So watch out!

I still say you have to watch out for strangers. All strangers in general but in particular certain readily-recognisable senior humans of the female variety.

They carry treats! Don’t accept them!

Often these well-meaning strangers have no idea that the delicious little goodie they’re holding out is downright lethal to small animals.

The ASPCA lists People Food as number #3 in the Top 10 Pet Poisons of 2009.

People food like grapes, raisins, avocado and products containing xylitol, like gum, can seriously disable our furry friends, and accounted for more than 17,453 cases in 2009.

I’ve seen people give chocolates to dogs. True!

If you know a dog (one that you don’t care to see harmed) make sure you pass on the message that chocolates are poisonous. A lot of dogs will forget this in the heat of the moment and wolf down anything.

Cats can be no better behaved.

Please remember that these elderly strangers look extremely non-threatening and their very good will radiates messages of bonhomie. Don’t trust them.

Never take food from strangers!

There’s life in the old boy yet! (Although not much in this rat).

I thought the woman who feeds me would be pleased with this irrefutable evidence of my keen observance of housecat duties. But you know how it is with people, they’re unpredictable.

Before I go any further I make a formal apology to Cat-the-Rat and Starsky over at Rattitude.

It’s not every day, not even every month, that I manage to bring down something of this nature. Let’s be real, catching a wind-blown leaf is difficult enough and really takes it out of me.

This isn’t an Australian rat, it’s the widespread and abundant Black Rat, Rattus rattus (or Roof Rat, responsible for London’s Bubonic Plague in 1665), an unwanted rodent usually found in the compost bins in my neighbourhood. I don’t expect to see the people who live round me suddenly go down with the Black Death, but this specimen here is definitely a pest and not someone’s pet.

These rats are capable of producing ten or more young every three weeks under ideal conditions. A breeding base like this leads to rapid overpopulation and allows them to exploit optimal conditions in the aforementioned compost bins.

What else could I have done?

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Sometimes I feel my age.

It’s all the brain really, in the little Poirotien grey cells. It’s not about senior moments and little accidents (cats get them too) it’s about the relevance of things to my daily life. My response to tragedy is no longer an impassioned howl to the heavens on the bloody blatant injustice of it all, but rather a semi-guilty sadness that such things could be.

I only have to momentarily raise my head from my sheepskin cuddle blanket to see what’s what. Yep, the world has gone crazy. Wars and disasters, fire, flood and drought, tigers will be extinct by 2012 and I’m spending more time traveling to the Vet than meditating in my nap basket.

A mere couple of years back I would have been spitting at the cosmic injustice of it all! Now I don’t worry about these things as much as I used to.

Am I growing callous and and uncaring? Is this a sign I’m on the way out? Is this encroaching senility ? But wait, the worst is yet to come…..

Yesterday I had a driving compulsion to chat about my various surgical experiences to a passing possum.