Christmas is for cats

Loki (top) and Otto, with shiny paper and a few balls.

‘Christmas is really for the children,’ or so many people claim.

In which case, do cats count too?

It’s certainly been an eventful festive season for our little pride, starting when Loki got herself lost.

She’d successfully chased the considerably larger Reggie out of the carpark behind our flat, and was rather obviously feeling chuffed with herself.

But by the time I’d returned from the shops, The Other Half was back inside, the door was still open, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Cue much calling and rattling of food tins. No sign.

After about half an hour of hunting – and increasing panic – The Other Half went upstairs on a communal staircase and opened a window to peer out from above.

Next door to our small block is an old pub that’s been converted into flats. He thought he spotted her on the metal stairs leading to the upper floors.

He sped out one way and I went the other, food tin and fork in hand.

There she was, underneath the metal stairs, hiding in a corner, bravado gone, now just thoroughly frightened.

Eventually he coaxed her out and through the gate, picking her up and pushing her back into the carpark, where she ran past me as I beat a tattoo on the tin and called her.

Past me, indeed, into the garden, straight into the flat and absolutely straight to the food bowl, where she started to gobble food.

“She’s going to bring that all back up,” I mused to The Other Half a few minutes later, as she continued to empty the bowl. But remarkably, she didn’t. Presumably, being frightened and lost gets the appetite going.

She’d also managed to get mud all over her paws and belly, so we toweled as much off as possible. I was wondering if we’d have to experience the joys of bathing a cat, but fortunately she completed the job excellently all by herself.

And then it was a case of flopping next to The Other Half on the sofa and not moving for the rest of the day. And the day after that.

But Christmas Day brought with it reasons to be active again.

The cats have had a few balls to play with for some time – light, ping pong balls are perfect. But they lose them rapidly beneath the furniture and then demand we get them out again.

Solution? A Christmas present of a bag of 150 orange ping pong balls.

Which we emptied onto the wooden floor all at once, to enormous feline confusion. Confusion, however, that was followed by gleeful play.

Boudicca isn’t entirely convinced, but The Kittens – who arrived at Christmas three years ago, so aren’t really kittens any more – love them.

It’s a sort of combination of dribbling skills and pinball. Although Otto has added a format to the game that’s entirely of her own making.

Having worked out that she can carry a ball around, she picks one up (using her front paws to lift it to her mouth) and then carries it to the mat inside the door to the garden.

Then she puts it down and waits until it either rolls away, before she charges after it, or until she decides to bat it away, and then charge after it.

But then, after a while of pinging it around, it will be brought back to the mat to start again. In the last week or so, the mat has changed to a piece of shiny wrapping paper, which is near the mat.

Wrapping paper is obviously another seasonal pleasure, to be dived on (this year’s new wooden floor means you can pretty much surf on it), torn at – and made into little tents to hide in.

Not that this is Otto’s only version of a formalised game.

Having realised, last Christmas, that she particularly loves ribbon, I bought a spool so we can cut lengths off for play.

And the ribbons ended up on the bed, which has a blanket box at the end of it.

The game, as it has evolved, means that when I’m sitting in bed with a book, Otto will sit on the blanket box and wait.

I’m supposed to take the longest piece of red ribbon and flick it towards her and then draw it slowly up the bed.

Sometimes she pounces quickly – sometimes she waits. And waits.

But she always returns to the blanket box to start the next round.

Cats have habits – they’ll patrol exactly the same area in exactly the same way, for instance – but neither The Other Half nor I have ever seen anything quite like this. It’s fascinating.

Mind, she will also sit and watch television (or a computer) for longer than any cat I’ve known either.

Boudi continues to be the household’s big clumsy girl. Presumably because she was so young when we got her (six and a half weeks) and because she moved into a household with two elderly cats, her social skills are not what they might be.

She gets her verbal signals all confused, growling and hissing when she’s actually playing. It still bemuses The Kittens, although they generally seem to regard her behaviour in a sort of ‘oh, it’s just Boudi’ way. They’d probably shrug if they could.

Mind, that’s when they’re not teasing her – karma, Boudi, given how you baited Trickie when you were a tiny thing?

Trickie, our Battersea rescue cat, who had spent most of her life with an elderly man who clearly liked a very hot home; who thought that she wasn’t a cat, but a small, elderly and rather genteel lady in a fur coat.

Trickie, who was nearly about to set records for the longest stay at the home; who beat her ‘cabin’ door when she saw us coming, drooled over the top of it at us, and faked the cat test, which is supposed to reveal whether a cat can get along with other cats.

Trickie, who was so grateful to be rescued from Stalag Luft Battersea, and who was then twice attacked in our garden by some hulking stranger cat, who was chased off by Boudi, paws a-whir as she hurtled after it, claws glistening in the morning light.

All of them leave you with stories and memories.

Not that our anthropological observations this last couple of weeks have been limited to the cats.

When we finally managed to get out for a walk yesterday, we discovered that squirrels make nests. Okay, I knew that they nested in hollow bits of trees, but had never realised that they actually make nests in the branches too.

We were in the park and there were squirrels everywhere – including the fattest one either of us have ever seen; sitting beneath a tree and munching its way through a whole pile of nuts, beady eye keeping a watch on anyone who got too close.

But not far away, there were squirrels running up and down the naked trees, carrying leaves to a big nest.

Since there was another rather large squirrel watching, we surmised that there’s a spot of Sciuridae pregnancy in the air.

And with a scattering of pink blossom on a tree further on, and crocuses already well on the way in our own little garden, it would seem that the seasons are well and truly in chaos.

No wonder it hasn’t felt much like Christmas anywhere but completely hidden away from the outside world.

Cutting food flights to fight climate change

Today is Blog Action Day 2009. Over 8,000 bloggers in 146 countries, with an estimated readership of almost 12 million people, have pledged to take part, as a way of sparking discussion on the chosen subject.

And this year, the organisers told participants that: "We encourage you to write about climate change in the context of how it relates to the topic of your blog."

Now I looked at that and thought: 'what is the theme of my blog?'

Well, the pleasureable things in life. And food is writ large in this.

But how do you combine that with the question of climate change?

Actually, it's quite easy.

Amongst the dafter things I've seen in UK shops have been herbs from Israel, watercress from the US, haricot vert from Kenya, courgettes from Zimbabwe and asparagus from Peru.

The first two are particularly absurd, since watercress and the herbs in question are all grown easily in this country. The others are seasonal.

But such foodstuffs are coming thousands and thousands of miles – by air. And that, if we accept that air travel produces climate-affecting emissions, is an issue in terms of the environmental cost – the carbon footprint of such food, if you will.

There are, of course, other questions.

• Are such foodstuffs 'natural' to the countries they're being grown in – and could indigenous foodstuffs be grown there instead to support local populations? According to the UN, global hunger is worsening. Not in the industrialised world, though. There are massive problems in many areas of Africa – including in Kenya where those haricot vert are grown for export. And plenty of problems in Zimbabwe, too. Peru, where out-of-season asparagus is grown for export, has serious food shortages.

• Then there's the matter of fair trade. Are local people being paid a fair price for what they produce for consumers in the developed world? It's not too difficult to buy the likes of coffee, tea and cocoa products that are fair trade – or exotic fruits such as bananas. Even wines from places such as South Africa that have been produced by co-operatives. And none of these need to be flown half way around the world.

Consumer power can have an impact on environmental issues. In the 1980s, one of the prime movers behind companies replacing CFCs from many products was the shift of consumers to products that didn't use CFCs.

Within the last few days I've noticed that Cadbury's, one of the biggest names in UK chocolate snacks, is now advertising that it's got a fair trade badge (okay, it's products hardly contain any actual chocolate, but that's not the point here). In other words, such a move is now seen as good for business.

But the consumer – you and I – doesn't have to suffer by making climate-informed choices about food.

Part of the key is simply seasonality. Asparagus in December in the UK really is nowhere near as good as it is in its short, natural season in the UK. Why? Well not least because it has to be as fresh as possible when eaten: the longer it's in transit, the more the taste decays.

And strawberries just don't have the same zing in February as they do in June.

So why bother?

Try to think locally – or at least regionally. And try to think seasonally. It's a joy to have parsnips in October. It's a joy to have the first asparagus at the end of May. And part of the joy is that you don't have them all year round – you don't take them for granted. Few people would dream of wanting beef bourguignon in the middle of summer – so why would you want strawberries at Christmas?

Not that air travel is the only form of transport that can contribute to the gases that many scientists believe are creating (in part at least) global warming.

Bottled water is another case in point.

Last year, public service union UNISON illustrated the insanity of transporting bottled water across the globe. For people in the UK (and most of the rest of Europe), tap water is perfectly good to drink. And it's perfectly easy and cheap to get a water filter jug for the fridge if you want.

Yet we still import bottled water from vast distances, with huge concomitant transport and environmental costs.

For instance, in the capital, you can buy Latitude 40 degrees, which has come from Tasmania to London = 17,396km.

Or FIJI water from Fiji = 16,300km.

Or VOSS water from Norway = 1,155km.

That's a lot of fuel to transport water to countries with plenty of water – and never mind the cost in terms of plastics for bottling.

We, as consumers and food lovers, can make a big contribution to cutting emissions by cutting out unnecessary food flights and journeys.

And we don't need to let our taste buds suffer one iota.


• To read more about Blog Action Day, visit www.blogactionday.org.