Having lost the secret of signing on myself onto the cat page, and
having forgotten to get you to again show me how to do it while you
were here, here is The Potjie News:

Among my birthday prezzies was Potjie, Tish's thoughtful and very
welcome replacement for Debussy, who had to be put down just before
Christmas, having run through all nine lives in his 21 years. (How the
hell do you divide 21 by 9 ? Cats must be able to do long division.)
One must hasten to explain that he is a rescue job. Neither Tish nor I
could ever hold our heads up again had we encouraged the breeding of
such a travesty of cat genetics as he is by actually buying a kitten
from a breeder, but the truth is that he is a pedigreed Exotic
Shorthair. I doubt if even his mother thought him beautiful. We have
heard of Faceless Men; he is their feline equivalent. From his eyes to
the point of his chin is a straight, vertical plane. No nose, no
muzzle, no face at all. Just big, yellow-orange eyes, lynx ears and
everything around them a sort of black haze. He is also an undersized
runt. He eats enough to bring on gross obesity in a hyperactive
Kalahari lion but that only results in his litter-tray having to be
cleaned out several times a day and my garden slowly disappearing
beneath the prolific load of fertilising cat poo. If it makes plants
grow, next Spring will see my place lost in dense thickets of
forest-sized Petunias, etc. But there's no doubting that he's  REAL
cat - with MOODS. I, and everybody else for seven Shires around know
when he is in a bad one and expresses himself. Hills have metres
shaved off their tops and paddocks are bared of their topsoil when he
bellows. It's like a maltreated banshee, but amplified beyond the
wildest dreams of spotty louts with sound systems in their wheels. And
an even bigger personality. He goes through phases of being
aggressively affectionate, when he hurls himself at me and sticks what
would be his face if he had one into mine. Or is pathetically
affectionate and cries broken-heartedly when I go outside, following
from one window to the next, telling the world what a brute I am and
how he is deprived of even the most casual, fleeting and wholly
inadequate attention and attention. And intellectually affectionate
("I'm not just a pretty face-that-isn't, you know") when  I'm
wrestling with something impossible on the computer and he dances on
the keyboard. This has the measureless benefit of my then knowing at
least one reason why it's impossible. Or warmly affectionate, when he
sits on my lap and goes through his repertoire of Life's Good sounds -
snuffles, grunts, wheezes, purrs on high and low notes, squeaks and
whistles - a sort of Moog Moggie.

Despite his deprived kittenhood (this is his seventh? home in his year
of life and his physical underdevelopment indicates a slender menu in
some of them) he is a bold beast. Dog Shima is an Akita. The Japanese
bred them for bear hunting and now use them as baby-sitters. This is
not a reflection on Japanese children, nor on their loving parents;
they are affectionate, intelligent and reliably biddable dogs. When
Shima came into the house as a very boisterous puppy eleven years ago,
Debussy, a large British Shorthair with the firmly set ways and
opinions of a ten-year old cat, firmly put her in her place and never
forgave her for being a dog. Shima, thus, grew up keeping out of the
way of cats. On his first day here, Potjie walked underneath her and
flicked up his tail at just the right moment to tickle her tummy,
Shima, who hadn't seen him coming, froze in shock and nearly levitated
in horror. She still won't make any overtures, but politely suffers
Potjie's nose-to-nose greetings, slumping down next to her on her
blanket and retrieval of toys that he has flicked to her with a World
Cup-winning pass.

Shima has her daily walk and has her preferred routes. Tramping around
the paddocks is all very well, but they lack the variety of
news-telling smells one finds on the road. Potjie thinks walks are the
best thing since sliced dry-food, but Boss Man (as he likes to style
himself - har-bloody-har !) misgives his traffic-sense as well as the
consequences of meeting neighbours' dogs. The compromise is that
Potjie only comes on some walks, restricted to paddock-roaming, and
stays home for the road expeditions. (Were Shima and I to get lost
anywhere within an absolutely huge number of kilometres, we could
simply home on the piercing racket of Potjie's protest at being left
behind.) Potjie's boldness quails at some of the paddock perils
encountered while he dashes off on side-trips of his own. "Surely
goodness, mercy and Shima shall protect me all the days of my life"
says Potjie, and gallops back to her, crouching beneath a very sorely
puzzled dog. If Shima doesn't make it all go away very quickly, then
Potjie turns to what I like to think he sees as higher authority, but
probably only regards as the next-best thing, and comes to me.

Cattle are NOT among the perils. From their better vantage, they can
see him all the time and are greatly intrigued by this little black,
bouncing ball, so come lumbering along to get a closer view and a good
sniff. No probs. Potjie just skitters off into longer grass  and Pop !
they disappear.

Now, with the weather having broken, he has to work out the phenomenon
of wet, cold rain. Yukkkk ! One remedy is to come inside and tell me,
loudly and at length, that this is simply not good enough. (Thank
goodness the solution only works indoors; the water-tank is filling up
nicely and we may actually get an autumn break this year.)

In short, Potjie has settled into his new home and imposed his ways on
it very successfully.

To my great pleasure.

George