Cat Politics Progress Report

Pictured above, is Timmy lounging around in the backyard. As you can see, he feels quite at home.

Not so the other cats, though they haven’t as yet packed up their bags and left home.

There has been quite a bit of argy bargy in the realm of cat politics over the past week, with Timmy starting to assert himself. He has miserably failed to win the affection of the either Lizzie (fat hope!) or Willy. They won’t have a bar of him. He makes them nervous and Lizzie is positively hostile to him. There have been several fiery close encounters between Lizzie and Timmy with neither cat actually gaining anything, though Lizzie put on such a fierce wild-cat display the other day, it caused Timmy to back away. We are woken in the early hours by the occasional shriek, but more often growling and hissing.

This morning all three cats were on the bed, though Willy climbed under the sheets. Two persons were between the other two who were glaring at each other venomously.

Peace only descends at meal times. Timmy must have been used to some other regimen, as at first he didn’t seem to like any food we put before him. Now, realising that he gets fed regularly, morning and night; he hoes in readily and eats a variety of cat food.

This situation is interesting for observing cat behaviour and marvelling at their intelligence in handling tricky situations. I observed Lizzie the other day. She wanted to get past Timmy, who was sitting directly in her path. She was under the impression that he would spring on her as soon as she moved, so she waited until B walked between the two of them, and used his brief buffer zone to get past the danger area. It reminded me somewhat of getting through tricky spots in a computer game. Willy, being younger and more agile can slip past Timmy before he realises that he’s been dodged, but has to put up with Timmy stalking him, with what intent we are uncertain, but Willy regards this pursuance as potentially hostile.

How long this state of affairs will last is hard to fathom. They’ll eventually sort it out and live in relative peace with each other, hopefully sooner than later.

Update on Spring Racing Carnival

Saturday’ s race meeting in Melbourne went ahead as anticipated and there is still no sign of the EI virus in Victoria, so it’s looking good for my day at the races in a week or so.

I had a few modest wagers on Saturday and was quite successful – 3 winners and 1 second place. My super stable balance was boosted by $140,000+ in virtual earnings. Haradasun was pipped at the post by the amazing Miss Finland who travelled from Adelaide the day before the race, but still managed to put up a good fighting finish.

Spring’s looking good again racing wise, all going well as far as the virus is concerned.

As it’s now officially spring, here’s another spring photo – the backyard resplendent with plum blossom, seen here through the boughs of the fig tree.