Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Cat Diary 21

The upshot of our battle is that we’re being stand offish to each other. The old woman does not try to touch me and I spend long hours under the bed where I can’t see what she gets up to.

But today she escaped the apartment altogether. The deepest scratch on her hand got infected—not my fault, she should’ve known better—and off to the doctor she went.

When she came back she had a big white bandage on her hand which did look, I confess, quite swollen. I understand she is to take medicines for ten days.

And she’s changed her attitude. She doesn’t give me any kibbles unless I do what she orders me to do. Such as for example she said ‘Up’ about fifteen minutes ago. I didn’t up and she gave me no encouragement awards.

So I jumped up on the couch just now and she said, good girl and gave me just two kibbles! And that was it. So I sat down. I’m feeling quite confused. I had the upper paw, and suddenly I’m back on square one?

One good thing she gave me a mystery to solve while she went out and I do quite like a mystery. This one is how to get the kibbles from under the plastic thing.

Cat Diary 20

We had a milestone of sorts today. I had to show the old woman I just do not like to be picked up. I clawed her good and proper.

It was her own fault really, I said for her to put me down, and she just wasn’t quick enough. I let her have both sets. Of my claws, that is. She’ll have four scars!

And you wouldn’t believe the blood! She stood for an age at the kitchen counter putting on that horrible stuff she calls tea tree antiseptic. I hate it! And then bandaids galore.

She was so silent, I got bored and thought I might as well catch up on washing myself. It’s never ending.

I wonder what she’s cooking up in that silence, something that will show me that she now knows her place, I hope.

Caterpillars

Six of these little critters are chomping down on my bolwarra bush. Not their usual food as far as I can make out.

Reading Helen Scwenke’s & Frank Jordan’s Create More Butterflies tells me that an Orchard Swallowtail will lay her eggs on any tree or bush in the citrus family.

Yet I thought I saw a large blackish butterfly in this bush. The caterpillars somewhat resemble the instars on p33 and there is a very small sandfly bush beside the bolwarra.

The caterpillars as you can see have a much closer resemblance to those of the Fuscous Swallowtail on p20. There’s only the lime berry mentioned for host plants for thst variety of swallowtail.

Here’s one doing its weird standing-up-in-the-sun move. Never seen that before.

The whole event is pretty exciting and was one of the reasons—the possibility that butterflies would visit my balcony garden—that I decided on a level two apartment rather than, say, a level seven place.

To top it all off, me getting an in house companion in the form of a cat is what made it possible for butterflies to visit. Before I got Moggy noisy miners, a pernicious sort of bird visited the balcony despite my efforts to keep them away, and clean out all insects good and bad. They even had a go at catching my fish. Moggy keeps them away and the caterpillars are safe.