New collar

[Photo of me in my old collar at my old house, circa 2002]

Hi. Pabs again.
I got a new collar last week.
Nobody even asked me if I wanted one.
It's not that different from my old collar, so I guess it's no big deal. It's black and shiny. My last one was black and felt a bit like furry skin. Suede, Kate called it. But this one is like leather. I don't think it is leather, though. I don't think that BigW in Kingston sells leather cat collars.

When my housepeople came home with my new collar, they took the old one off me and let me walk around in the nude for a bit. It felt nice, like when I was a kitten. I feel in touch with my wild cat ancestors when I don't have a collar on. It's nice just to be an anonymous cat every now and then. Sometimes it gets very tiring being Pablo, bearing all the responsibilities that being Pablo entails. But that's a story for another time.

I was a bit scared when they brought out the new collar, because it was a ringing collar. I hate ringing collars. Some cats have them, you know. Poor bastards. They can't sneak up on anyone so they can't fight properly and they can't hunt properly... I've instituted a 'no ringing collars' rule for the West Hobart Tigers. It puts some cats out, but we can't lower our standards. You don't see James Hird or Brendan Fevola running around the MCG with a ringing collar, do you?

Anyway, the ringing collar. It scared the kitty litter out of me at first because I thought that there was another cat inside. I looked and looked and sniffed and sniffed around the lounge room, but nothing. Then I saw the ringing collar. I thought I was done for. Skinny Ginge and Graham White would never let me keep on as Captain/Coach of the Tigers if I had a ringing collar. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends have ringing collars, but I'm just not that kind of cat. Thankfully, Kate knows that, and she took the ring out of the collar before she put it on me, even when Nick begged her to put the ringing collar on me for a little while, 'just to see what I would do'. Pounced on him with my claws out, that's what I would have done.

To cut a long story short, the new collar's ok, though it took a good few days to get my fur nicely arranged around it. Always takes a while to break in a new collar. Black goes well with my stripes, too. Kate put my name tag on the new collar, so everyone knows that I'm Pablo.
And that's the way I like it... most of the time.
Cheers,
Pabs

Don't read this if you can't handle gross things

I vomited today.

Twice. Inside. Under the table.

No one was home.

It looked like (and basically was) liquid cat food, but a bit redder.

Don't worry. I'm not sick or anything. It's just something cats do sometimes. A little vom. Today, I think it was due to a hairball -- no, a bit of hair just caught the wrong way. I'd actually forgotten all about it when Kate discovered it tonight. Lucky Nick wasn't home. He's not so understanding about these things. He would have put me outside.

Like that would have solved anything!

Kate was funny. After she wiped up the solid bits, she put all this food on top of the stain to try and get it out! Rubbed stuff called bran (smelled rank) into the carpet, left it there for a bit, vacuumed it up, wiped vinegar on it (smelled even ranker), poured bicarb on it (didn't smell like anything). Left it there for a bit. Vacuumed again. I think she was trying out stuff she heard about on the cleaning talkback program on the radio. I don't know what any of that stuff is, I just know the names because Kate was talking me through the whole freaking process. Like I cared. It only kind of worked, anyway. You can still see it. I was happy to leave it there. Why bother? It's only vomit. I might've eaten it tomorrow.

Anyway, I hate the vacuum cleaner.
--Pabs

my first post

Hi. My name is Pablo. I'm a six-year-old cat from West Hobart, Tasmania. I've been wanting to do this blogging thing for ages now, but my housepeople (Nick and Kate) are always on the computer... and you wouldn't believe how hard it is to type with paws! So I saved up my pocket money and bought some meow-recognition software, so I'm now finally good to go. It is my vision that this blog becomes a platform for the promotion of my business interests (Pablo Enterprises), my football team (West Hobart Tigers- I'm captain/coach this year) and the general advancement of cat culture and ideology. That's all for now, I'm due for a feed.
Hope it's chicken!
Until next time,
Pablo
(PS big shout out to Blackie, Skinny Ginger, Fat Ginger and Graham White... 'Go forward to kicks the goal, boys!')