Reading, 4

Next up is a book I’ve been wanting to read for about 20 years. When it was first published, the title grabbed me … Matthew Flinders’ Cat. I already knew that Flinders had a cat he’d named Trim, and had seen the bronze statue of Trim at the State Library of New South Wales.

I didn’t research the story beforehand as nowadays I usually do, just looked forward to reading a blow-by-blow account of Matthew Flinders’ voyage mapping the coastlines of what was then New Holland, accompanied by his cat.

Usually I wait until a book comes out in paperback before buying it, so when I didn’t see it appear in the local bookshop a year later, forgot about it. Since then I’ve seen it a few times in libraries without there ever being an opportunity to borrow it, and a couple of weeks ago saw it on one of the two bookshops I now frequent.

And so bought it. Because I needed a new, chewy read, and for the expectations I just described, but still not knowing anything about it apart from the fact that Trim might be one of the main characters.

Book 10. Matthew Flinders’ Cat by Bryce Courtenay, this edition published in 2006 by the Penguin group.

How did I miss that it was written by Bryce Courtenay? I’ve read a few of his but generally don’t like his style. To me they’re the kind of book I might read if there is nothing else available.

Such as when stuck in a camping ground by the roads being flooded and Bryce Courtenay book is the only thing to be found in the camp laundry. That’s where I found The Potato Factory and read that. But that’s by the by.

Reading the first paragraph of this book I knew it wasn’t going to come to my expectations but, I reminded myself, that was my own fault. And since I had given out good money for it, I would read it.

‘Billy O’Shannessy woke to the raucous laughter of two kookaburras seated on top of adjacent telegraph poles.’

There is Billy O’Shannessy … Courtenay does this thing that I was taught as a new fiction writer, make the first two words about the the main character. In that same first sentence there is also setting the scene, in this case the Australian scenario with the two kookaburras. And there is the modernity of telegraph poles, if a slightly old-fashioned term for them telling us the story is set in the present. Telegraph poles might’ve been normal for 2002, when the book was first published. I don’t remember. The rest of the paragraph tells of his hangover and that the birds served as his ‘regular alarm clock’.

In the next paragraph I learned he was lying on a park bench with a canopy of leaves over him. It’s only on the third page that Trim gets a mention and then only his life-sized bronze statue on a window ledge of the state library

By en:User:PanBK – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Trim-the-illustrous.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1182097

The Wikipedia page about Trim is interesting. He’s got several more statues, one in Donington, UK and one in Port Lincoln, South Australia, as well as a glowing epitaph by Matthew Flinders himself.

Alas, this book is not primarily about Trim, or even Matthew Flinders.

Purporting to be a novel, it seems to me to be written as a tribute to the Salvation Army, the Twelve Step Program to recover from drugs and alcohol abuse and rehab, and the many services helping homeless people and troubled children in Kings Cross, Sydney. All very worthwhile people and services, I’m not denying that.

Published two years after Courtenay’s divorce, I did wonder whether he was writing a semi-autobiographical novel, that he was a recovering alcoholic. The fact that it is his twelfth novel might explain why an editor would do less editing, leaving unchanged the info dumps, for example, consisting of half or three-quarter pages describing people and places.

But I’ve often wondered how people go about writing a tribute novel so in that respect this was an interesting read. First, he had a professional researcher … the results of research are big in this novel. There are screeds of explanations. Over pages 333-334 there’s a paragraph of over 200 words. That’s almost a whole page. Commonly called a wall of text. It seems very 19th century-ish.

In places it feels like Courtenay inserted a whole paragraph straight from the source. That can’t be right, of course. Courtenay was a well-respected author. I like to think there would’ve been at least one rewrite to make the material his own.

In addition, most professional people wouldn’t hesitate when approached by a famous author to tell them about their world, any extra mention is going to help promote their concerns, right? That also shows in the detail about organizations such as the Salvation Army. I imagine there’s a fine line between wanting to do one’s sources justice and keeping the story from dragging the weight of excess information.

The bits about Trim were the story Billy O’Shannessy told Ryan, the ten-year-old other main character. Trim is imagined in the talking-animal style with a lot of agency. Which left me wondering whether the adventures described had any truth in them. They read like fantasy.
Probably I’ll try to find something nearer to Matthew Flinders’ own account of his and Trim’s circumnavigation of Australia.

Cat Diary 34

See this?

That’s the chair I like to scrapple. My efforts obviously not appreciated. The old woman saw this supposed cure in a few video clips, I understand.

She laughed herself silly at my poor brothers and sisters negotiating kitchen benches and other furniture draped with this stuff. Next time she went shopping she came back with a roll of it.

I’m not happy. It’s another foreign element to negotiate. If she thinks it’ll stop me scrappling the other chair she has got another think coming.

I’m sitting under the table, in the centre. Like I can lash out in three hundred and sixty three directions at least ninety of them covered in that disgusting shiny stuff.

It’s a stand off.

Cat Diary 28

When I was totally mellowed out the pernickety old woman vacuumed up all my catnip that I have fallen in love with!!

This pic of me mellowed out before she did the vacuuming. See the leaves?

Why would she do that?

She said you’re not eating.

I didn’t feel the need to eat and she worries?

But last night she spread out a brown pillow case for me that had the rest of the catnip supply in it Tthat she had whip-stitched shut, she said. For me to spend the night on. Which I did.

This morning she took it away. To air it, she said.

What for? I like it the way it is. But anyway, she laid out the usual track of breakfast kibbles for me and I set off finding them, eating them along the way, and keeping body and soul together.

Lol, Cat Litter

We definitely have not yet hit our goldilocks moment with cat litter!

Who knew there would be so many brands and types available. I started with my usual arrogant save-the-world attitude and bought a large 10kg bag of recycled newspaper pellets. This being possible because someone else was carrying it to the car and from the car to my apartment. Newspaper pellets go sludgy.

Second was hemp pellets, left overs from the process of producing hemp for rope, hemp-crete and other products, this was another product that was going to save the environment. Hemp pellets disintegrate into a fine dust difficult to clean up and very bad for my allergies.

Third was a gravelly product made of tofu and pea flour. It is meant to ‘clump’ and so be easier to keep the litter box clean. It does clump but is also easily transported into the rest of the house by sticking between the poor cat’s toes, and is nearly as bad as the proverbial Lego block to stand on when walking around on bare feet. And why wouldn’t I?

Fourth is a tiny vermicelli-like extruded pellet made of coconut fiber and charcoal. This was probably the worst purchase yet. Very sharp, and I soon picked up a piece in the sole of my foot. Have been wearing a big band aid for a week. Apart from that, the stuff ‘clumps’ only reluctantly. The one thing going for it, it does work wonders on odors.

Above, a mix of fresh litter containing all four of the recalcitrant litter types. As by then I’d been buying a new sort every time I went shopping, and since I can carry home only the stuff I can fit on my walker, the average bag of litter weighs 5 kg.

At the present we’re trying out the mix of sawdust and wood-splinters. And when I go shopping in a few minutes I will probably–out of sheer pernickety recalcitrance–buy yet another of the still untried possibilities.

Having to send untold bags of used cat litter to land-fill is also not ideal. Before, when I lived in freestanding houses, the used cat litter went into the compost bin, or was buried in the garden and helped to build up my low-lying yard. I’ll be asking Brisbane City Council why apartement blocks don’t get green bins. It’s not as if we don’t produce any organic waste!

There has got to be a better way!

Sunday Silences …

Screenshot of Apple TV screensaver I suppose you’d call that function.

It’s Sunday morning here and quieter than I appreciate. It struck me earlier that while I’ve been alone much of the time for the last twenty years, I absolutely depend on people sounds in the background to feel I still belong in human society.

My apartment/unit is so well insulated that I don’t get any noise from my neighbours. A blessing in disguise. Heating the place, for example, is no trouble at all.

With the balcony doors open, I get noise from the bus interchange across the road… buses arriving and leaving.

With the wind from the south, there is plenty of action in the trees. Leaves rustling. The podium sports many leafy plants.

With the balcony doors open, I can hear crows at their business harvesting food from the rubbish at the shopping centre, and seeing off rivals.

But no people. No voices.

Down at groundlevel, at the front of the building, there will be a few people waiting for their Sunday pick ups and a dog walker or two starting or coming back from their jaunts.

I’ve been toying all week with the idea of joining the dog walkers. Or cat owners, if there are any. Or even a bird … budgie, cockatiel or cockatoo. Imagining scenarios of how that would be …

Cat tales 19

My proper, Hand-of-God life, as backyard guardian, started when these frog eggs hatched. The next day, my human carefully emptied all three buckets into the bath in the backyard. A few hours later hundreds of tiny tadpoles wriggled up to get a breath of air, and down to the floor of the pond to get food. And repeated that all day. I studied them for hours.

Their first danger was the egret that came every day. It seemed to know when it was safe. If it came at dawn, I’d be stuck in the house because the pernickety old woman still lay in bed. In the daytime, I might be inside because the pernickety old woman had gone down the street for some shopping.

I stalked from left to right and left sweeping my tail angrily behind the glass doors, hoping Mr Egret would see me and feel threatened by my scary puffed-up black and white shape. But he didn’t appear to be able to see through glass. My human and I had learned from the TV that only intelligent—whatever that means—animals could see through glass or see themselves in mirrors. I have no trouble whatever with either of those types of glass though I confess that the TV sometimes tricks me.

When Mr Egret first arrived, he’d perch on the corner of the garden bed, and would stare for many minutes in every direction. If no movement anywhere—despite me at my performance— he’d half-open his wings and use a slight downward thrust to hop onto the corner of the pond-bath that was mine! He’d start with his scooping action, scooping up a few of the tadpoles at the time, many many times. Every time he’d been for a meal, I expected the crowd in the pond to have been quartered or even halved.

But it didn’t turn out too bad. The babies grew very fast and filled the empty spaces. And they ate everything suitable for them in a matter of three days. When my human and I started to see skinny tadpoles, we knew we had to do something. She researched food for tadpoles and took off down the street. That first day she brought back an oak-leaf lettuce, a tadpole delicacy, she said. I couldn’t see why, surely they’d need something more heartening? She floated the lettuce in the bath to see what would happen.

They loved it. Ate and ate until the remnants sank. My human had already fetched in another lettuce, a different look about the thing, which the little animals barely touched. Oh no! We were back at the beginning plus one. The plus one referring to their growth so far, of course.

“I couldn’t get an oak-leaf,” my human said. “How would they even know the difference?” There were a few things I could’ve said, but I knew she wouldn’t listen. “Maybe they’ll eat fish food,” she said. “If I leave you in the backyard will you still be here when I get back? The Pet Shop is just around the corner.

Humans have a saying for how I decided I would communicate my intention. I tried to remember how it went. Ah. I remember. I arranged my face, and even my body to say Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. Though I might be making a mistake about that saying. I’m not human, after all. It doesn’t sound all that applicable. What I meant to say, Yes I’ll be here. Yes, I’ll be good.

And so I was when my human returned with fish food flakes. They smelled so good I was tempted to jump into the water after them. But in fact, upon getting a good sniff of them herself, she realized their attraction for me and poured a little pile of them for me to lick from the corner of the pond.

Modem troubles

My modem is ‘on the blink’, which is a colloquial way of saying it has started to fail. Sometimes its little lights work well and my computer has an internet connection.

Sometimes they’re blinking and I know then there’s a gappy reception and goodbye to getting anything done online except by mobile. That means one-fingered typing for me.

I’m sitting on instalment 16 of Cat Tales, with no way that I have found of getting the photos from the computer onto my phone.

People will tell me the cloud and/or dropbox. Seems like neither of them like going in reverse. Mind you that could be a personal bugbear.

Anyway, there it is. Another hold-up.

Now to access the other photo …