(no subject)

[desperance]

So it's eight in the morning, and I'm sitting there watching a rerun of Keith Floyd cooking in a boat in Bangkok (hey, look, it's Saturday morning: I'm allowed a little gastroporn before work), and suddenly Barry comes in with his coat entirely covered with - well, something. I don't know what. It's grainy and clearly dried, except for being slightly damp, and brief and unworthy thoughts do flit through my bewildered mind ("oh God, don't tell me you've been rolling in the litter-tray," and like that). So I go to investigate, and he comes strutting with to show me - this is after he's rolled around all over the living-room carpet in an ecstasy of long black beauty: his self-content knows no bounds - and there is this stuff all over the kitchen floor. It looks like he's spilled one of the spice-jars, but I can't identify it and it doesn't smell spicy. Herbal, perhaps. A lot of dried herb, it might well be, only I don't keep dried herbs, having a yardful of fresh...

And then I find the packet. As Baz clearly had before me. Light dawns, and a question is answered: oh, so he does like catnip, then. See, I'd bought this bag of it a year ago, meaning it as a present for a new kitten in a friend's life; only to learn that she was to be a clean kitten, undrugged-up, so I wasn't allowed to give it her. My Misha-cat wasn't interested by then, she'd outgrown her druggy phase (when we used to play a game where I grew catnip and would go out into the yard to hide it; she'd come out to find it; then she'd eat it; then she'd go back indoors to be sick. Great game). So it had just been lying around - not quite sure where; on top of the fridge, I think - and I had meant to hunt it out and see if Bazza liked it.

So Bazza did the hunting, and yup. He likes it. Unfortunately, he's used it all at once, but hey.

Right now he's out in the back yard, leaping and massacring cherry-blossoms as they drift in over the wall. I can't actually work out if this is still hyperactive nipped-up Barry, or if it's just regular frantic Barryness: a distinction without a difference, perhaps.

Comments

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Snowy loves the catnip drops my cat-loving aunt and uncle bought them for Christmas a few years ago, whereas Josie is scared of catnip and runs away.

Mind you, Josie is scared of everything, whereas Snowy has just eaten the rice crackers I had next to the pc. Drat!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Rice crackers, huh? Self-indulgent brute. Me, I go for slices of salami and other interesting pork products in the something-to-nibble-while-I'm-working stakes. That's in the evening slot, of course, with a glass or two of wine. Morning-time it's chocolate-coated coffee beans, to go alongside the coffee. Spot the ex-smoker, or what?

Barry fancies the pork products intensely, but I am ruthless.

Catnip games, though: the other thing I have is a pot of catnip-scented bubble mix. I'm not actually sure that the catnip does anything, but Barry is deeply attracted by the bubbles. They're kind of heavier than regular soap bubbles, which means that they tend to fall straight to the carpet, but they don't burst on contact. Approach one fascinated cat, who sniffs and stares and pokes at them, and then they do burst - and then he startles and stares all around the room, desperate to work out where this strange thing has gone. Amuses me no end.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! We want the bubble mix! (Still working our way through some ordinary bubble mix I bought as a stocking filler a few years ago).

Of course, I'm not actually working at the pc - just browsing lj and playing too much City of Heroes (D*mn your on-line gaming - you fiends!).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

It's called Kookamunga Catnip Bubbles and you can get it here (http://www.woofnwhiskers.com/product.asp?numPageStartPosition=1&strPageHistory=cat&strKeywords=&strSearchCriteria=&PT_ID=53&P_ID=301).

And I, on a Sunday afternoon when I am full of sleepiness after partying last night, am doing working. We call this Conspicuous Virtue, or Deadline Fever.