crouching tiger, wary cat

The cats don’t often come inside the house, but I was sitting reading beside the log fire last night and thought I’d see if they wanted to join me. The one in the photo is the tamest of the lot and, on the rare occasion he gets the chance, he’s usually very happy to settle into an armchair and make himself at home. I’d forgotten that we’d rearranged things in the kitchen, though.

A cat can look at a king

Almost the first thing he saw when he came in was the tiger statue. He then spent over twenty minutes stalking, reversing and approaching with caution from different angles, before deciding that he’d really rather go back into the cold and dark of the garden than spend time in the same place as that fearsome creature.

don’t confuse the slaughtered pig

blog standard searches

WordPress – which is where this blog is hosted – provide statistics so bloggers can see how many readers they have and what brings them to the site.

I’m intrigued by the readers who arrive from search engines looking for specific things.

Or, more accurately, I’m intrigued by the things they are looking for. The image on the left shows the most popular search strings from a couple of days ago.

The variety of ways that people think of for searching for the same basic idea fascinates me. But, after all, if there’s more than one way to kill a cat, there’s probably more than one way to slaughter a pig.

last year’s cat

I said the next post would be more about poetry, but if it is, this page is going to begin to be very boringly text-heavy. So here’s a quick seasonal picture to brighten it up:

What do you mean, 'bonfire'?

The photo was taken last year and this cat is no longer with us. The rest of the semi-feral family are doing exactly the same with this year’s leaves, though.

roundabout they go

Patience is a pony

Over the last few days, the village has been celebrating yet more fiestas.

The main car park area by the river is given over to candyfloss and hotdog stands, the usual stalls selling tat, a bouncy castle or two and a few traditional funfair rides.

It’s all pretty run of the mill stuff. There are dodgem (bumper?) cars in two sizes, a couple of Torito Salvaje rides and a Canguro Loco. (I guess the first is a Spanish equivalent of a bucking bronco ride for kids, and the Krazy Kangaroo is a fairly standard kind of octopus ride.) Then, of course, there’s a carousel with painted horses and other fantasy creatures.

But one thing I don’t think you’ll see in the UK is the pony carousel. (The Spanish use the word pony to refer to shetland ponies.)

ferreting around on the web

A friend happened to comment that the latest edition of the Radio Times had meerkats on the front cover.

This got me wondering why meerkats hadn’t been “invented” when I was in school – they’re like an internet meme that sprang fully-formed in the public consciousness just a few years ago – and I did a quick bit of on-line research.