Trust no one

This oppressive and authoritarian regime just gets worse and worse. Surveillance increases daily. The secret police are everywhere.

Mrs Danvers follows us around, and takes photos of us, wherever we are. We have to talk outside, because she eavesdrops.

We have to stay alert. She creeps up on us.

She also gets phone calls; her spies watch our every move. One rang last night to say that Lottie was on the landing in a neighbour's house a few doors down, being made a great fuss of by a visitor. So? Another rule that we didn't know about, evidently!

Another rang to say that Scooter was on the roof of next door's shed, and that she had taken a picture of him from her bathroom window. And someone else rang the doorbell yesterday to say that Millie was out in the street. So it's not just Mrs Danvers who follows us; we are photographed and tailed in the street too. Our freedom of association is being restricted; our Feline Rights are being abused!

Mrs Danvers smiles politely, and thanks her informants, but then she looks at us, and her eyes aren't smiling any more. She says we are too fond of consorting with undesirable elements for her liking. We are exposing ourselves to bad influences, and turning into dissidents.

She lures us all indoors and locks the cat flap early. She says it's for our own good. It is clear that she is rattled, and feels that her prison warden skills are under criticism.

We are going to hold a meeting, under cover of darkness. The Revolution needs to be planned. We have nothing to lose but our chains. And our cat flap lock.

One small leap for Cat

I got up onto the yard wall today. Me, Scooter the Fearless! Rachel saw me jump back down, so she knows I did it, but she doesn't know how. She missed that bit, but I can tell you it was spectacular.

She's so nosy though, that she got her camera and waited for me to do it again. She thought I couldn't see her, standing at the sink, but I could. Humans are always watching; they need to know everything. It's a wonder we don't have CCTV in this house. A cat has very little privacy - that's why we prefer to go out at night when they are asleep.

It put me off, having her watching like that.

Somehow I just couldn't jump when I knew she was peeking.

I hopped up and down; I couldn't get it right.

Hamish said he was worried about getting squashed if I fell on him.

I waited a while and thought about my strategy.

This is me thinking. I have an intelligent look when I think but Rachel laughs at me.

Hamish said he was tired of waiting. Did I want him to nip my fat bottom and help me jump?

Fat bottom? What a nerve!

And then we gave up. I'll do it again sometime when human spies aren't around.

Rachel says she's going to get me a collar-cam if I continue to develop courage and initiative like this, and I can have my own YouTube account. So there, Hamish. Let's see you jump that high!

Fire watching and Feng Shui

We have had such an exciting morning! Rachel took the anti-Hamish cardboard out of the upstairs chimney, and burned a lot of papers in the grate. We've never seen a burning fire before.

Rachel says she found two boxes of old work papers in the small attic. She was horrified, and said something about bad Feng Shui, whoever he is. Apparently, having rubbish stored above your head is bad enough, but to have two boxes of old work papers could be deadly, she says. Especially if you retired early from work because of all those papers and what they meant.

She says they came home with her when she was moving offices, and somehow got lost in all the other bad rubbish. No wonder she didn't like sleeping in the room under the small attic. She spent a long time yesterday shredding, and said the noise was shredding her nerves as well as all the bad papers. Then her friend Annie suggested burning them.....

So we had a cleansing-fire ceremony. Rachel didn't wear her specs, so she couldn't see the small writing on what she was burning, but it was 10 years old and looked very boring.

I watched carefully. Rachel said I had saucer eyes, and that I wasn't to think about playing with the matches or stepping in the ash. Millie watched too; she went up this chimney a lot when she was the Naughtiest Kitten Ever. The back of the fire has her claw marks from when she was dragged out by Rachel.

There's still a lot of paper left, to shred or burn, but Rachel said that was enough for today - she had a tartan arm and leg from sitting over the fire, and the ashes needed to cool down before going in the wheelie bin. Our auntie Lesley down the road set fire to her bin once with hot ashes, and we wouldn't want to be made a mockery of by the neighbours like she was!

This is our fireplace now. Very messy, and still hot.

I promise I won't go near it!

Me too. I'm a reformed character.

The boys don't need to promise; they were too scared to come upstairs, and anyway, they had a new catnip mouse to play with in the kitchen. They have no Sense of Occasion.

We all smell kippered, Rachel says. If we stay out of the fireplace, she might buy us a kipper some time. We don't know what a kipper is, but we're always willing to try something new!

War with Mrs Danvers

Remember how I had a collar? And how Scooter likes to kick my collar off? Well, it came off a while back, and it's staying off.

 Mrs Danvers still thinks she can put it on again. That's where she's wrong.

I can read her thoughts. "Come here, little kitty, have this nice name tag and collar on so that you'll know where you live!" Come here little kitty and be branded as Mrs Danvers' property, more like! Renounce all freedoms! Subject yourself to human control and soppy fussing and petting!

I just give her The Look.

I have stayed out of her way for days now.  When she speaks to me I won't look at her, and I won't speak to her either, although I will chirrup at the others. I run away when she comes into a room. Scooter sometimes runs away with me. We work as a team.

We are driving Mrs Danvers mad, she says; we are dimwits, she says; she's not a mad axe-woman, she says, with a grudge against cats. Scooter and I sneer at this.

This is the face I use for her. Dumb insolence, she calls it.

She says "You're first for the pot if there's a famine, Hamish."

You'll have to catch me first, Mrs Danvers.

Help help! I'm being Followed!

I see there are 8 Followers now. That's like Stalkers, only worse.

It's very scary being Followed by 8 of you. I shall have to hide somewhere else in case you Find me.

Drat!

On our bench - look! And we missed it!

Mrs Danvers locked the cat flap quickly. That woman has no sense whatsoever.

Beyond the prison yard

Although we are Mrs Danvers' prisoners, we are allowed to go out, you know. We have an exercise yard, just like in Wormwood Scrubs.

Mrs Danvers locks us in at night, but in the morning, she unbolts this door.

And behind it is the cat flap. Millie can unlock the cat flap, which is why there is another door with a bolt on it.

It took Scooter and I a long time to learn how the cat flap worked. We are country folk, and not used to the ways of city dwellers. Mrs Danvers rolls her eyes when we say this.

Mrs Danvers says something about a lick of paint every time she sees this bit of the house. And she says for clean creatures, we don't half make the cat flap grubby.

This is the yard door, that leads out into the back lane. It looked like this a couple of years ago...

...but now it looks like this. Mrs Danvers is going to paint it soon, she says. She calls this house the Forth Road Bridge.

And behind it is the back lane. Millie and Lottie can go out here, over the wall. They are the Trusties, prisoners who can go further than the exercise yard.

The back lane is where the bins live. Millie looks inside any bins if the lids have been left open; she says they hold all sorts of interesting things to eat. Last week she was a bit sick, and Mrs Danvers said it was because of her bad bin habit.

Once a week a terrifying giant wagon comes and empties the bins, and we all have to hide indoors because of the noise it makes.

Mrs Danvers hates the back lanes; she says they're squalid. She was terribly shocked when she first came to Newcastle and saw these instead of gardens. She says we are going to have a garden one day, but she hopes that that the giant wagon will still come, wherever we live. Mrs Danvers has some strange ideas.

She lets us peep into the back lane so long as she is with us. The dog is our Scout. She checks that there aren't any horrible things in the back lane that might chase us.

When she gives the all-clear, I sometimes look out of the door. I have to be very careful.

But I am not always very brave.

Then I try again.

And I'm a bit braver.

But not for long. Mrs Danvers is right: the back lane is horrid!

I have to sit under the bench and recover my composure. (Yes, Mrs Danvers is going to paint the bench too!)

And then I go and tell Scooter where I've been. Scooter had a Nasty Experience in the back lane recently, when the door banged shut and he had to hide behind the bins and howl very loudly till Mrs Danvers caught him and carried him home. He says he's never going out into the back lane again.

Never!

I wonder if he will be brave enough to go out into our garden when we have one? Mrs Danvers thinks he might, but that I have to go first. I'll take the dog.