Cat

 

There was a cat.*  A small, sleek, slinky, dark brown Burmese with enormous eyes.  It—she—was sitting on the (padded) fender** when we came in.  Well 'sitting'.  Sitting is not really the word.  What we want is the verb form of 'they worshipped me in ancient Egypt, you know'.

            You may or may not remember that we were ringing handbells at Fernanda's tonight.***  I'm being ganged up on;  all my regular handbellers ring oftener than I do—as Niall likes to point out, trying, without a great deal of success, not to laugh fiendishly—not just Colin and Niall and Fernanda, but pretty much every handbeller I know, aside from the ones who do it only because you're holding a gun to their heads.†  I've been hearing about these Tuesday evenings for years now, and my standard excuse that I haven't got time to commute loses force when Fernanda is hosting it, since she lives about twelve minutes away. 

            And . . . she has a cat.  Niall and I were the first to arrive, and the cat Viewed us, as cats will, and appeared to find us less than entirely satisfactory, but you could see her telling herself that she had been well-bred, and that a well-bred cat does not stoop.  She may stalk, however, and this one stalked.  Out of the room.  Then Colin turned up, and we began to assail bob major††.  A fifth person arrived, but we were busy with poor bob††† and it wasn't till we crashed and burned that we noticed that the fifth person had gone all quiet, because he had a cat on his chest.  Colin, who is seriously a cat person, showed signs of being diverted from the sacred art of handbell ringing, and Fernanda said quellingly that Neith or Isis or Nephthys or whatever her name is wouldn't stick around long because, fascinating as potential worshippers are, she didn't like the noise the bells made.  And she did indeed disappear again shortly after this.

            I had had another crummy night last night, when I couldn't get to sleep and then I woke up way too early and lay there having the horrors‡ . . . till I sat up, feeling my pupils spinning like Catherine wheels, turned the light and Pooka on, and started ringing the frelling 3-4 to frelling bob major again.  How do I get myself into these things.  I was driven to it, like a cow backing away from a cow prod, but I did agree to learn an inside pair to bob major.  I had had a sudden traumatic thought last night when Niall, on our way home from tower ringing at South Desuetude,‡‡ said, I'm sure you'll be fine on the 3-4‡‡‡ and you're solid on the trebles.  —Er.  I am?  So I suspiciously had a refresher go on the trebles on Pooka, and—yup.  I still can't ring 3-4 reliably, but trying to learn it has entirely unseated my marginal stability on the trebles.  Aaaaaugh.  So today has perhaps been less about PEG II than about bob major.§

            And then there were six of us tonight, which meant we split up nicely into two groups of three—which meant minor.  I can ring bob minor. 

            Colin and Fernanda and I were one group, and we were perhaps none of us having one of our most brilliant evenings—furthermore I was on the frelling inside pair, which is enough to cause brain lesions in the susceptible—when there was unexpectedly a small lithe dark brown shadow gliding around the edges of the room.  She approached our little group of chairs—the three of us all valiantly ignoring her—took aim and—I suddenly had a cat in my lap.  I'm still ringing.  Colin is starting to lose it and Fernanda is saying, never mind the cat!  Keep ringing!  Nephthys stared up at me for a few seconds—I am now ringing with my hands better than lap-width apart, and up around my ears so I don't, you know, distress her or anything—tested  my lap with her front paws—sat—lay down—I'm still ringing—stood up—lay down again.  Settled.  Fernanda and I were coping—girls multitask you know—but Colin lost it.  He had to stop to laugh, and we fired out.  Feh.

            Nephthys was there for the rest of the evening.§§  When the groups shifted I said 'I can't move.  There's a cat in my lap.'  So the groups shifted around me.  During tea break when the five of us not dealing with kettles and cups rang plain hunt royal I was on the 9-10 which are big frelling wrist-breaker bells and I was ringing them at shoulder level so I wouldn't disturb the cat. 

            I finally had to put her down when Niall and I left.  The ancient Egyptians had a point.  I'm sure she's responsible for the fact that there were six of us tonight.  Which means I have two more days to get both the 3-4 thumped into my granite brain and the trebles reinstated.  There will be four of us on Thursday, so—major.

            The hellhounds found my lap very interesting when I got home. 

 * * *

* I know, I know, not a cat person.  Tell me about it.  The kitten monster next door at the cottage has become a vast, fluffy-tailed orange tom, but Phineas has been staying home in a weirdly persistent way, so I haven't contributed to the ex-kitten's attainment of vastness in a long time. 

** I want to call something you can sit on a settle—fenders are just railings—but settles are big bench things with backs, and this is just a little low cushioned kneeler that runs the width of the hearth.   We had two at the old house, in front of the two big fireplaces in the two sitting rooms.  But they're nice for sitting on and contemplating life, the universe, and the soggy smoking tangle of hacked-off branches you haven't given up on making burn yet.  That's one of the great things about a wood stove:  once it's going it'll burn anything.  Of course if you're burning a lot of anything you need to have the chimney cleaned about every six hours, which slightly defeats the purpose of cheap(er) heating.   But a nice padded thing, whatever you call it, beats crouching on the floor, whether your fire is behaving or not.

*** I suppose I may conceivably not have told you.  I do try to remember that not everyone is fascinated by method bell ringing and—although this is nearly inconceivable to me—some people have positively an aversion to bells^, especially handbells.^^ 

^ Probably no one who has survived reading this blog for more than two days however 

^^  Fancy schmancy tower bell ringers have been known to be rude about handbells.  But I know the truth.  They are merely trying to disguise their impotence and inadequacy.  Handbells is an extreme sport.  Hang gliding?  Piffle.   Rock climbing?  Pshaw.   Free diving? +  Child's play.  Plummeting over the edge of a very tall waterfall in your kayak?++ . . . okay, wait, that's not sport, that's just nuts. 

            Handbells is the true summit, the peak achievement of the human yearning to go too far.  I bet that kayak guy wouldn't get through a plain course of bob minor. 

+ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU_IF20t2R8 Thank you, ajlr 

++ http://www.dump.com/2010/11/30/highest-waterfall-in-a-kayak-189-ft-video/ 

† Tediously gifted handbell ringers are rarer than tediously gifted tower ringers but they do exist.  The thing that makes us sad blistered grinds want to throw ourselves into shark-infested waters^ is that just because they can doesn't mean they want to, but really good handbell ringers are so vanishingly present in the population that you are tempted to promise almost anything to get them to agree to ring.  Read GOODNIGHT MOON one million times a month to your three-year-old?  Sure, I can do that.  Make one million brownies for your favourite charity's bake sale next month?  Sure, I can do that.  Dedicate your next book to . . .

            No.  There are limits.

^ Or offer to play 'wolf pack' with a group of sociopathic six-year-old girls http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/01/wolves.html

Thank you, Jodi

†† Yes, I mean assail.  Mug, accost, belabour, whack that sucker.

††† Ow!  Ow!  No, no, please, I'll read GOODNIGHT MOON to the three-year-old!

‡ What is about waking-too-early, not-quite-asleep semi-dreams?   It's very much like 'you're not going to get up on your own?  Okay, I'll make you'.  This kind of thing makes me feel that I have been taken over by hostile aliens.

‡‡ Where the ropes were so damp and stiff I swear if you—ahem—wrung them you'd get a puddle of water on the floor.  So not only are they incredibly awkward and unpleasant to pull, they chafe.  Colin shouted for Cambridge and said to me, are you ready for a touch yet?  —Are you kidding? I said.  I can barely make it through a plain course on a good night. 

            And then three of the other ringers went wrong.     

‡‡‡ This is the sort of thing Niall says.  I have never decided if it's meant to be comforting, or is just expressing his inner demon. 

§ Maybe I should try kayaking.  The waterfalls around here are all pretty small. 

§ She is tiny.  If it weren't for how warm she is you'd barely know you had anything in your lap.  Her little paws are about the size of the tips of my index fingers.  People keep telling me that Burmese aren't small, but every one I've ever known has been itty-bitty and radiant with charisma.