After a morning of sleeping on the sofa quite successfully while the kittens wandered about, Our Ginger's nerve cracked last night. As he came into the study, where we were watching the final part of Dan Cruickshank's series on domestic architecture, he was mobbed by his tiny fans. Faced with a kitten at every turn he climbed on to the footstool, fur standing up all along his back, and began to howl. I took him out into the hall, while the Systems Administrator shut the study door with the kittens inside.
Our Ginger sat down in the outer hall, staring out into the garden, tail lashing, while I sat down next to him and stroked him, murmuring that it was rotten of us to fill his house up with rats and that he was doing very well. We stayed there for some time, until the SA opened the study door to see where I'd got to and whether to abandon Dan Cruickshank, and the tiny fans shot past the SA's ankles towards Our Ginger. Looking at the three little remorselessly advancing black and white faces and three sets of white feet from closer to Our Ginger's perspective than I usually see them, I had to admit that they did look quite creepy.
Our Ginger bolted through the cat door, the SA ran about in circles rounding up the kittens, and I followed Our Ginger into the garden. He consented to be called back from the concrete, and we sat on the doorstep for a while then he agreed to come back into the house. Eventually I got to see the last bit of Dan Cruickshank, which I was glad about as we'd just got to the Ronan Point disaster and the key design difference between that and the earliest tower blocks, as well as the construction failures of the former.
Our Ginger was still in residence this morning, appearing in the bedroom just as I was getting up. The SA had already disappeared into the bathroom so I felt obliged to go back to bed for ten minutes so that Our Ginger could lie on the bed with me. John Humphrys was in particularly annoying form so we listened to Radio 3 for the duration.
By evening the kittens' clockwork had finally run down and they were all lying flaked out in the sitting room when I heard the cat flap bang, and went to the front door to find Our Ginger had nipped in for some supper and was sitting on the doorstep washing. I opened the front door and inner glass doors for him and he strolled into the house, to be met by his tiny fanboys streaming down the hall to meet him. He magisterially touched noses with them as he passed by, and settled on the sofa where he went to sleep, once we had persuaded them not to climb up there to join him. All three sat in an adoring row for several minutes gazing up at him.
They are now amusing themselves with my fleece on the other sofa, while Our Ginger slumbers. We are going to usher them into the study with us while we have supper, to give him some peace. I am trying not to take it personally that our new cats find our existing cat so much more fascinating than us.
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