Cats and Knitting

When I arrived at the supermarket checkout on Thursday afternoon, I wasn’t really listening and when the cashier said something about a bag, I said no I didn’t need one.  The boy behind me said he’d have it if I didn’t want it, so I asked her what she had said.  Apparently, as I’d spent more than €50 I was eligible for a surprise bag from the Information Desk.  It contained a carton of vegetable soup, six bags of roasted chicken flavoured crisps and a cellophaned sponge cake.  Ah well – I expect the children will eat them.  The bag however, being a stiff paper carrier, has been taken over by Purrdy.

It reminded me of an incident in 1969, when I was living in London and had a new kitten called Sampsa.  The kitten was first called Sampson and then we found out it was a girl, hence the odd name.  I came back from work one afternoon to find that Sampsa was trying to walk with the string-handled paper carrier, from the previous night’s Chinese takeaway, attached to her.  She had obviously climbed into the bag and on climbing out had got one of the string handles around her neck and had not been able to get it off.

Sampsa used up most of her nine lives in the first few months of her life.  Another day I came home and couldn’t find her at all.  It was an hour or so later when I went up to the bathroom and found her straddling the lavatory pan trying not to be in the water.  Heavens knows how long she had been there.

I sat down on Thursday morning to read 40 pages of Crossing Qalandiya, the book club choice for Monday's discussion afternoon.   It was a short, 160 page, book of letters between an Israeli Jewish mother and a Palestinian Arab mother, who had met once at a conference in Geneva. 

I had decided to read 40 pages a day to get it read by Monday as I was running out of time, but in fact, read the whole thing in the morning.  It held my attention, with me wanting to know how things panned out and I would recommend it.

I made pumpkin soup using exactly the same method as for butternut squash.  I was going to add carrot, but completely forgot - senior moment!  I used just about a third of the pumpkin and will use the rest  for more soups. 

It may not look very attractive in the roasting pan, but believe me once it was liquidised, passed through a sieve and had cream and pili pili added, it tasted lovely and luckily will last a couple more days. 

I started my second sock yesterday but when I took the first one out I realised I had made a mistake in the first one and will have to undo it - buxxer, buxxer, buxxer.  I had forgotten how much cats like moving knitting needles and wool snaking about!

Today I knitted the second sock almost to the top and have put it away now to chill out in bed with recorded television programmes.

I'll finish with a photo of Daisy lying in a way all of the cats do at some time or other, with body twisted so the head and front paws are one way and the back paws and lower body the other. 

Very strange position; you wouldn't think it was very comfortable would you?

Three things I like:

1.   Being so involved in knitting my sock today, that the hours whizzed by.
2.   Hearing from my physio that she can come round and do my back this week.
3.   That for once, I've managed to finished my book well before Book Club afternoon.