Sneaky Sneaky

I think I am now finally old enough to have my own proper pet. I would really like a cat. I have been observing friends and family with their four legged friends and feel I would adapt easily into the role of cat owner, hi I'm Sasha, yeah that's right, I own a cat.

The first stumbling block I hit was a clause in our lease stating no pets. I have decided I can work around this one. We already have fish, the landlady seems fine with them, so a cat shouldn't be too far a leap.

The next stumbling block is the live-in love of my life. He has a really appalling cat allergy. Not just your usual streaming eye sort of thing, but full on can't breathe allergy. This is going to be trickier than I had initially thought...

I do play a little game with myself when bored at my desk, imagining that I have a really large Persian cat sitting on my knee and I have to work around him. Its a charm of a sport, makes any dull Tuesday fly by. So I applied the same principles to the apartment cat. I would imagine I had a cat and see how that went.

Hello Sneaky. Sneaky is now my imaginary cat, he officially lives up the chimney and sneaks out, hiding from the allergy, so we can all live harmoniously. Its going down an absolute storm! We love Sneaky! (I love having a third party to blame for stuff, Sneaky is a demon for not putting my clothes away.)

It was all going so well. Until yesterday. Fortunately Wonder Boy had vanished for the weekend and it was just Sneaky and I holding the fort. I had the patio doors open to air the place a little, I was so smug and in a complete Cath Kidston fantasy with this small practicality. The next thing I know, Sneaky has managed to come to life and is sitting on my bed! I was shellshocked. He didn't answer to the name Sneaky, we could work around this, but how had this happened! He was so handsome, big furry black coat, with a grey bib, quite debonair.

The next clue that something wasn't quite right came in the form of a smell. Sneaky showers daily, I am often delayed getting out of bed because Sneaky has gone ahead of me into the shower, so this smell was hard to explain. I began to think I had an imposter on my hands. The only thing I could do was to ask him to leave. Which he did.

He left me with quite the calling card though, a fur encrusted bed. I mustered all my Cath Kidston inspired strength and put the bed linen on the hottest wash possible. Then I rang my Mum. She sensibly enquired about where the cat had been sitting, naturally he was on Wonder Boy's side and had he been on the sheet or the duvet mainly? He was a sheet man it turned out. Mother's solution? Ditch the sheet, get a new one in a nice bright spring colour, and stop inviting lethal allergens into your home!

Sneaky and I are off to make some fluffed Soya milk now, he's been helping me type.

Taking a closer look

I'm of quite an inquisitive nature and love a little bit of private investigation. I am so interested in other people. I can often be found just randomly staring at strangers, completely consumed by their activities. Like, why is that man buying 14 bananas? Does he have a potassium deficiency? That must be it, I better go and casually examine the contents of his trolley now.

The weekend saw a delightful Friday night visit to my favorite nail bar, where aside from the joy of preening, i also get to effortlessly eavesdrop onto the conversations of neighbours in grooming. I learned of lip filling injections, favorite mascaras, misbehaving absent fathers and dogs being taken to a photography studio. Absolute jackpot for someone like myself. I like to call it Safari.
Safari because you are surveying all around you and studying any item of person who may be of interest to you. If you ever have the opportunity to sit next to me on a plane, you too will be submerged in the joy of safari.
I also visited my parent's cottage in the West of Ireland. They have owned the cottage since October, so we are relatively new to the area. It was such a beautiful weekend, my Mum and I had lots of opportunities to explore the local area. We walked a gorgeous beach and climbed some rocks at the end, only to be brought to a smaller sandy enclave, with a very unusual stone formation. It was very well built and looked like it had been there for hundreds of years. When we went around the other side of the rocks, we saw that the sun fell very precisely on top of it. What could it be for?

The following day we had some more interesting finds, including the remains of a very quiet sandy harbour. Could it have been a ladies bathing area? Perhaps used for smuggling? Investigations are underway! Our walk continued past these handsome donkeys who were waiting for their Sunday dinner and down to a small but busy harbour.
Instead of the harbour being full of boats, it was populated by large bales of seaweed tightly bound together and very securely moored in a web like structure. We couldn't figure out what they were for. Google has kindly told me they are for a local seaweed factory, but they really were something else.

The usual safari routes were rather limited for me, other than a helpful, handsome service station attendant, there really were no other items of interest to be observed.