Hidey-hole
Originally uploaded by Mags.

Séba really doesn't like fireworks. He has found himself a den to hide himself in when they start though: where the throw falls to the floor at the front of the sofa, he has created tunnel. Lifting an edge, he will stare at you with big worried eyes. If you are sitting on the sofa when he disappears into hiding, like a priest vanishing into a hole, an undulation reveals his whereabouts.

I'm all for fireworks. And Guy Fawkes night is great fun, not least as there's an urge to call him Guido amongst modern historians (and to mutter about Catesby, obviously) which appeals to my vague Spanish-speaking side. Plus the 400th anniversary of the Plot interests me more than the 200th of Trafalgar. Anything which is commerated by a) a rhyming couplet allegedly by Shakespeare and b) pretty explosions is fine by me. I especially like the ones which explode into a whole load of screaming white sparkly things. The problem is the tossers in my neighbourhood who think that, for example, 28th October is a good time to start letting off the whizz-bangs. And, hello? Hallowe'en! Not a whizz-bang night. It's a night for ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, not the thundercracker rocket illegally imported from SE Asia. For the next week or so my poor boy will be hiding under the sofa so give it a bloody rest!

This site give the common sense stuff about cats and Guy Fawkes night but irritates me with the assumptation that cats are female. I was discussing gender assumptions with someone tonight who mentioned that her history textbooks always refer to the historian as 'he' and this feminisation of cats seems to come from the opposite assumption. Cats live with humans via a negotiated system instead of a simple pack hierarchy. Cats like indoors. Cats like to be fussed but are also left to pursue mysterious daytime lives whilst their owners (i.e bread-winners - or rather Iams-buyers) are at work. Therefore cats are female. My cats have always been toms, with one co-owned exception (a queen called Willow). After a decade of buying stuff for a male cat which is labelled 'good girl', the genderisation of cats has really started to piss me off. Just as I tend to use 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she' in generalised writing, so I deliberately want to call cats 'he' and reclaim my darling boy's balls.

Although not literally. Séba has, obviously, been snipped.