on it.

"Actually Milt, I'm faced with two possibilities here:

A} You've done a big ear-scratchy thing and the collar has gone "ping"

B} A drug addict person (let's face it, there's lots around our way) has grabbed you and stolen your collar to sell for acid etc...

"I'm at a bit of a loss here...and you're not helping one bit!"

The Mother Ship worries too much. Obviously what happened between the collars and me is a sensitive subject and maybe one that will come up in future correspondence...

Anyhows, keeping the Mother Ship in suspension, last night I sashayed into the kitchen....only to find her painting the shelves a - what can I say? - 'sunburst' orange colour!"

It's finally happened...the old dear who dishes out my grub - has finally flipped.

"What d'ya think Milt?" she enquired, with a sickening smile on her old pus. "Cool eh?. From now on when me and you walk into the kitchen of a morning feeling like crap and wishing we could just crawl back into bed and not go to work, instead we're going to be so gee'd up by this positive colour you and moi are gonna think to ourselves: 'Hey, it's another new day. Let's get out there and do damage!!"

Actually the paint's making my head spin and the colour makes me want to boak. I'm well aware Muttie is a despressive but colour therapy?!

And this was just after I'd eavesdropped and heard Muttie's friend going on about how she knows how it feels to be Victoria Beckham. Not that she's married to someone who looks better naked than her, or that she feels sick when confronted by a carbohydrate. No, it's cos at her work they've covered all the windows in a tinted film. This apparently is a cost-saving carbon-tastic measure ie it keeps the heat in. Brilliant! Except..it's now so dark in there that unless you want to know how it feels like to wear sunglasses indoors - all day, every day (the skinny Vicky way) - then you have to switch the lights on which er....uses up electricity and costs money....

Another bizarre carbon-tastic idea came from a man who proudly sent the Mother Ship a photo of his new electrical bike. Yes, when going up a hill you just switch on the rechargable operated engine and it shoots all the way up to the top. Job done. No exertion required. Except this self same man who, at 40, is even younger than she is, had just been saying how unfit he'd felt and how this new bike was going to get him back in shape again. The Mother Ship felt incredibly disappointed at this and thought it kinda missed the point. I got a long bloo*y lecture on it.

Anyways, if you've read this far you're an extremely tolerant person and maybe one day, you and Muttie could get together...

Miltonian The Memorable xxx

Toilet Training for Deluded Humans

You’ll never guess what the Mother Ship is proposing now.

In a contradict-me-if-you-dare tone, she announced last night that kittie litter trays were "so passe.”

“Yes, Milton" she continued, "While trawling through t’net the other day I came across a brilliant invention. It’s a system that teaches you, my cutey wutey little kittie, to go to the loo human-style. In three easy steps it shows how you can discard your litter tray and do a Jimmy Riddle in a toilet pan instead. And it's called...wait for it baby, you’re gonna love this…the Litter Kwitter!! Genius, huh?!”

Actually no, it’s not "genius" you silly, delusional, old bat. I’m happy with my soggy wooden chips thank you very much. And anyways, what If we were both bursting to pee at the same time? The Mother Ship would no doubt come out with something about me being lower down the evolutionary scale, push me aside and insist I make way for her….pronto!

Worse still, there’s no way I’m going in there after one of Dad’s marathon dumpster sessions. Gas masks? There's times when I've considered advising all the neighbours in our four-storey tenement to decamp to the nearest nuclear bunker, or at least Lidl's across the road. Despite being surrounded by products with wierd foreign names and a check-out lad with a drum-size hole in his left earlobe, it's way safer than being in the vicinity of a stinker that's sure to knock your senses sideways.

Having said that, I checked out the link and I must say, the fourth cat to take a pee, the Bengal one is a bit of alrrrrrrrright!

However, when it comes down to it, in terms of Muttie hitting the barmy scale, the hammer’s been thumped and that silver arrow is about to not just hit the bell but whack it right off.

You know, it's a real shame for me, I mean, of all the mum's in all the world, I get her....

Milt :( xxx

Appropo of Nothing...

I've come to the conclusion (after a long lecture from the Mother Ship) that it's not in my best interests to slag her off on this blog anymore. Not that I ever was - I was merely recording life and her attempts at stumbling through it, from my inconsequential (her word) point of view.

"Milton, you have an opportunity to speak for kittens everywhere via a state-of-the-art medium and all you can do is go on about my weight, intelligence and general demeanour," she huffed. "And as Auntie Debs pointed out, it's hardly earth-shattering verse! We're all boooooored reading it. In fact I'm thinking of putting a lock on my computer so you won't be able to access it anymore."

Do I care? I'll just nip along to Govanhill Library and execute my wit there...

Then she got threatening.

"Actually Milton, there's been a couple of articles in the news recently that have been very interesting...extremely interesting, in fact. They concerned new pets one could adopt. Very cute pets - ones which don't have paws that can type. For instance micro pigs and pigmy hedgehogs."

Actually I wouldn't mind one of those pigmy hedgehogs myself, I can just see myself playing pit-pat with it, from one paw to another like that computer tennis game you used to get in the 80s (obviously I wasn't born then but I've googled it).

So anyways, I digress. The Mother Ship thinks it would be a good idea for me to 'raise the standard' of my blog and comment on political matters. So...did you see Samantha Cameron's Kath Kidston-type dress she wore to the Tory Party Conference last week? The Daily Mail, of course, did a big piece on it and I have to say, I was a fan myself. I loved the ruffled collar. It showed off her lovely, long neck to perfection.

What else can I say that will appeal to the intelligensia? Oh yes, the Booker Prize Winner - Hilary Mantel and Wolf Hall. Well, afraid I'm going to go against the grain here and say...a big kitten yaaaaaawn and stretch in front of the fire. Darlings, I'd rather watch Tracey Emin do the research for her installation piece Everyone I've Ever Slept With...

Other matters, Muttie has signed up for an OU course in Creative Writing (this'll be a laugh). She was supposed to read the box of literature that arrived in the post yesterday. And what did she do last night? Suddenly the four days worth of dishes that had been piling up at the side of the sink got done. And now there's nothing left in the laundry basket...I'm sure one day she'll also get round to cleaning out my litter tray (wonder's will never cease). The fridge, however, is another matter. God knows what it'll take to get that cleaned. A deadline for an essay perhaps?

Yours, in an interested, voyeuristic fashion, The Milt xxx

Well folks, first off, paws for thought while you admire my new snakeskin collar (see extremely flattering photo). Snakeskin is very now, actually, according to the Observer magazine last week. Mum (now that I'm seven months old I've dropped the 'Mummy' bit) has an over-sized handbag that's very similar.

"Milton," she exclaimed, excitedly: "How cool would it be for you and me to go into town with you sitting in my matching bag flouting your snakeskin collar!"

Like, does she think she's Paris Hilton?!! Well she's probably got the same intellect but without the cash...

As I'm sure you'll sympathise, I let that one drop by shooting up to the top of her ridiculously expensive Laura Ashley bedroom curtains - a brill way to wind her up and simultaneously change the subject. Having said that, now I'm getting bigger it's not so easy...when I was a kitten I was like rocket fodder climbing up those 100 per cent cotten swags.

Ah well, old age hits us all. Some more than others (you want to see Muttie's eyelids these days. Talk about creases...we're looking at major steamroller action to get those babys smooth again). And she's not exactly sympathetic. Viewing my ailing attempts at my impressive ascent up said curtains I swear I clocked her tittering away under the duvet covers. I'd like to see her master it! She used to go rock climbing - as we all know (yawn) - but let me tell you, she hasn't been to the gym in six months and those biceps she used to be so proud of are like putty these days. Don't let her tell you otherwise...

But anyhow, let's not focus on her shortcomings (for a few seconds at least). I do feel a tad sympathetic towards her. The other night at Daddy's for instance, she was lying on the couch reading one of her Elizabeth Berg novels (no-one, but no-one, is allowed to interrupt her in the midst of the Godess-like Elizabeth Berg) when she sat back against the cushions, causing her T-shirt to ride up. Well, all of a sudden - like the really scary scene in Alien - all this voluptuous, white, flesh came rippling out from beneath those cotten folds. We're talking one mainstream wall of blubber here! Needless to say it wasn't a pretty sight and I could actually feel myself simultaneously recoil.

Dad, who was reading his newspaper at the time (The Star, cos it's the cheapest) clocked it too. And boy, did he make the most of it.

"Milton," he innocently enquired (with a wicked glint in his eye), as I lay basking myself in front of his ancient gas fire (circa 1950's): "have you ever seen a whale?"

Alerted, like a ship's scanner, the Mother Ship sat up at this point. And, I have to say, I'd worked out the inference for myself. Well let's face it, the flesh was staring me point blank in my pretty face. I contorted myself into that comforting foetal position we cats tend to adopt when we see trouble ahead, but too late...

The Mother Ship, as is her want, felt compelled to retaliate: "Ooooh, Milton," she exclaimed in an extremely contrived neutral tone: "You know how they say bald men are virile? Well, it's total crap. There's exceptions to every rule and your Dad is a classic case in point!"

What? Since when did I become a conduit for human argumentation?! It got me thinking though...how many kitties are there out there in my position? I mean, why can't humans communicate face-to-face? Do they think it's clever to abuse cats in this way? Well, here's news for them, it's not...

Yours, in a rather troubled fashion, The Milt xx

Mummy is doin' my frigging head in.

She's just been to see the movie "Julie on Julia", starring Meryl Streep which is all to do with a young, frustrated US woman writer (aren't they all?!) who started up a cookery blog based on the writings of an off-her-trolly older woman (Meryl Street). The upshot is, the neurotic (Julie) gets a book and a movie deal out of her nocturnal blogging.

"Oooh Milton," cried my equally-neurotic Mummy on her return home, "You and me are gonna make a fortune."

She'd had a couple, I could tell.

"Baby, this blog stuff is the way to fortune and stardom. No other kitty, far as I can tell, has his own blog. You're onto a winner here Milt. Just keep up the excellent prose and maybe, like Julie, a publisher will see your stuff and wheeeeeey, you and me will coin it in!"

Eh? What do ya mean 'we' Mummy?? It's me who puts in all the hard graft to write the bloody blog. Obviously, were this to go further a bit of negotiating re further kitten treats would be on the cards.

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to discuss it with her cos she fell into a drunken slumber... But folks, I'm currently looking for an agent...any feline friendly recommendations welcome...

Meanwhile, like any normal person, you would think with this on my side Mummy would be a right sook right now. But nah. She's giving me a deafie (which is not a bad thing as her voice really grates on me anyway).

The reason she's adopted this monastic vow of silence is because I inadvertently lost the new, very expensive, dark blue, velvet collar she bought me last week (Auntie Jen, I loved the silver, sparkly collar you gave me but I somehow wore the elastic away).

The lost collar was just one of those things, you know? I was having a right good claw at my left ear, heard a 'ping' and saw a blue flash go 'wheeeeeeee' past my left ear. Before I knew it Sophia (an annoying black male cat who lives in the vicinity - and yes, he has a poofy name cos his Mummy thought he was a female for months after she'd got him until the vet explained otherwise) picked it up in his teeth and ran off with it. I could hear the wee silver bell ringing for ages afterwards. I chased him but well, he's faster (and bigger) than me.

See when it comes down to it though, I blame Mummy. The collar had a quick-release catch. What right-thinking Mummy would purchase such a thing? I mean, I was obviously going to lose it, right?

Other stuff that's happened this week...the Pet Therapy idea hasn't gone away. Muttie rang the woman who organises it last week. Apparently I have to go to a vet in Irvine who'll check me over to ensure I have no horrible diseases I'll give to the old dears etc. Bloody cheek!! Not only that but I have to take out insurance! Well, hey...who's doing who the favour here? Hopefully it's too complicated for the Mother Ship and she'll drop the idea.

More on this soon...

Yours, despairingly, The Milt xx