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The Bramble Diaries

Remember me? I am the Alentejo cat that might be getting new pets — the tall one and the red one.  They have been coming to see me most days and have been leaving me food.  I was very glad of it when it was raining all the time — they even left it on the porch so it would keep dry for me.

Now it is sunny, and I have spent my time trying to catch these two birds on the fence — so far they have eluded me! They are crafty; they steal my cat food and fly off just as I pounce.  I am patient though and, like me, they hang around most days.

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Call Me Bramble

They call me Bramble.  I have been living rough for several months since my friend died. Before that, I used to live in her house with four like me — all of whom have now disappeared along with the five large dogs that used to live outside. I was very afraid of them, they did not like us and used to hunt us in packs.  I hid inside a lot.

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The Cat that Refuses to Listen

In the last year, I have learned a lot about what it means to live with a cat. For the most part, it has been a pleasant experience, with Abby being nice company and a good addition to the mix. Sometimes, however, she can be a supreme, nuisance — fortunately, this is not too often the case.

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Treat: Ten Sentence Story #102

Johann was getting more than a little bit worried about his little cat Danielle.

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Sticking to Holistic Cat Food for Less Stinky Poopy

Shortly after we came to realize Abby was going to be staying with us for the foreseeable future, we decided to switch things up in her diet. She had been on a diet of supermarket cat food, largely the sort that you can buy in large quantities for an extremely low price. I’m not knocking the food based on the price but what we went on to discover made us wonder about our former cat food choice.

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Living With Abby, Our Strange and Wonderful Cat

Picture the following scenario — I am up at three in the morning because I feel like I need to get a drink of water, the sensation of dehydration all over me. I get up out of bed and find my way to the door, and am about halfway to the kitchen when I just about trip over a bowl of cat kibble. This is not the first time this has happened, and I doubt that it will be the last. The cat is trying to send us a message and we must hear her loudly and clearly — “I WANT MORE FOOD!” When our cat Abby feels that there is not enough food in her bowl, she will drag it out into the middle of the room. It doesn’t matter that there may be what looks like plenty of food in the bowl — it is her judgment call, not ours, that ultimately matters.

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When Neighbors Intrude Without Entering

There is a good chance that television and movies have spoiled me with regards to how I expect neighbors in an apartment building to behave. I understand that not every neighbor is going to be aware of the rules for urban dwelling and certainly isn’t going to make cups of sugar available for loan, but some things that our neighbors do just defy the imagination.

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The Chinese Subway Fire Drill

I was ready to write a humor based article on how you can gauge the importance of a subway service announcement from how easy it is to understand it — the more important the announcement, the more likely that it will be garbled and impossible to understand. This is despite the fact that many service announcements are pre-recorded and have been for awhile.

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The Cutest Cat in the Hat

Sometimes a rough day can be made better with an animal intervention, and yesterday was just such a day when the lovely Janna SMS’d me this image of her modeling the cutest cat hat I ever did see saw.

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Nina Simone and Cat Stevens

Nina Simone is one of our must unappreciated and undervalued Blues voices.  Evidence of such is found in the lack of instant recognition when you invoke her name and in the fact that her ovaric album of 50 songs and a video found in — “The Definitive Rarities Collection” — is currently selling for an incredibly cheap $7.99USD in the American iTunes store.  That’s less than 15-cents per song!

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