Saturday 9 February 2013

Betty and Basil: a story of soulmates ;-)


 
You know I’m a kitteh tragic, right? I’ve always been this way, but my cat-craziness increased exponentially when I acquired my little bestie, (that's bestie, not beastie!) Basil, who has captured my heart and imagination utterly, totally, truly madly deeply. He’s a little cat with a giant personality. He grabs life by the balls (he has none of his own these days) and absolutely loves the ride. Indoors or out, Basil knows how to have fun, and he's made me his very own partner in crime. He even pats me on the head, coz that's apparently what besties do. I'm flattered, and pat him on the head as well.

We play chasey in the house, running and hiding around corners, and jumping out at each other. It’s just as well we live alone, or the Funny Farm would probably be sending a van around to collect me right now – and then who would feed the cat?

Outdoors, we are more sedate (ok, outdoors I am more sedate.) Basil goes nuts, leaping more than a metre in the air and executing mid-air twists and turns worthy of an Olympic gymnast. He forces me to undertake obstacle courses (oh my aching back!), ducking and weaving and bending to untangle his lead from the more jungular bits of the garden. He runs up and down trees and flies through the air with the grace of, er, something extremely graceful. He bounces and pounces, digs holes that a dog would be proud of, poops in the strawberry pot and eyes off birds, bees, beetles and butterflies. And lizards. He loves the lizards that love the rockery.
 He likes to sit atop the vegie cage watching kangaroos, 
and has made friends with the horses that wander the back paddock. I kid you not – they touched noses and he actually patted a horse on the nose. Truly. Then the horse did that snorty thing that horses do, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Basil, however, barely twitched a whisker. If I were to let him off the lead, I swear he’d be off, clinging to the mane of his horsey buddy and galloping across the field, tail streaming pennant-like behind him (why oh why won’t he get on the Harley with me?)


 He’s desperate to be better friends with the amazing variety of visiting birds, too. 
So near yet so faaaaaaar!
 Clearly that’s why he hopped onto the bird-table this morning and started nibbling at the birdseed while he waited for the birds to join him. The birds, less gullible than I, didn’t fall for his “look, I’m just another bird” cat-in-bird’s-clothing subterfuge, though, and stayed away in droves. Birds aren’t so birdbrained after all!
I'm just an innocent little birdie, heh heh. Hmmm, this birdseed's quite tasty!
He’s wanting to spend more and more time outdoors. This business of ‘walking the cat’ is going to get pretty old pretty quickly, so I’m thinking I shall build him an outdoor cat-palace. My internet research is about to begin, and my lovely neighbour has already offered me some timber. Watch this space for progress on that Grand Design. In the meantime I have ingeniously installed several strategically-placed anchor-points, and I can weed/dig/potter to my heart’s content, knowing that my Basil is having safe, bird-friendly fun, leaping on lizards, sniffing at snails and digging kitty-latrines.
Eventually, though, I always risk the Wrath of Khat by making him come back indoors when he doesn’t actually want to. He’s devised a brilliant win-win strategy. Yes, he thought this one up all by himself (not only is my cat Chuck Norris – he’s Einstein/Dr Spock as well!) He protests a bit, just for form's sake, then picks up his lead in his mouth, holds his head high and “walks himself” where I want him to go, as if it was his idea in the first place. So so SO unbelievably cute!

Oh Basil, how ever did I live without you?

6 comments:

Tara said...

He's adorable! I am SO glad that you relented and got another. I have to say it must be the name comes with the cheeky spirit ;) Make sure you look on pinterest for cat enclosures, there is all manner of awesome inventions on there :)

Nikos said...

Sometimes you wonder whether there is anything in reincarnation.

Trobairitz said...

There is so much awesome contained in that one post that I am grinning.

I too love kitties and so I completely relate to everything in that post, well except our Basil is lazier that your Basil. Oh and ours is a scaredy cat. I am glad your Basil is making friends with everyone even the horses.

Thanks for sharing the pics and story.

AndrewM said...

Vegie cage? VEGIE CAGE!!!??? You cruel inhuman monster, release those vegies immediately.

And as to why Basil won't hop on the Harley with you: is it possible that informations about your riding history have been whispered along?

Sue said...

@AndrewM - lol - harsh but true, re the Harley. :-P

Heh heh, the vegies are imprisoned for their own good, allegedly. I've heard rumours of marauding satin bowerbirds, although I haven't seen any in my garden (perhaps the cage is doing its job.) In truth, there aren't any vegies in there atm - I've only just liberated the weeds! I shall remove the roof of it, because the whole thing is only 3 feet high, and I almost imprisoned myself in there during the weeding marathon! All crouched over like that, my back and hipsdecided they couldn't straighten up, and I almost had to take up permanent resaidence. Seriously, what kind of person makes a 3-foot high garden cage? (a 2-foot 11 gardener, maybe???)

Sue said...

@Trobairitz, how old is your Basil? Perhaps my Basil will calm down a bit when he's older? (Although Tara's Basil is, what about a year old now, and showing no sign of calming down!)

@Tara - will certainly have a look on pinterest for some cat-palace ideas. Ta for the tip.

@Nikos - I originally thought (ok, HOPED) Oscar was a reincarnation of Ollie, the World's Best Cat, but I was wrong. The similarities ended with colour/breed. Oscar was Ollie's Evil Twin, straight from the Dark Side... :-)