March 13th & 14th
The lambs have been apprehended and put behind wire.

Having tortured the newly planted trees, biting leaf after leaf off in their quest for information which was not forthcoming, they accosted the builders, hijacked Brent’s car and wrote stuff with their sharp hooves in the freshly laid concrete.

“What the hell is going on” I asked Bedlamb, who seems to be the thinking lamb.

“Tis the will of Maaalah Akbaaa” he said nodding his head wisely, a slight tension showing only in the impatient chewing of his cud.
“You what?” - I had forgotten Zeuss’s warning that the lambs were in fact militant Islambic extremists.

I didn’t get any more out of Maahamad Maali formally known as Bedlamb so I asked Zeuss later, if he knew anything more.
“Vegilantes” he said, “they are woolly Vegilantes”.

March 11th
Brent and I went to listen to Richard Dawkins lecturing in Christchurch. Brent had surprised me with tickets and we sat right up the front. Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion & the Selfish Gene among other brilliant books) is my hero, I was star struck.

He took questions from the floor at the end of his lecture so I furiously racked y brains for something intelligent to ask this great man simply so I could bask for a moment in his intellectual glow.

Fortunately, for Brent, I kept my trap shut as people were asking unbelievably smart things about the laws of quantum physics in relation to the universe and what he thought of the expanding universe theory.

I had my Schmart glasses on for the whole lecture which was a good thing as they made it possible for me to understand what he was talking about.
Quite frankly I really felt the urge to ask him if what he thinks of my theorem of the universal rule of buttock expansion”.

March 9th
I’ve spent the last couple of days feeling unbelievably proud of myself.
I actually managed to get my TAX return (the big yearly one) done – on time and IN ORDER.
I’d had a meeting with my accountant the week before where he’d explained what to do along with a bunch of interesting stuff which had nothing to do with accounting.

My accountant knows how to handle me – he knows that in order to keep my eyes from glazing over he needs to spend no more than 5 seconds should be taken up with accounting stuff. Instead we talked about Global Dimming, which I took to mean the human race’s slide into utter stupidity (DUHism) but which actually means something else, basically …The counteraction of Global Warming due to Carbon Particle Reflection; very scary stuff. (And I wrote that without even having to look it up!)

Anyhow the end result was a frenetic flurry of activity, swearing and grumpiness ending with the finished TAX return and me feeling rather pleased with myself.
Of course I then rushed it round to my accountant who sat suitably gobsmacked as I presented it to him.
“I don’t believe it” he said as he looked through it.
I know”, I replied, “I can hardly believe it myself, it nearly killed me but here it is”.

He looked at me over the top of his glasses – not always a good sign, “Cathy,” he said, sternly, “This is good, you’re all done this year bar March, but what I need is LAST YEARS TAX return”.

March 8th
I arrived home to find Flossom sitting in one of the large planter boxes at the back door.

“What are you doing? I asked.

“Gaining experience for writing my novel” she said as if I should have known that.

I heard a small cough behind me, Zeuss stood looking up at me, his innocent blue eyes twinkling;
“Have you got anything to do with this Zeuss?”

He denied all knowledge but indicated that he had a bit of a fuel deficit.

I found out all I needed to know later from Partly; Apparently Zeuss decided to run a creative writing workshop, which all the cats attended. He had instructed his class to write about what it would be like to be something else. “Like what?” asked Flossom, who doesn’t have much of an imagination.

“Well”, said Zeuss; “Like a dog”. He then went on to tell the group that whatever they chose, they must ‘experience the essence’ of it. “Research” he said, “Become your subject”.

Flossom chose a pot plant.

March 6th & 7th
Brent has been putting his farming ‘skills’ to work.

He is building a fence to keep the sheep; who have helpfully pruned all our trees, and the horses in.

Because Brent is a man, he never admits he doesn’t know how to do something. Instead of asking for help, or reading a book about it, he just invents new ways of doing stuff and the fencing job was no exception.

I drove up just in time to see him hooking up a complicated looking system of pulleys and cables to a couple of hunks of wood which in turn were attached by more cables to the tow bar of the car.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Straining the fence” he replied as if I should have known that that was what he was doing.

He got into the car and drove it forward to take up the slack, then he revved the engine a bit and the fence looked quite good for a few seconds before the car suddenly shot forward taking with it the strainer post and a pile of wire. Imagine my surprise.

“Bugger” said Brent, “I didn’t expect that to happen”.

Next week he will be doing a whole lot of stuff involving fence posts, concrete and wooden battens...

 

 

March 4th
Zeuss has taken up writing and singing Reggae.

We went through his song list together...

1. ‘Possovitz Vibrations’ – all about a cat who is so fat the floor vibrates every time she takes a step.

2. ‘Crazy Baldhead’ – a song about the time Brent discovered a mummified rabbit under his side of the bed.

3. ‘What the Cat Fits’ – a ballad about the cat door and “how some cats just don’t fit it” he said, looking over at Possovitz who was lying on her back purring happily in the sunshine.

4. ‘Fly to Me’ – “this is about a horizontally challenged pigeon wondering where to fly to”, explained Zeuss, licking his lips.

5. And finally ‘Yertle was a Good Cat’, which Grommart and Sticky, who grew up with the late legendary Yertle B’stard; helped write.

Zeuss was planning a concert which he downgraded to a recital, but, as bookings did not reach the expected (By Zeuss) 20,000, cancelled at the last minute and went rabbit hunting instead.

“So, how many bookings did we get, Grommart?” I asked; she was standing in as resident ticketek, “erm”, she said, frantically counting and then recounting with much sucking of pencil and paw twiddling, before looking up at me, “Two” she said finally.

 

March 3rd
I’ve been watching what I eat for 3 days.
I’d rather watch TV but this is essential viewing.
I went on an overnight horse trek with the Phantom and my friend Jess rode Nibbler for me. Some photographs were taken and you can clearly see that I have been hijacked by a hippopotamus in jodhpurs. It has my face but that body is plainly not mine.
Now I am starving it in the hope it will return to the Serengeti and stay there.