Up Front by Emma Hart

To be fair, I have slept with people with less respect for my boundaries.

Hahaha.

Love this paragraph.

To be fair, I’ve recently realised he’s not as stupid as I thought he was. Not ‘driving up the hill to look at the fires getting in the way of emergency services’ stupid. He’s just reckless. ‘Being the Prime Minister on TV suggesting both fires might be arson’ reckless.

Thanks for brightening my day.

He’s going to continue to be a murdery disaster his whole life

Even mature cats do odd things. Here's Colin sitting in the cubbyhole by our new Ikea shelves last week.

Min’s brother, Killigula, is an arsehole. The scratchiest bitiest – but smartest – cat we’ve ever had. He watches, intently as we do anything. He opens doors to let the dog through, he switches on lights (yep), and he runs inside and climbs people and nests in their hair.

I’m gutted about the Hills. So many layers of connection and memory that can’t I think about up there without torrential weeping. Many of my family lie there, in one way or another, and so many trees planted by all of us.
So many are burned and more will die in the coming weeks, and then we will start again, so my grandchilden and great-children can see what we had.

More tomorrow. Music today.

Apollo is our evil cat. At random times for no discernible reason he will savagely attack our arms - full on death claw and bite to the bone mode. We don't know why. For the rest of the time he's lovely, last night he wanted cuddles so came and lay on my mouse hand and purred. he doesn't do laps but likes to be between us so we have to leave a space on the couch just for him.

Artemis is his sister and a perfect example of why you should be very careful with cat names - after discovering who she was named after she has spent every minute of every night trying to live up to her name. She's generous though - she will bring her victims up to our bedroom to let us play with them too ... at 3 am.

Min's brother, Killigula, is an arsehole.

Crikey they look alike. I tried to get Min to come look (he can see 'the cat in the mirror' and watches bird videos and stuff), but he's too busy outside seeing how many foxgloves he can eat before he dies.

Colin

I'm pretty sure our Min learned his 'lounging around between the keyboard and monitor' trick from your Colin.

Even mature cats do odd things. Here's Colin sitting in the cubbyhole by our new Ikea shelves last week.

Apollo has decided the place to sleep is on top of my rucksack which I put down on the workbench in the garage.

Here’s Colin sitting in the cubbyhole by our new Ikea shelves last week.

I’m envious of those shelves. You’ve stacked shelf stuff any old how.
Like a quake virgin.

Our cat is dead.
Life is heaven.
No cat hair.
No cat food.
No baby - er- cat sitters required
We own the house again.
No shit.

This is Rufus. Rufus is an arsehole. And unfathomably stupid. In this picture, he is attacking one of his primary nemeses, the potatoes. Other arsehole things Rufus does:

- pees in the hallway
- shreds the armchairs
- attacks the children (for no reason)
- bites the dogs on the legs and head (for no reason)

No body much likes him, but I do love him.

by our new Ikea shelves

They built a wall!!

He’s going to continue to be a murdery disaster his whole life, but at least he’ll never learn to use matches.

Tempting fate...

This is what he's doing right now. That thing he's trying to kill? Is a concrete statue of a cat.

P.S. An all-black cat is not the easiest thing in the world to photograph.

P.S. An all-black cat is not the easiest thing in the world to photograph.

In case you hadn't already seen it, turns out black cats are less popular for that reason. (At least amongst the selfie generation.)

Our Pudcat (her name) has this special Youtube viewing platform. Cockatoos singing and dancing are her favorite. I feel it really deep for Christchurch... can so understand screaming at the word "resilient". We should teach cats to attack on that command.

Even though I don’t live in Chch I’ve been having mild flashbacks of living in Berkeley/Oakland in ’89 (Loma Preita earthquake) and ’91 (Oakland Hills fire) watching (and smelling) the hills burn, people’s lives, cookbooks etc falling as ash around us

We used to love walking in the Hills …. but you know, all the grass and trees grew back, those 1000 houses were rebuilt …. the hills you love will return

I’m pretty sure our Min learned his ‘lounging around between the keyboard and monitor’ trick from your Colin.

DO NOT let the cats use the internet.

DO NOT let the cats use the internet.

This is basically my top answer to 'what do our cats do while we're asleep?'

To put Trump in perspective:

- there are 167 countries in the world, excluding microstates
- 51 (31%) of these are full on dictatorships
- 97 (58%) are authoritarian states that have some semblance of (manufactured) popular consent
- 15 (9%) are liberal capitalist states with regular elections and some sort of human rights oversight
- 4 (2%) are progressive states that are actually trying to move beyond late market capitalism

All Trump has done is to move the US from the third category to the second.

(Figures from here, but adjusted for my personal prejudices which differ from the Economist) E&OE

To put Trump in perspective:

Rejected due to absence of cat references or photos

Maisie is only an arsehole if you are a mouse (as illustrated), sparrow, or lost kitten crying piteously in the street. She is, however, stupid. So very stupid. It took her over a month to master the cat door and, even now, five years on, she occasionally forgets how it works and tries to pull it open instead of pushing.

We love her anyway and tell her frequently that she's lucky she's so pretty...

There's a cracking rocksteady song called 'little things'

Making the rounds.

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