Jean, Food and the Cats (by sarah)

Jean is becoming a proper mini person these days - her baby sign is improoving drastically including making up her own variations on them. On of the things she does is keep asking for more food until she has stuff in her mouth and something in each hand, or at least this is what she was doing. Now she stores it out of sight in the hope we wont realise and will give her more - we've been caught out by this one once or twice now. She got very indignant when I removed her store of grapes - lots of NO and snorting on her part plus 'grumpy donald duck' face.

The other interesting thing is her interaction with the cats. She feds them - I have to be really quick when nipping to the kitchen or what ever other wise they are eating out of her hand - this is only the kittens and not Minni - I have taken to turfing them from the house if I'm going to feed her! However she did get very annoyed with them when she had stashed something and they started trying to drag it away to eat it - she was really indignant with them - of course I upset everyone by throwing the cracker away!

She also says 'itan' which we assume is kitten as she is normally pointing at them whilst saying it. She hugs the 'itans' which they tend to tolorate until she starts trying to stroke them at which point they rapidly move to just out of her reach - she then crawls after them and everone goes round in circles. She just points at Minni these days, iterestingly she doesnt call Minni 'itan' she has a sound sort of like 'mmmack' so goodness knows what shes thinking with that one!

Minni seems to have grown to tolorate the kittens, especially H - she sometimes still attacks poor He but will sit next to H. She even eats next to them sometimes to eat!

The kittens are so funny to watch eating if Minnis got to the big plate before them - they then have to both eat from her little bog bowl thing and sort of push each others heads out of the way, they get steadily faster and faster and more and more insistant but without actually attacking each other - its quiet amazing to watch really. They are sort of polite about it somehow.

The last thing I have to say about the cats is that they all have very distinctive personalities that we have observed. If confronted with something that say hurt them on investigation - Minni would run away like a streak of black lightning, He would run out of range then turn and glare at what ever it was whilst H who is the cute bimbo would go 'ooo pretty, ouch, ooo pretty ouch.....' and so on ad infonitium. She also falls of chairs and falls into the stream generally by stretching and then rolling in the wronge direction. She has also accidently jumped into a bath of water - how she could have failed to notice we had removed the chaning table I dont know!

Another Hectic Weekend (by sarah)

Mew!

We left friday - we have only just got back 🙁

He is refusing to come in the house though the other two cats are in and purring like mad things!

Photos of weekend will soon be up - if they are not up soon prod me! Hopefully along with one other party and two weddings.

Quick brief - this weekend saw one party and one perants anniversary - today saw Al in a potentially exciting meeting with Ammericans and megetting fed back on a shot story which I am very very happy about!

We have to get up early to have Jean jabbed in the morning - nine o'clock appointment - shivers at the thought of getting up early after a four days of not enough sleep.

Residual Current Blues (by alaric)

Bah. Yesterday the RCD tripped, shutting off the electricity supply to the house, while I was standing in the kitchen.

This means that, somewhere, something's leaking electricity. An RCD measures the current that goes out to appliances on the Live wire, and measures the current that comes back via the Neutral wire, and if they differ by more than about 100mA (in the case of our unit), then it knows that coulombs of charge are going awry somewhere - which is usually a dangerous situation, since it means either a short to ground of some kind (which can start fires due to electricity flowing through things it shouldn't and making them hot) or a short to ground via a human being, which is usually rather unhealthy.

Read more »

Minnie finds a new place to sit! (by alaric)

I was mean to Minni :( (by sarah)

We were on the landing and Minni was sitting next to the changing table which due to showers etc... was not on the bath. Jean used said changing table to stand up and walk over to our little black shadow. Things were going well with Jean making her sudo cat word noises - then Jean tried to stroke/poke/hit Minni, there was a hiss and a snapping of jaws and a crying baby and me acting on mothers instict chasing the cat away!

Poor Minni hadnt even biten Jean but the sudden agressiveness of the cat had been enough to frighten Jean whom the kittens willingly take cuddles from. But I didnt stop to think my instincts told me - something attacking baby - MUST PROTECT.

I feel bad as Minni is so highly strung as it is and nervous - we normal make sure Jean doesnt scare her but didnt realise the furry feline was sitting there.

Still I think I am forgiven for ousting the kittens who are Minnis arch emimies!