cATHEAD'S cRANKY wORLD

Poor keeper has been utterly distraught this past couple of weeks.
I keep trying to cheer him up by brushing my tail against his trouser bottoms as I stroll past, but all to no avail. Even the Dingo pup's daily playful antics such as leaping up at him and trying to slobber his face as she flies by are to no effect.

It all boils down to a sad episode that befell keeper the week before last - I heard him recounting it to his hypnotherapist - whom he nicknames "the hippo" - over the blower just three days back. Apparently keeper had been driving back from a cycling stint in Hertfordshire with his mountain bicycle strapped to the back of the camper as usual... and might have been daydreaming just a little.

Anyhows he was travelling at rounghy 40 MPH on an unlit stretch of road near Potters Bar, when a blur of a large bird flew straight out of the hedge right in his way. It was so close he hardly had time to brake and the poor feathered creature hit the windscreen right where his third eye would have been. Rather uncanny in fact.

He drove on aways in shock, then turned around and drove back the other way searching for the big bird in the roadway. He found it by headlight and stopped riskily as it was a very busy stretch of road.... and went to pick the poor dear creature up.,

It was a young Tawny Owl, but limp in keepers hands. He brought him back to the camper and stowed him in a carrier bag and started chanting names of God over him as he drove the poor Tawny to the vet college which is just around the corner... all the time stroking the still warm beautiful light brown (tawny) plumage.

He said he thought the bird struggled once so he stopped and tied the top of the bag loosely in case he tried to fly out into the van and cause commotion. Any hows keeper gets to the vet hospital and the nurses let him in with the carrier with Tawny. The senior lady vet inspects Tawny with as stethoscope and moves the birds neck and declares him dead with a broken neck.

Poor keeper came home distraught and crying and has hardly stopped since, He thinks he hears the owl's mate hooting for him in the early hours and wakes up sobbing. He's ever so guilty. Wow is a curse and a blessing to have such a loving heart I'd say. He feels guilty too about killing, albeit accidentally and no fault of his own, such a wondrous bird as Tawny. He was such a fine young specimen that the vet college phoned to say they'd stuffed him for display and for educating the young vet students .... and can you believe it they sent him a picture for his trouble in bringing him in!

So that's Tawny above.... and that was his tale that had to be told!

Would that there were more compassionates like keeper in this world, it would be a far happier place 4 sure.

'Scuse me while I paw a tear away from my encrusted slitty eye as well now... POOR TAWNY, I hope he is happy now and reincarnated inside a delightful Golden Eagle's egg up in the Highlands or something ).

Yowwww
CATHEAD

Yowwww! Long time no post Cathead fans - or those of you still blogging after all this time.... little furry me has been utmost buzzy bee along with keeper, in paying frequent visitations to the local hospital in order to check-up on our mutual friend Bloaterchops, whom some of you may remember was last espied being winched out of an upstairs window of his rancid Norbury hovel, having succumbed to a mystery illness ( no doubt connected to his 32 stone of weight in a 5' 7" frame.)

Well, it took some time and some doing I can tell you. Cathead all along being smuggled into the ward time and again by co9mpassionate keeper who, it has to be said, is a saint in disguise. For even when other people who he helps reject him, still he continues to uplift and support despite his inner pain of crucifixion as all genuine spiritual folk must endure in this horrid world of devious using humans.

at any rate, only a fortnight ago, he again smuggled me under his jacket into the disinfectant-smelly ward 10, to again witness the billowing hulk of bulk languishing beneath the sheets of his sagging single bed.
The end-of-bed clipboards told of a steady decline in all bodily functions to the point where Cathead extrapolated the big man's demise within another fortnight ( and thats too weak).

So, something had to be done if ever I was to pad into his culinary junk yard of a kitchen, to be fed scraps of lard and juicy cockroach-ridden offcuts from last weeks ham shank off a mould-encrusted old fork.

There Bloaterchops was, laying semiconscious on a drip feed, face up and snoring. Dishevelled with stubble and wild hair decorating the pillow. I knew there was no way out for him unless....
.... I instinctively sprung from my cache of keepers warm inside jacket and down down onto BC's exposed chest. There I landed and sunk my still sharp claws into his rib cage. As I did so I let out the same awe-inspiring cat screech that had wrought that vet Doctor's ultimate demise, a few posts back.

At this old Bloa\tewrchops' eyes went wixde open and he startled awake and shouted and sat bolt upright in his NHS bed, all in one go.

The energy my dramatic intervention had wrought was nothing short of catmiraculous. For the out-for-the-count BC was suddenly out of bed and on his feet, snapping the feed tube and dancing around the ward in some kind of warpath frenzy....dancing...laughing like he had no cares in the world.

So much so that the junior doctors came rushing in and sedated BC with a big short of horse tranquilizere for his sheer bulk...and then keeper and I left.

A week later Bloaterchops was discharged, fed watered and washed - a new man!

Keeper took this digicam of him all back up and running again, all thanks to the hidden psychic healing powers of little white soxs me,

I tells you the honest truth,

yours
CATHEAD

As I peered out the kitchen window from atop the worktop above the washing machine this very morn, my cat eyes still encrusted with catsleep, and my furry face all a non-stop cat yaaaaawn, I was somewhat startled to behold the sight of a crane jig sticking up in the air over the ramshackle hovel of my good friend Derek, aka Mr Bloaterchops, opposite.

I haven't bumped into his burly form since over a year ago and wasn't sure how his life was rolling. Anyhows, as I stared and unblinkingly stared, the crane swung into motion over the tile-deleted and depleted roof of the run-down terrace which backs onto keeper's back garden.

On the end of the cable hanging from the crane was a strange floppy looking contraption. The jig moved until it swung against an upstairs window. It was only then that I spotted with my super-sensitive 10-times-better-than-human catsight, the tell-tale blue trouble strobe of some emergency van through the overgrown shrubbery constituting Mr Bloaterchop's weed farm, out on the road beyond.

Oh dear, I thought.

At that moment my keeper waded into the kitchen, hair all a sleep-scraggled, face stubbled and puffy-eyed from his seemingly nowadays obligatory wine-guzzle the previous eve.
" Hey Cathead " he croaked, " Like a saucer of milk?"
" Yowwwwwww" I replied, but then turned my gaze back through the window. This seemed to focus keeper as he lifted the full saucer to the worktop.
" What are you looking at Cathead" he quizzed.
As he peered in the general direction of BC's run-down manse, he gasped
" Oh Lord, how sad is that?".
" Yowwwwww" I replied, with human DNA-doctored cat sympathy.

For what was happening was now plain to see. The big double upstairs window that had been attended to by the crane was now swung wide open and the cable had disappeared inside. The "strange contraption" on the end was beginning to exit slowly, an inch at a time, but burdened and sagged by a whale-like weight of bulk and hulk.

" Oh good Lord" exclaimed keeper, quickly donning his clothes and shoes, " come Cathead let's take a closer look"

Out through the back door he rushed, followed by myself - taking the catflap route as a matter of habit - springing lightly over the lawn behind sprinting keeper. The cat Buffy and pet dog Dingo had sensed the drama and trouped along behind.

Over the 100ft back garden we all ran, to the wooden slatted fence boundary where keeper stopped and looked over. Both Buffy and I bounded and scraped up onto two fence posts, then sat and stared unblinkingly.
" Oh Lord, exclaimed keeper, the poor fellow must have had a medical emergency.

For there was our heavily obese old friend being winched and hoisted out of his bedroom window on a giant hammock, all strapped in by the attendant paramedics, who were looking out of the window and shouting directions to the crane driver below. Poor BC must have grown so voluminous in the past months that he could no longer fit down the stairs and out the door.

His chubby unshaven face - now a ghostly white pallor - and straggly matted hair was just visible poking from one end and the BC BO stench downwind was rather familiar to these feline nostrils at least. Dingo's nose was all a twitch too.

" How terribly sad " said keeper rather guiltily (as he rather understandably hadn't been in touch with this neighbour since the episodes where he took the rise good and proper a while back - see the back cat-alogue of my adventures in the Tags here below right, my friends ).

So. Poor old Bloater Chops hospitalized over Christmas & New Year. Friendless and doubtless sagging some NHS superbed in Norbury General NHS Trust. At least the big devil will be fed and watered.
But which brave auxiliary nurses will be asked to do the bed baths I wonder - oops I feel a hiccup of sick coming on.

In the New Year Cathead must turn his psychic-healing attention to sorting this fellow out once and for all and put him on the straight and narrow, as opposed the wobbly and wide.

Yowww

CATHEAD

Then have a peep at Cat Head Theatre. Utter daftness gone pear-shaped and no candle to the original methinks

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