I just know I will end up owning a cat sanctuary

Pet therapy...all for it. I love my cats. Monty my big male maine coon with a personality like a dog/kid/cuddly bear/cat on catnip and Mishka (Mimi), my beautiful slightly snobby, but has finally decided she is a lap cat, white one.

Unfortunately Mimi was here first and has the annoying but understandable habit of hissing at Monty if he so much as passes one eye over her...he can be in the next street and she says in cat language of course "How dare you pass by me within 600 metres of my glossy white being". Monty just sits there and asks "what you going on about woman?". My partner, M, says that Monty cant possibly understand me, I say he is wrong and then last night a breakthrough. M was speaking to Monty (who has recently decided its cool to sit at the front door and maw continually in one breath til someone opens it) and telling him to go use the cat flap in the back door when Monty went Maw, M answered him with " Don't tell me that, go to the back". Since then he hasn't lived it down. "cant understand? you don't speak to him?" YEAH RIGHT! You love him just as much as me!. He has to really since Monty has pride of place in between us in bed at night. Monty gets my side of the covers. I regularly let him lay peacefully whilst my bottom is hanging out in the cold!

Monty and I like to play hide and seek. I hide, he comes find me and I jump out at him and he says "maw" in response. My friends think I am mad. I think they are right but we enjoy it and it makes me laugh. If you don't know the personality of Maine Coons, go find someone who has one and spend time with them. They chirp, and purr like pigeons, follow you around like dogs and just love to sit on your computer keyboard unfortunately when you are using it and whacking social workers pencils from their hands to play with is a favourite pastime of Monty. He is 90cm long when lying down - nose to end of tail and weighs 17lb.....My friend's MC is bigger and the reason why we got a MC in the first place and the reason we then got a boy after getting a girl.

Mimi is smaller but fluffier. She loves her food, just like her owner and occasionally shows her playful side by lifting an elegant paw slowly and carefully to pat a dangling cat toy..only the once mind, it wouldn't do to show tooooo much emotion! You may think because I don't say so much about her that I love her less. Not the case. She is my little "powderpuff" as my friend calls her and my purretty one.

Ok, I admit it.

I'm a cat bore.

How to feel great about being a woman

Last night I went to see the Vagina Monologues in Woking with a friend with fairly well known stars doing it. I expected 2 hours of creased up laughter. What I actually got was belly aching laughs mixed with real poignant messages. The way it was done was very good. Amidst the expected "what do you call it?" and "what noise do you make?" were some stories of women who have had different experiences. A young woman who had been raped by men and objects in Bosnia, a virgin at 82 due to a horrid experience in early adulthood and a woman made to feel unclean by her husband. Their stories were not about laughter or pleasure. It was about their feelings of shame and trauma and the courage to speak about about it. More to the point, their experiences will serve to educate many many women across the world through this play (and a few brave men in the audiences too) about things that perhaps many would like to ignore (because its just too hard to hear) or even give some women the courage to seek help themselves to come to terms with similar traumatic experiences. That has to make it one of the best nights out I have had in a long time.

And back to the laughter, lets bring back that naughty naughty four letter word beginning with C...its so effective when its shouted out LOUD! :)

It's not supposed to be nighty time

I am supposed to be getting ready for uni but am still sat here in my rather fetching wincyette nighty (ok its White Company but still!) playing with my computer. My neck is feeling the impact of too much pc time. The fact is the thought of several hours of revising for my upcoming exam is far less attractive than sitting here reading email and searching for bargains on eBay. Speaking of which my neighbour came round last night in her curlers with a big bag of parcels that arrived for me, too many to hold in her arms! Will have to start signing for things soon, she is becoming my personal post office..oops...mmm wonder if she sells stamps???.....

Exciting things are happening on B's wheelchair situation, about to sign a cheque for half the amount of an Active 3 self-propel wheelchair to enable her to do some self-propelling indoors only (outdoors - too far, too tiring), the other half is being funded by a charity assigned to the school (or so they hope) and 3 applications for funding are going in this week for the £ 17k all singing, you can sleep in it, mega powerchair - Balder Finesse 290.

oh well, the ins and outs of the digestive system await my attention and perhaps today I will finally get my head around what on earth Freud must have been on to come up with his theories!