As Seen on TV

When I arrived at work last Monday week, one of the girls who works in my area shrieked, “I saw you on television last Saturday!” She was terribly excited about it, and after an initial puzzlement as to what on earth she was talking about; I found out that I had indeed been filmed at the races in a crowd scene after the running of the Manikato Stakes.

Later in the week, another work colleague came up to me and asked about my luck at the races. He had actually recorded the moment onto a DVD and he kindly burned me a copy.

The above photo is a screen capture from the DVD. As is usually the case with screen captures, the photo is somewhat distorted, but I am perfectly obvious, up there on the fence, camera clutched in my hands, surrounded by blokes. I feel rather privileged to be in the same picture as Gold Edition, who is the real star of the screen.

Update on cat politics

Timmy has been part of the household for over a month now, and the situation as regards the other two cats has improved somewhat, with Lizzie basically having established her credentials as a cat not to be messed with. She and Timmy have pretty well settled their differences and co exist quite peacefully. As for Willy, it is still tricky, as Willy is frightened of Timmy and avoids him where possible, mostly by making himself scarce. We have been dosing Timmy on clomicalm after he had been consistently aggressive to our little prince. Clomicalm is a mild sedative for dogs and cats and is helpful in reducing stress and modifying behaviour. We’ve tried to make it clear to Timmy that Willy has our full protection and must not be driven away. Whether Timmy has got the message is unclear. Other than this problem with Will, Timmy is a laid back, pleasant puss who generally minds his own business. He doesn’t stray and rarely calls attention to himself.

He did however get himself into a dire situation last weekend, trapping himself behind a fireplace and being unable to get out. The fireplace is purely decorative and every one of our cats has jumped behind it and managed to get out again even when they were tiny kittens. We were under the impression that he’d got behind the fireplace via access under the house. We subsequently discovered that this was not possible. So on Friday morning he must have jumped behind the fireplace and then discovered he couldn’t get out. B heard him meowing but assumed he was under the house. We later discovered him, by feel, behind the hearth and tried to encourage him to get out. To no avail – he couldn’t or wouldn’t get out. He stayed there all night without a making a noise. It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that B, fearing that he had died there, decided to move the fireplace. Timmy wobbled out, unsteady on his pins, which leads us to assume that he has arthritis in his back legs and was therefore lacking rear drive power to climb from the fireplace. He can however jump onto the bed with ease even though it is higher than the fireplace. It may have something to do with being unable to visualise the landing spot on the other side, that convinced him that he was unable to get out of the fireplace, as I do believe sight is important to cats in working out spatial measurements. It looks so effortless when a cat jumps to a high place – one moment they’re on ground level, the next they’re on high.

As always, fascinating creatures.