The Unadulterated Cat

1. After considerable heated debate, the Committee wishes it to be made clear that this statement should not be taken to include, in order, small white terriers with an IQ of 150, faithful old mongrels who may be smelly but apparently we love him, and huge shaggy wheezing St Bernards who consume more protein in a day than some humans see in a year2 but understand every word we say, no, really, and are like one of the family.

2. The committee, failing despite tremendous pressure to have this phrase removed, haha, have asked it to be amended to “has a healthy appetite for a dog of his age”. This refers to the way the huge snout drops like a bulldozer3 and pushes a bowl the size of a washbasin clean across the kitchen, I suppose.

3. The committee can say what they like, but the Chairman, who indeed fully admits never to have experienced the joys and pleasures of dog ownership, intends never to do so, and fully accepts that there are houses where dogs and cats live in domestic harmony, has seen him eat.

4. If you meet a vegan it's bad form to give them the famous four-fingered V sign and say “Live long and prosper”. That's for vulcans. Vegans are the ones with the paler complexions who can't disable people by touching them gently on the neck.

5. All right, not perhaps a name you'd use every, day, but best to have one ready, just in case, because when you're leaning against the freezing cold water tank trying to staunch the blood with a priceless antique copy of Dante, you don't want to have to tax the imagination.

6. If St Francis of Assisi had prided himself on his broccoli, and saw the last little seedling turning yellow because of the ministrations of Itsthatsoddingtomfromnextdoor, he would have done the same thing.

7. Apart from the garden fork, and this isn't that type of book.

8. Or the cauliflowers and leeks, naturally.

9. ie, uncertain. Because of Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle.

10. One that you can't do, and which won't work.

11. A 17-member ring ketone, according to my dictionary, as opposed to the mere 15-membered muscone from the musk deer. Does the civet feel any better for knowingthis? Probably not.

12. Who invents these scents, anyway? There's a guy walking along the beach, hey, here's some whale vomit, I bet we can make scent out of this. Exactly how likely do you think this is?

13. It is: Cats Travelling on Shoulder (Prohibition) Order, 1949.

14. This is not the time and place for extensive definitions. Let's just say that the Real gardener is not the same as the Proper (or Radio) gardener. For example, when the Proper Gardener has finished digging, harrowing, sifting, aerating and raking, he has a tilth, possibly even a friable one; when the Real gardener has conscientiously done all these things he has a large heap of stones, roots, twigs and old seed row markers (Country folk used to believe that certain types of stone were “mother stones”, which gave birth to new stones every year; under our garden is a Plastic Seed Row Marker generator.) A Proper gardener has a lawn consisting of Chewings Fescue, Red Bents and Ryegrass; a Real Gardener has moss imbedded with dolls' legs, plastic alphabet characters and clothes pegs. And large areas down to Cat.

15. ie, can't aim properly.

16. This sort of thing used to happen all the time in our house. I blame television.