I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her equal would be hard to find, she likes the warm and sunny spots. All day she sits beside the hearth or on the bed or on my hat: She sits and sits and sits and sits--and that's what makes a Gumbie Cat! T S Eliot

This is Scribble,

Scribble is the cat that lives at The Old Bakery.
It would be wrong to say that she is 'our' cat as like all cats she is beholden only to herself.

We have cohabited for about 10 years now and it is fair to say that we both understand, and put up with, each others little foibles.

We brought her into the family from an RSPCA rescue centre along with Mr. Gladstonebags, a big black furry male soppy cat who Scribble doted upon.

Soon after they joined us Gladstone was diagnosed with a heart murmur and given only a year to live. He lived a 'relaxed' life and was seemingly never in discomfort going on to enjoy a further 3 years of life before he finally died.

Scribble clearly had great affection for him and spent many hours washing and grooming him for which he tolerated her with good temper.

They were very close and it was quite a loss to us all when he died but as is often the way with rescue cats you never know of their pre-adoption life and clearly their bond was long and strong. Thus Scribble was clearly saddened that her best buddy had disappeared. It is at times like these that you wished you could talk to your cats, but alas all we could do was give her a spread more of attention and pour on a dollop of extra affection too.



Originally Scribble was my daughter's cat, well the idea was that she was responsible for her but my daughter headed off to University and we were left with Scribble to look after.
I can understand why Claire left her behind, firstly because the Halls have a NO PET policy and
secondly because whenever any of us sit down to do any work Scribble will come up and sit on whatever it is that we need to read.

You can put 10 separate pieces of paper on a desk and only NEED to use one of them and she will seek it out and plump her big furry bottom onto it ~ game over!

We have tried all sorts of tricks to fool her, pretending to read one piece whilst really waiting for her to sit  so we can use another but it is a waste of time, she has the thing off to a fine skill. I'm thinking of entering her on to Britain's Got Talent, she is far cleverer than that dumb dog, however whilst it is a true (and very annoying) talent I really cannot see how it can be put to good use. Perhaps I could hire her out to the people that sell Time Shares and she could discretely sit on the part of the contract that tells the punters they are signing a contract which will tie them in for the rest of their lives. Or I could stick a Royal Charter seal up her butt and she could officially approve all of our new laws on behalf of the Queen as she is starting to delegate more tasks.

The long and the short of it is that whenever you want to get on and do something Scribble turns up and either puts her metaphorical bum in the blinking way and more often than not this involves her putting her actual bum in the way.
Here she decided to sit on the pile of towels that I was stacking, so I just carried on stacking them but she didn't seem to give a hoot.




Time marches on and here we are in different circumstances and a new dynamic. I used to see Scribble early in the morning and then often late in the evening when I returned from my ludicrously long hours working at the Supermarket. It's all changed now of course as my work is this place and Scribble is always 'there'. As a result we have developed a routine much as a retired couple would do and I guess I have become a 'second best' to Gladstonebags as well.


The day starts with Scribble normally waking one of us up with a niggling meooowww out side the bedroom door. Obviously we both pretend to be asleep adding a little snore for effect hoping that the other one will go to feed her (much the same as when the children were babies and wanted feeding in the night). When we are both at our maxim 'acting asleep' capabilities and at warp factor 5 for obstinacy then Scribble will start to scratch and paw the hall carpet whilst emanating a blood curdling wail that will eventually cause one of us to break and get up in a huff thumping across the bedroom floor and making it quite clear to the other person that he or she should have got up instead. Alison can even make a crash and a bash whilst putting on her dressing gown, I admire that.

That reminds me that earlier today I was fooled. I seem to be under a constant barrage of various noises from telephones to Microwaves. It seems that every bit of kit wants to let you know it is there. If you don't open the microwave once it has gone ping then it won't let you forget and a few minutes later it will ping at you again..... then again until you can be arsed to open the door and then close it immediately to shut the darn thing up.
The fridge and the freezer beep at me if I have the door open for too long (in their opinion!).
The fire alarms let a random peep out just to keep me guessing.
And as for my new phone well it rings, beeps, sings, whistles and even knocks at me. The knock makes me jump as it sounds like someone knocking on the window. I don't know what half of these sounds mean or why it is bothering me. All I know is that it does every noise but burp, somethings remain in my domain.
So with this constant shock and awe bombardment of sounds I was totally confused by a 'dingggg' noise that I heard in the bedroom whilst I was drying my hair. Every time I had the towel drying my head I heard this new sound, slightly muffled by the towel, go 'dinngggg'. Well I stopped drying and patiently listened for it. Nothing. So naturally just as I started to dry my hair again... 'Dinngggg'. I'd whip the towel off to try to locate it but it was too late.

I checked my mobile, I checked the alarm, I checked the answer phone, I even looked out the window, still no sign whatsoever of where this 'Ding' came from.

EVENTUALLY as I 'threw the towel in', well onto the bed I found out what it was. Every time I dried my hair the loose end of the towel had kept flicking against the brass bed knob of the bed.... 'Dingggg'........ Duuurrrr!

Back to Scribble. Well as I say we are like an old married couple (without the 'relations' bit just for the record). She'll have breakfast and then have a morning snooze to shake of all that sleeping she had done all night. At about noon she will want to go into the garden to pester some wild life and at about 4:30pm she will come in for her tea.

However this 'partner' obviously doesn't speak the same language as me, OR should I say that I don't speak the same language as her for we are both equals in this inability to communicate. When Alison is at home well then I'm in the majority and feel superior to the cat but when it is just us two and I'm trying to tell her something or she is meowing something or other to me well it is just like trying to speak to a foreigner. I remember trying to explain to a french garage mechanic that my cars clutch was slipping. What an earth is the french for clutch slipping? It ended up with me doing an embarrassing charade, Marcel Marceau style. Well Scribble will come to me with a longing meow and I won't have a clue what she is saying but that doesn't stop her just as a true brit will use the shout it louder technique with Jonny foreigner Scribble uses the persistence method in the belief if she says it often enough I'll get it.

Eventually we both give up either she will walk off with a grump or I'll go into another room and shut the door so I can't hear her. That normally resolves it for me. Perhaps the power of the door handle gives me that superiority back after all. 

So we bumble on and in the evening she jumps up onto my lap and will flop out there until I go to bed only getting off when I have to go to the loo, which seems to happen more often now days.

We were watching a great Horizon TV programme in which they tracked 50 cats in a small village for 1 week with GPS devices. They over layed the cats movements on to a map of the village and you could clearly see how far they had traveled. Many had gone to a neighbours house and eaten their cats food and some had gone to a near by farm. If you did this with Scribble it would just be a line between the sofa, the food bowl, our bedroom and my lap...... You'd just have a blob to illustrate all her movement.

She is a pest at times and comforting at other times. Most of the guests adore her, even the guy that was allergic to cats liked her. So with all life long partners we just have to live with the foibles and tolerate the differences of opinion and concentrate on the positives, she's cute, she's fairly cheap and she is house trained.......  And the cat is OK to live with as well!!

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