It was so cold yesterday that I decided to indulge myself in a little English soul food, me being a furry little English soul, so it seemed just right.

English food has the ability to make you feel not only warm when you eat it but also has a cheering effect and though I never do seem to need cheering up I certainly enjoyed the warm feeling of every mouthful hitting the spot, if you see what I mean.

I was so pleased with the outcome that I thought I would share the recipe with you my dear readers you never know you might be not only feeling cold but also a bit down in the dumps but if you make this Rice Pudding you’ll feel so much better and if one of the reasons you are feeling down in the dumps is that you are hard up the great thing about this recipe is that it really doesn’t cost much too cook, especially if you take the dish full of raw ingredients around to a neighbour and use their stove. Mind you it does take 2 hours to cook so make sure that you have a lot of conversation topics prepared.

Old fashioned Rice Pudding

This Rice Pudding is so simple to make just measure out rice, milk, butter, sugar and mix them all together in the oven dish you are going to cook it in, stir it all together one last time and then follow the very limited instructions on the recipe I have added above.

I got my recipe for Rice Pudding from the ‘Mother of all TV cooks’ the patron saint of daytime TV Saint Delia Smith, she was the first TV cook back in the 1970′s and taught a whole nation how to burn Beef Bourguignon, cock up Coq au vin and be adventurous in the kitchen, and as we all simmered, sautéed and sliced our way through countless new recipes that dear Delia had careful made so simple to follow our cooking abilities grew.

Delia

Delia Smith is definitely the reason I like to cook and I often refer to her website deliaonline if I am wondering what to do with a Prawn or Carrot or indeed both!

First I ate beef stew with plenty of carrots in it and of course loads of beef and then I ate the Rice Pudding and then I tried doing the washing up while holding my stomach off the floor and smiling to myself singing a little song about not worrying about being a fat Cat, though of course the nicer kind of fat Cat and not some masked arsehole from a merchant bank, railway authority or the royal family.



About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Cat in the Snow

Well it has finally happened, Central Europe, and other odd bits attached to this particular bit of the Continent have frozen solid as the temperatures touch paw freezingly awful parts of the thermometer usually unexplored by us middle earth dwellers and more common in chilly bits of the world like Siberia, Alaska and of course the two all-white bits at the top and bottom of any Atlas.

It’s cold here in Prague, currently it’s minus 17C which is about just over 1 degree in Fahrenheit and frankly though it was colder over night -26C (which is minus 15 degrees F) Prague is on the warm side compared to parts of Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland and the Ukraine which and covered in blankets of frozen snow producing daytime temperatures of -30C the ‘C’ in this case meaning ‘cold.’

But as this picture from Kiev (below) shows, where it was -30C, life goes on as it does around most of Europe.

Kiev Tram 30
Indeed as I sit on the windowsill above a radiator which is full on I can see that the roads here are clear, bundles of people in furry coats are bustling here and there and in the distance there is a Tram rattling on its rails while overhead in the ice white sky there are a couple of vapour trails made by aeroplanes using full throttle to take off from the nearby airport.

You could say therefore that the Czech republic like any other civilised modern country is coping well and still – as the ever awful Mrs Thatcher used to say “open for business.” Imagine my surprise then at the headlines of the newspapers from that most modern and go-ahead country of all Great Britain, ‘Just 3 inches of snow halts half of all flights at Heathrow’ and ‘Roads will be like ice rinks for a week, drivers warned.’

UK Snow

What is it with the Brits? The barometer follows the thermometer down and the whole of Britain comes to a halt and that is in spite of having what I read was “records amounts of salt” (used to clear roads in the UK and also to flavour Chips and well everything edible).

Judging by the reports about the roads and the all other forms of transport I imagine the “records amounts of salt” are still safely locked up nice and warm in depots around the country and have been since early December, in fact just like the Queen who begins her Jubilee Year today, she and other members of the royals who have been ensconced in Sandringham a luxury palace in Norfolk on holiday since the middle of December which is rather nice!

Snow in the UK

Of course you get the feeling that the royals would rather be somewhere tropical but in times of hardship in the UK and nervousness about whether or not someone will give them the latest handout that they want – a new royal yacht – they are keeping their heads down in what is probably one of the best and most exclusive spa resorts in the world, though between you and me I bet the decoration is just plain awful, the royals after all have terrible taste and if you ever troll around a royal palace when open to the public you can see that for yourself.

So instead of spending 60 or so million pounds of a shiny new royal yacht for the monarch maybe the people of Great Britain should spend the money wisely, on some nice shiny gritting trucks and polished snow ploughs and if the royals want to they can drive them when they are not on holiday it might actually give them something to do and let’s face it it will be cheaper to the teach them how to drive a truck than it will be to teach them to drive a helicopter which is what they usually want to have a go on!

And looking to the long term when the royals are taken out of service because of budgetary cuts when the country decides it can no longer afford to keep a kennelful they will have a trade that suits their lifestyles, after all it only snows for a few weeks of the year in the UK and so the job of snow shifter would be perfect for them all wouldn’t it?



About the Author

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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To be honest with you dear cuddly readers (and as I have explained on numerous occasions in the past unfortunately due to be large genetic balls up by the creator Cats find it physically and mentally impossible to tell a lie the only factor in our development that has held us back and allowed humans to run the world I might add, and so I can’t be anything other than honest with you), I find it very difficult to use the ‘F’ word whether in polite or any other type of company and definitely not in my books.

Mind you I remember getting close to using the ‘F’ word in my Cat’s Diary and first masterpiece of Feline Literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts From a Cat’s Diary.’ when I tried to use a card system to express my disapproval with service from Apple Computers giving them four king cards for ‘four king’ awful service!

With the above in mind I secretly admire people who proudly display their total disregard for the ‘F’ word’s detrimental impact and use liberally. In the case of the picture below I believe that John the Chinese cook doesn’t like Chinese food all that much and that’s a shame because although the Chinese do have some absolutely disgusting habits, including menu items they do make some rather sublime din dins, I am thinking here of Szechuan Prawns and Beef Chow Mein to name but a few.

Great Chinese Food

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I should imagine by now that everyone in the world knows that I am a very famous Feline author of several bestselling (thankfully) books, the first ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ sold more copies than the Bible (when translated in to Inuit) and the second ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ is currently outselling the English language version of Steve Job’s biography in Uzbekistan to say nothing of the latest book from Newt Gingrich ‘Newt’s Tips On A Successful Marriage’ which concentrates on being faithful and has a foreword by prince Charles.

Unfortunately as yet neither of my masterpieces of Feline Literature have eclipsed sales of prince Andrew the Duke of York’s latest book ‘Dictators, Autocrats and Paedophiles I Know and Respect’ but then I suppose everyone wants to read a book written by the world’s most famous frequent flyer and discover how they could get so many free trips by displaying pure ignorance and a total lack of judgement. Just a thought I wonder if he will go back to Turkey where there is an outstanding arrest warrant for her ferginess the duchess of York?

And so on to my lovely picture today which I saw while researching my latest unputdownable book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue,’ look Newt and Andrew here is somewhere that will welcome you with open arms, just pop down to the Faith Baptist Church and as the sign says “you will fit right in!”

Is Yours A Dysfunctional Family If So Join The Baptist Church

Just recently and for no reason really, except the website address is on the sign, I went onto the website for the Faith Baptist Church in New Brunswick, Canada and I promise you it was everything I hoped it would be from the ‘Donut Club’ to the desperately cheesy pictures of the happy families who “join us on Sunday.”

Sadly although I spent quite a long time on the website – ok three minutes but I promise you that was all I could bear I am only human oops ‘feline – I didn’t see a single family who looked ‘dysfunctional’ in any way whatsoever although one of the teenagers hanging from a tree looked more than a little strange.

Still I am sure that the sugar fuelled members of the Donut Club, which to quote the Faith Baptist Church’s professional copywriter exactly “The Donut Club is our mid-week children’s program for kids kindergarten through grade 5. Every week they enjoy music, games, a Bible lesson and a special visit from Duncan the Donut. Donut Club meets every Tuesday from 6:30-7:45pm,” will probably carry out sugar induced rampages at some point in time and if you wonder why just as yourself how many Donuts can a kid eat in an hour and fifteen minutes? The answer is an awful lot!

So the only really ‘dysfunctional’ thing about the Faith Baptist Church is their billboard, just look closely at the website and you won’t see any dysfunctional people, not even Duncan the Donut, which is a shame because they tend to be my favourites!



About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Robin

This weekend in England it was the RSPB’s 33rd ‘Big Garden Birdwatch’ (the RSPB is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for all those who might not know which when you think about it is an enormous number of people) a weekend when friends and fanciers of our feathered friends gaze out into their gardens to identify and count the number of birds who have decided to land on their tiny patch of England that hasn’t as yet been repossessed by the banks.

Now I haven’t been in England for a few years but when I was there I didn’t just dedicate one weekend to watching English garden birds it was a full time occupation, I was always on the windowsill glued to the bird table or in the Spring watching our feathered cousins pick at the newly sown lawn.

So what on earth is the ‘Big Garden Birdwatch?’ Well to keep it simple, which is always nice, for 33 years now the RSPB have asked people to snoop on the feathered wildlife in their gardens, obviously as the RSPB is a charity there is no pay or reward and if you want to know the full results of the weekend’s activity you have to buy a report from them.

The Big Garden Birdwatch is believed to be the biggest “citizen science” exercise anywhere in the world and anyone can ‘join in’ all you have to do is to watch an open space, which can be your garden, a park or even a prison exercise yard for one hour and do that once a year and while you are watching the space just count the birds that land, unfortunately pouncing on them is frowned upon at all times by the RSPB and not only during the study. How was I suppose to know that? I’m a Cat after all.

So while you are watching your bit of England waiting for the flap of wings all you have to do is to count the birds that arrive and to avoid double counting you simply record the largest number of each species you see at any one moment.

The clever thing about this survey is that everyone taking part helps to create a countrywide snapshot of England’s ever changing populations of winter birds and over the years the survey has measured and confirmed the changes in populations of England’s birds which as last year’s survey reveals the number of species in England’s gardens stands at an impressive and mouthwatering 73!

So well done to the RSPB who have proved that not everything with a ‘royal’ connection is completely spoilt and useless, and they still think that they should be bought a new royal yacht but then that is another story that I have been trying to resist telling.

One bit of information from the Big Garden Birdwatch that I found interesting if not a little incriminating is that there number of birds in my old garden has increased dramatically since I left for central Europe where it’s reported the numbers of garden birds has begun to decline, nature is an odd thing isn’t it?

Below is a graph that has nothing to do with this blog article whatsoever but I think it makes it look ever so important and included it for that reason.

Graph



About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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No Mental Patients  Guilin China

The safety instructions for riding a cable car in Gulin, China would amusing if they didn’t show how dreadfully backward and prejudice the richest communists in the world really are!

Of course I can understand that people riding the cable car should be discouraged from taking explosives on board, and smelly things that can “irritate the nose” and if I knew what “lolling People” were, I would probably stop them from boarding too, but is it fair, reasonable or just to prohibit “mental Patients,” or even “dull-witted Patients” to be forced to spend hours trolling up a mountain instead of sailing up in a few minutes? I don’t think so do you?

The prejudice of the Chinese doesn’t just apply to the unfortunate among us who suffer mental health problems apparently, according to Chinese authorities if you are “liable to carsickness” you must be mentally ill – see point 4.1!

Which all goes to prove that not only should we not buy the shoddy goods manufactured in China which are made to the ‘break out of the box’ principle, we shouldn’t go to China on holiday either.



About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

 

I just wanted to say well done to my Translator Mr. John Woodcock because his ebook ‘Tram No6 – The Naughtiest of Trams’ which is the first book in the ‘The Trams of Prague’ series has started to sell really well as a the number of people who have colour ebook readers grows thanks to the enormous increase in sales of the Amazon Kindle Fire and the iPad.

trams-cover.jpg

Mr. John Woodcock says that he thinks the reason why ‘Tram No6 – The Naughtiest of Trams’ is selling so well is that it’s illustrated in colour through-out and was one of the first picture books written and developed for colour ereaders (probably why it stuck on the shelves of Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for so long before they we’re invented – and not my first thought which was that he is a talentless nobody who is only employed as my translator because he is the only human in the world who can speak Cat. You will know exactly what I think of him if you have read my book ‘Getting Out Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ which out sells Mr. John Woodcock’s book by thousands to one!

Of course I very rarely make references to other books when I can always mention my own which are such masterpieces but there is always a first time for everything as my Mum said when she was strapping the Bungee cord to her ankle, which of course is another story… which I am writing at the moment and Mr. John Woodcock is desperately trying to translate!

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They say you can get a lot of things in Bangkok and as this sign demonstrates ‘anything’ means ‘anything’ in Bangkok unless of course the translator misread the word he or she was supposed to translate for the sign and had ‘testicles’ on the brain – not a nice mental picture.

Testicle Massage In Bangkok

As for this unfortunate Cat I wouldn’t be able to have a testicle massage in Bangkok as readers of my first book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ will recall. Some nice person mentioned to me as I was writing this paragraph that that was a bit sad, ‘A BIT SAD!’ Huh I would call it a crime agains Cat kind!

Lastly what has ‘SMILE TEEN MASSAGE’ got to do with anything? Answers in the usual format please unless this Cat has completely misunderstood what a ‘smiling teen’ has to do with a ‘testicle massage,’ then I think that your answers should be in private only!

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Cat Pensioner Window

A lot of newspapers recently have been carrying a story about an 85 year old pensioner being hit on the head by a Cat in Buenos Aires in July. The pensioner was knocked unconscious and was in a coma for a long while after being hit by the Cat and has never really recovered from the incident. The Cat wasn’t so fortunate and didn’t survive the fall from the fourth storey.

So what was a fine looking Cat doing falling four stories I hear you ask? Images come to mind of a devil may care feline tethering on a window ledge 50 feet in the air come to mind, or a swashbuckling puss walking a tightrope of telephone wires strung from one building to another. Sadly the truth of what happened to this poor Cat is not only rather mundane it is also absolutely disgusting.

Apparently a couple on the forth floor were having a blazing row, can you see where this is going, no I bet you can’t dear cuddly reader but then you are a normal well adjusted individual! What happened is so bizarre it wouldn’t even appear in one of my books, during their quarrel the husband picked up the family pet and threw it at his wife, but she ducked and the Cat sailed through an open window.

Can you imagine what went through the husband’s head at that moment, “I hate you and I am going to kill you, I will kill you with a um… err… a… yes I know a Cat.’ What was he thinking! I am afraid I don’t know.

There has been a lot of discussion about the injuries to the pensioner of course and her family seem to expect compensation for her quite rightly, but sadly as happens in these cases all too often no one seems to be saying, until now – this. “The person who did this is one of the cruelest most disgusting individuals on the planet and The Cat hopes that something really very awful happens to him.”

What is it with some of you humans and Cats, we aren’t vases, blunt instruments or any other kind of deadly weapons, please stop treating us as though we are inanimate.



About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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When Is A Monkey park Not A Monkey Park When It s In Japan

Sometimes you see a sign that really asks more questions than it answers, just like this one from the masters of misinformation and translation, the Japanese bless them.

This sign from a Monkey Park (yes you guessed right) is one of the best exhibits of the Japanese tradition of ‘Ru-bbishy’ which roughly translated means ‘nonsense signage.’

I am afraid that is all of the information I can give my dear cuddly readers I thought the Monkey Park was lovely and so did the Monkeys but I never discovered exactly what the Bird and Deer look for which is quite sad because if I had I would have been able to tell everyone in my latest masterpiece of feline literature ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ and put some of the other pictures I took of Japan on the Cat’s Diary www-wickedlywonderfulwebsite www.thecatsdiary.com.

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