Why should cats use the toilet?

By popular demand, a full-on explanation of why I might want to teach my middle-aged cats to use the loo - necessarily there is comment here that one probably wouldn't want to read while eating dinner, so be warned.

There are in fact many reasons why I might want to attempt such a feat, but there is one overwhelming reason.

For the sake of completeness, the many reasons might include:

• To see if I can,
• So that I can say that my kit(s) are cleverer than anyone elses.
• To watch unsuspecting people's faces when they walk into the bathroom,
• It would be handy when living on a boat,
• My cat-sitter would appreciate it,
• And I've forgotten the others, but I'm sure I'll be reminded when I get home tonight.

The overwhelming and most immediate reason though, is a cat who moved in two doors down a couple of years ago. He is a big silver tabby with white socks, so when in polite company, I call him Socks. Otherwise he is known as that f@(£ing little $&^t.

Socks is a boy - a fact that has been verified several times while running away from me as I call his (non-polite company) name - in his full male prime He is also an alpha, which means that he thinks he is master of all he surveys.

Much fighting has taken place over the last couple of years. At its worst point, it included incursions into my kitchen and an attempt to spray everything in sight - this latter was only attempted once that I know of, and the contents of a full glass of orange juice sent him home with a very strange and strangled howl.

Ultimately though, my three middle-aged wimps kits have agreed that all he surveys includes my back garden (but not the kitchen), so he likes to sit outside the cat-flap and box it. Or leave a poo there. Although he hasn't done that in a while. Now I think on it, he hasn't done it since...

I keep a large squeezy bottle full of... fluid... by the back door. By fluid I mean it varies. Mostly just water. Sometimes there's lemon juice in there too. Sometimes there's squash in there. Once there was washing water with a bit of fairy liquid - that was an accident. Once it was water with a large dollop of onion grave - that was not an accident.

... on one occasion I emptied the litter tray and then realised that I was out of litter when just a few tiny granules rolled out of the bag. So I went dashing off to Tesco to get a new bag, and by the time I came back, one, or more likely two, of the kits had been for a very long pee. Dutifully in the tray with the few granules of litter swimming around desperately trying to soak it all up. Socks boxed the cat-flat and in one of those moments of absolute clarity, I took the tray into the room above the back door and tipped the contents out through the window.

Note that I have no intention of hurting the little $&^t, just scaring him. This has worked and it is now scared of me.

So now it only terrorises my tribe when I'm not there. Which is not quite how I'd envisioned things turning out, and I now have three cats who religiously use the litter tray as they will no longer go outside unless I'm there to guard against intruders. Or I have the hoover out.

As you can imagine, 24 hours worth of cat poo and pee x3 in a tray in my bathroom is not pleasant, to put it mildly. So if I can get one, two or all three to use the toilet, it's got to be an improvement.

I have been told by, and have read of, many people who have succeeded in training their cats to use the loo and that as long as one is patient, it can be done no matter how old the cat. Of course, the methodology does vary, as does end-result occasionally.

One poor lady spent three months of painstaking training to get her three beautiful pure-white kitties to do their business in the toilet, and ended up with three off-white mogs that thought the toilet was their private drinking fountain.

Wish me luck.

I thought March was supposed be the mad month?

A couple of weeks ago, I discovered that my boy Neko (the cat), likes dry semolina. I discovered this as I was making shortbread and he came to help. I was so busy defending the butter that I was taken quite by surprise when he aimed for the semolina. 

In my bid to teach the tribe to use the toilet, the litter tray has successfully migrated across the bathroom floor and next to the toilet. I've also used a low cardboard box full of books to raise it by a couple of inches. Rio and Neko are totally unfazed by the project, although I don't think any of those books will be touched by human hand ever again.

Callie, on the other hand, isn't quite so sure about the idea.

Last week I went to a DIY show at the NEC in Birmingham. It was a very good show, with a much better atmosphere than most of the trade shows have had for a couple years. Even when some of the demonstrations on people's stands didn't go to plan - glue guns not gluing, jam-free nailers jamming, straight lines going wonky - it was all done with good humour and only added to the event.

And it was my favourite kind of show where I spent most of it taking pictures. Not like the camera phone effort here, but proper ones with my big camera. We had a stand there too which was great for resting feet and back now and again, but was a bit naked so I didn't take a picture of it. The only problem was trying to write stuff and details at the same time.

Insanely I decided to go up both days by train - mostly as an experiment, but also because it's cheaper. The first day was a disaster, (I'm actually not going to rant, I promise) with the Southeastern superslug hanging about outside St Pancras for half an hour due to points failure, so that I missed my connecting train from Euston. Fortunately, my boss also missed the train because of tube problems, so we both ended up on the same later train. 

On the return, the Virgin train was half an hour late - because someone had run a van into a railway bridge support. But, I've had this theory for a while now, that there are some frustrated Formula 1 drivers out there driving trains - we have at least one on one of my regular trains home. And one such was clearly driving my train from Birmingham that day, because we got to Euston something like just five minutes late. The second day was just perfect.

There was one scary moment at Birmingham International - there were several thousand people on the platform meant that those of us on the yellow line couldn't step back - when a cargo train came steaming through at a squillion miles an hour just two feet from the end of my nose. *gulp!*

The trouble with the spring trade shows is that they often collide with our press week, and this one was no different. So with being out of the office seeing people, the show, sales still selling over and beyond the last possible moment and such things, we ended up with almost no time to put the issue together. We made it a bit more than no time by working through the weekend - albeit from my own sofa with Star Trek on in the background - but we are just about done now and I'm knackered - looking forward to a large glass of wine tomorrow and a lie-in Saturday.

Additional problems meant that last Friday I had no Mac at work because super duper new power cable died. On Monday is decided to work again, but Friday I may have been in a bit of a strop. Possibly.

It has been a good week at work for goodies - I guess the other mags realised that we were going hell-for-leather - Monday was home-made chocolate brownies from one lady, Tuesday was a pack of Fox's Rounds from another, and today has been cream cakes from a visitor. *burp*

With all these deep and meaningful issues and topics on our website, the one story that has actually prompted debate, discussion, comment and opinion is the one about tradesmen getting propositioned. Go figure.

On Tuesday I decided that improving my handwriting is a must as I couldn't read any of the notes I'd taken at the trade show. Good job I have an excellent memory for power tools and cute bloke's faces.

Neko had a poorly tummy over the weekend, which meant added cleaning up type fun. I knew that the semolina was never going to end well.

I tried to get rid of some of my old books. They're only worth something like 50p each with zero demand behind them, so auctioning them is pointless, and boot-fairing them is too much hard work for little to no return. So I decided to donate to charity. It's really, really difficult to give to charity - mostly because whoever you speak to doesn't know the answer to absolutely any question you care to ask. 

'Are you taking books?' 

'I don't know, you'll have to ask Fred.' 

'Can I speak to Fred?'

'I don't know where he is.'

'Well, when is the best time to catch him?'

'I don't know, he doesn't come in very often.'

'Can I leave my number for him to call me?'

'I don't know if he'll get a message.'

'But he will if you give it to him.'

'I don't know if I'll see him.'

And so on...

 

Lovely eateries in London

On Thursday I went to the Kensington Roof Gardens, which I've been to before. The difficult thing about the place is that you have to go down a dodgy side street to find the entrance.


It's easy to lose confidence that you're in the right place when you're in your 'lounge suit' grade of attire and suddenly surrounded by blokes unloading delivery trucks all about.
But having found the entrance and taken the lift up the gardens, they are a lovely oasis that is hard to believe is in the centre of London.

It's not huge, being on a roof, but there are several styles of gardens with flamingoes and ornamental ducks, as well the pond with footbridge, trees, flowers and shrubs.

And I mean proper trees with proper roots, which made several people wonder how the building supported it all without a random root popping through a light fitting in the floor below.

On Friday, I had a working lunch in Covent Garden at Carluccios, which was extraordinarily civilised. Fettuccine with wild boar ragu followed by Tiramisu made with strong espresso coffee and coffee liqueur - I love Italian!

Shortbread and Stratford

My two greatest accomplishments at the weekend involved shortbread and tooth picks.

I made shortbread on Sunday which was really scrummy. Semolina makes all the difference!

Saturday morning I found that Tesco does cheaper versions of those very expensive tooth pick/brush thingies. Saturday afternoon I discovered exactly why they are cheaper. They are two weak to get through the gaps between teeth unless you have the kind of gaps that cargo tankers can get through, and the little brush filaments come off as you brush so you need three or four brushes per attempt. Phooey!

I went to darkest Essex on Tuesday, which was an adventure - by train. The super-slug (aka HS-1, Javelin, Hi-speed train), was very civilised and I had a nice chat with a chap who works in greetings cards.

When I got up to debark at Stratford, the entire carriage looked at me like I had three heads - apparently no one gets off at Stratford!

Which is a building site, by the way. There is no way from Stratford International (which seems to be made entirely of concrete and is very grey), to Stratford mainline, so you have to take a shuttle bus which negotiates the building works.  For those who have seen Harry Potter 3 - think Knight Bus. The driver drove like that, and I *swear* had the Lenny Henry voice.

Negotiating the building site included navigating reversing cement mixers, mini-vans full of construction workers and tractor, none of of whom were using the highway code. We had a different driver on the return, later that day, but the style and situation were almost identical and the driver of the return bus turned out to be the cousin of the driver on the way out.

While Stratford International is sterile, empty and grey, Stratford main line is completely different - dirty chaotic and completely confused. Looking for the right train is like looking for the needle when no one knows where the haystack is.

Staff gave me conflicting and mostly wrong information, the sign for the 11.05 train to Ipswich which had departed on time was still up when the 11.35 Norwich train came and went, and again as the 11.37 Southend train came and went.

Fortunately, not being run by Southeastern, the trains were all exactly on time, so having ascertained that I wanted the 11.45 from platform 10, I just got on the one that turned up at 11.45, which Doris (the formless voice that announces stations) confirmed was the one I wanted.

 The inside of some National Express trains are stunningly purple, which was a shock to the eyeballs.

On the return journey there were two points to note. The first, that Chelmsford station has the most dilapidated looking signal box(?) ever.

 And the second, that Stratford International, in the middle of the rush hour has to be the emptiest station in the history of railway stations.