The Bells, The Bells !!!

Morning readers. Our worst fears have come to fruition. "My poncy brother" - I can't stand him, looks like he is going to make a full recovery from his swollen head. He is almost back to normal this morning - well what qualifies as normal in his case. I now know that the course of antibiotics he is on lasts for another four days. Four more days of big fat juicy king prawns. It is driving me mad. Perhaps he will choke on one of them. It was terrible this morning - a little baby prawn for me, another little baby prawn for "my stupid sister" and then a huge great big one for him. "The housekeeping staff "are really daft. They don't realise that as soon as they are not looking he spits the tablets out under a bush. This is a picture of me in the garden looking thoroughly hacked off upon learning that he is on the mend. "My Stupid sister" was none too impressed either! Anyway, enough of this. Today I thought I would tell you about an acquaintance of mine, a cat that lives five or six houses away. A most strange looking tabby thing with stripes on it - never seen anything like it before, not even up at the council dump where I was born. I can assure you there were some very peculiar cats there!! I call it Quasimodo, because it wears a collar with a bell on it. You can hear him coming from miles away. He is as mad as a hatter - all the time he just keeps repeating, "the bells, the bells......", over and over again. He is as deaf as a post as well, ringing in the ears I expect. Ho Ho! What is really cruel, or funny, depending on how you look at it, is that when he was a lad he had the misfortune to be run over by a pushbike, so now he thinks he is being chased by a gang of demented invisible cyclists continuously ringing their bicycle bells.

In one of his rare lucid moments he told me that years ago he had decimated the local bird population and this is why his owners make him wear a bell. I have subsequently discovered that he was fitted-up for the crime - an old black tom was in the frame, and in order to get off the hook, planted a couple of dead sparrows in Quasimodo's bed. The gullible owners went for it - hook, line and sinker, hence the bell. In one of the gardens nearby there is one of those wind chime things. Just for a bit of sport you understand, when we hear him coming along the back wall, me and "my poncy brother" love nothing more than to pat the chime thing with our paws. Poor old Quasimodo is so far gone, he thinks the invisible bikes are coming at him from all sides - oh how we laugh!

They tried to put a collar on me once. For fleas apparently - what a cheek. I soon got rid of it. "My stupid sister" said it was a nice colour and that blue suited me. She had a red one and really liked it, prancing about and showing off to anyone that bothered to take notice. The smile was soon wiped off her face when they put a lampshade round her head for a couple of weeks - now that really was funny. I'll tell you about that another day.

That's your lot for today. Off to see if I can scrounge a snack before lunch. A few big juicy king prawns would be nice - perhaps if I got put on antibiotics - now there's a thought!!! What a life! Albert the Cat.