Someone once described the photograph of me on the cover of my wonderful best selling masterpiece “Getting Out – Excerpts From A Cat’s Diary” which you can get here Amazon.com as a work of art and I sincerely believe that they were speaking the truth.

I found this picture of an astonishingly good looking, well read and cultured clever Cat, for a moment I thought it was me! But then I realised that the artist Charles Wysocki had probably just seen a photograph of me and wanted to use me as the perfect model.

Looking through the book on the bookshelf I have to say I thoroughly recommend the volume on the lower shelf ‘The Sardine,’ when I read this magical book I found it to be not only insightful but also a tender loving story with a very happy and satisfying ending.

While we are talking about the books in the picture and not me does anyone know where I can get a copy of ‘Delicious Field Mice I have Known’ and who wrote it? As yet I haven’t read it but now that I know of it, it is top of my reading list.

One last thought about my book with the wonderful cover, if you don’t own and treasure a copy already just click over to Amazon.com and you can get one, actually if you do own and treasure a copy of my wonderful book why not treat yourself to a second or third copy I say?

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The diary in question is Samuel Pepys’ and was started on January 1st 1660 and carried on for nine years which is a bit of a long time, but it is as interesting as it is heavy and has some priceless extracts some include watching the Great Fire of London in 1666, living through the Black Death a year or two before and some about his private life.

The private moments in Pepys diary pain a rather unpleasant picture of the workings of London’s sewer system which was frankly non-existent.

Pepys moved into a new house and tells his readers what happened soon afterwards.

“Going down into my cellar I put my foot into a great heap of turds [from his neighbour's toilet]… which doth trouble me.”

Pepys was not usually a man to call a “turd” a ‘turd’ because he was patronised heavily by king Charles II being appointed to the Navy office and rose through the ranks to become a very influencial and powerful member of the upper class, not bad for a tailor’s son from Fleet Street.

One of the best bits of his diary proves that he is a real Englishman when he describes trying for the first time a drink newly arrived in England – Tea – and says that he enjoyed his “cupp” very much.

If you haven’t dipped into Samuel Pepys’ diary I can hardly say that this Cat blames you it’s so big, but it is nice to think that diaries are so universally appreciated and that my diary will one day be 350 years old as well, I am sure that there will be a party to celebrate – I wonder what presents I will get?

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But there is something so much worst than a Tattoo on a human male or female and that is a misspelt one. Imagine having to live with a Tattoo that instead of claiming you are awesome suggests that you are “awsome” and worse the type face you chose to become “awsome” was very old and so when someone read your back quickly they might believe you are suggesting you are “amsome” whatever that might be?

You would think that getting a Tattoo would be something that you would plan very, very carefully and if the Tattoo involved words then you would write them out and check the spelling very, very carefully after all if you are going to go through the pain, trouble and expense of having ink injected into your skin then you will want to make sure that people don’t judge you by your Tattoo surely.

Then again if you are not so diligent you may just hope that only God judges you, like the person in the next picture, and then you will have to hope that God’s spelling is as dreadful as yours and your Tattoo artist’s as he will have to poor thing.

You humans never cease to amaze this Cat and I would like to thank you all on behalf of all of the Cat’s in the world for giving us such a lot to laugh at so very often – you are all awesome.

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Have I piqued your interest? I do hope so! Where am I going I hear you ask – no go on please ask where I am going even if you aren’t really very interested because I am really hyped by the prospect and when you hear you might just be a little hyped too – whatever ‘hyped’ actually is of course!

Ok I give in I’ll tell you anyway. I am going to Florida, to Cape Canaveral that used to be Cape Kennedy, to watch a photograph of my face be launched into space on the last Space Shuttle flight ever, unless of course you count the return flight as a separate one if you see what I mean and surely the return flight is important enough to be counted separately.

The great thing is that after NASA asked me to supply the photograph of me that is used on the cover of my world famous book “Getting Out Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary” available from all good, and not so terribly good, bookshops near you and of course at these fine places Amazon.com and my wickedly wonderful website or www www.thecatsdiary.com I asked them nicely if they would consider letting ordinary people send their pictures into space along with mine.

First they said that was a wonderful idea and then as they thought about it more they suggested that they might encourage people to send their pictures to them via the wonderful world wide web and they went away to build a website to do that very thing, well we have to celebrate NASA’s generosity because now if you are inclined to send your photograph into space you can do just that.

Simply go to the link below and upload a picture of you or indeed a loved one or family member (sorry old joke couldn’t resist it) and then wait until the Shuttle you choose comes back to the planet.

After your Shuttle has arrived back on Earth all you have to do is to go back to the site and using your reference number (which they give you after your picture is uploaded) you can get a certificate to say that your face has been in space, which if you are as interest in Rockets and of course explosions as I am you will probably treasure for a long time or if you are cheap like some people accuse me of being send the certificates to your friends and family as Christmas presents – tee hee.

www.faceinspace.nasa.gov/index.aspxm

I am going on the very last Space Shuttle mission the 134th, you should choose that one because it is going to be the best and most memorable because it has me on it. If you look at the picture below you’ll see some of our co-astronauts, a little bit about our mission on the STS-134 and a picture of the all important embroidered Mission logo – I want one of those don’t you?

Well although of course I am going to be really sad to see the back of the ugly little Space Shuttle it has ended up like almost all little ugly things, it has become an icon like, oh Mickey Mouse, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Chief Executive Officer of Dreamworks and of course the Statue of Liberty which frankly I believe the French couldn’t off load fast enough once they realised just how ugly it was, so they looked around for a young, gullible nation and gave them a ‘present.’

I think that the only reason that America accepted the French ‘present’ was that they thought that they were getting the Eiffel Tower, much as they did when the those nice folks in Lake Tahoe thought that they were getting the iron bridge called Tower Bridge and were justifiably surprised when the first stones of London Bridge were unloaded, though why they would want that ugly Victorian monstrosity is anyone’s guess!

Just to compare the bridges and to prove that the bridge the good people of Lake Tahoe got was a nicer bridge. Here is the London Bridge as it is today.

Do please let me know if you agree with this Cat or not and of course if you upload your picture to be blasted off into space later this year.

Personally I can hardly wait.

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Please remember when you look at the pictures that the Donkey is the animal in distress in the Well and the princess is the animal in de dress.

So why was the princess in the dress? Well that is simple this was a royal official picture, sorry “portrait” taken about 90 years ago and still used today.

More interestingly the Donkey was in the Well because the poor animal fell in! Sadly that wasn’t the end of the Donkey’s trials and tribulations because the farmer decided that the Donkey and the Well were both surplus to his long term agricultural requirements (and in that the Donkey had a lot in common with the ‘fair’ princess and the rest of the royals), so he decided to fill in the Well and in doing so bury the Donkey alive.

Obviously that could be considered a little harsh but let’s face it farmers are, in the main, bastards and so this sort of behaviour is quite in character.

Well, the Donkey in the Well proved to be a credit to his stubborn and resilient race and as the farmer shovelled more and more earth into the Well (and of course over the Donkey) the Donkey just shook the earth off his back, sending the shovelfuls to the floor of the Well, then he stood on top of the earth that had fallen. And he kept doing that until he was able to climb out of the Well, kick the farmer and live a totally unfruitful life being too old to work and happily became a significant burden on the farmer, who couldn’t get rid of the Donkey because his time in the Well made him famous and modern society says that you mustn’t kill minor celebrities even on your own farm.

There is of course a moral for all of us here and that is to simply shake off everything that is thrown at us and then trample it under foot.

So The Cat says good on you Mr. Donkey! Sadly I don’t know his or indeed her name but if he or she were this Cat’s Donkey I would call him ‘Rex’ which I believe is a fine name and shouldn’t simply be confined for use on Dogs and Kings and should be used more often, especially on Donkeys.

Tomorrow I hope to bring you a great story about a Cat called Milly who is without a doubt a Cat after my own heart, till then dear reader Purrs and Noses.

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So just to prove that no Cat is perfect here is a picture of the ‘devastation,’ I use the emphasis because I have yet to see any devastation personally and can’t find any photographs of the ‘event.’

I did hear that there is a town up near the border with the old west that is cut off and they were evacuating people but really doesn’t anyone remember 2002 when the Metro in Prague was full of water and some areas were 20 feet under it, I have no sympathy with anyone who didn’t take that as a warning and move to higher ground like the place I live in there would really have to be a flood of Noah proportions to get water to lap at my threshold.

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Why is it that Cats have such a bad reputation when it comes to old sayings or expressions? It is something I have puzzled about when sitting very comfortably and warmly on various human laps and knees recently as apparently the flood water in Central Europe gets deeper and Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic start to drown, but back to that later.

Honestly I have no idea why Cats have such a bad reputation and would be interested to hear from any reader why they think it is the case! Apart, of course, from the reader who asked me why I hadn’t written a blog for a few days and they, in turn, hadn’t had anything funny to read.

Well I replied to them that they really ought to read my book of course book which anyone can easily get here at Amazon.com as if you all need reminding tee hee, and I also let them into a bit of a secret and that is that everyone will soon be able to read my wonderful book on a Sony eReader because those nice people at Sony and this wonderful Cat are going to start ‘bundling’ my amazing ebook with their cute eReader so that you can all buy them as a set if you see what I mean – do contact me for details.

Still the note from my fan did make me think about the phrase “Has the Cat got your tongue?” though, and I thought that I would share those thoughts with you below.

1. What would a Cat do with your tongue or indeed anyone else’s tongue – make a tongue necklace? I hardly
think so!
2. Where would we keep all of the tongues we collect? We don’t have pockets you know, or if we do I have never found mine!
3. Old sayings are as mental as the people who use them.
3. Couldn’t really think of a third point.
3. I think I am a little confused with the numbering system here and anyway I am getting bored with this
list.
4. Dropped off for a while until I was woken up by someone standing up and me falling on my feet (of course).
5. Why do humans stand up unexpectedly when a warm Cat is comfortably asleep on their lap?
6. I may have lost my train of thought and veered off the subject I was thinking about!
7. What was the subject?
8. What am I doing here.
9. Does existentialism have any relevance to the modern feline.
10 My head hurts!

It is so unlikely that a Cat and this cat in particular would want to steal a human tongue that I had to commission an artist to show a Cat stealing a tongue.

Artist’s impression of Cat lulling human to sleep before stealing tongue.

One last thing before I go off to find a lap and have a well deserved sleep. The weather here has been pretty terrible recently ‘but’ and it is a very big but just as the idea that Cat’s collect tongues is a myth so is the ‘fact’ reported by the BBC News that the Czech republic, Poland and Hungary are flooded – they aren’t I promise you, so please stop if you were reaching for the inflatable life raft catalogue and wondering if they deliver to Prague. Prague and the surrounding countryside is as dry as a bone, or it was a couple of days ago when I flew over it on my way back from Moscow – the Russian bless them are buying my book now.

Not only that currently I am looking out over Prague from the largest film studios in Europe on a hill above Prague where I can see for miles or kilometres as they say here and I can’t see a drop of water that isn’t in the place it should be ie., the Vltava river which flows, usually in an orderly fashion, through Prague and then down to Slovakia where it is given a new name and eventually ends up in the sea somewhere.

Artist’s impression of BBC news imaginary flood water.

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Look she is only little, so why do people make such a fuss about poor Oh Eun-Sun? According to the 3ft 3inch sturdily build Korean (there is only one Korea to Koreans) she has managed to climb all of the highest peaks in the world which is quite an achievement for someone who must think that a MacDonald’s counter is at the top of the world when she is dying for a Big Mac but being ignored.

So why oh why does some clever Richard or is the “clever dick” keep saying that poor little stocky Oh Eun-Sun has missed a significant peak and therefore failed to climb all of the world’s highest mountains, when poor plucky petite Oh Eun-Sun is probably at home with her mountaineers socks off warming her frost bitten chilblanes and trying to recover from a diet of Yaks, milk which apparently turns your stomach into a dangling mess after as far as she was concerned running out of very tall mountain peaks to climb.

Personally I think that the clever Richard is jealous and just because poor little Oh Eun-Su might have become confused at the end of her mountain climbing odyssey and turned right instead of turning left to climb Mt Kanchenjunga, on the border of Nepal, India and China, and gone home instead, it is nothing to get too hot under the thermals about.

Lets face it, if all you have been doing since 1997 when Oh Eun-Sun, who of course is not very tall, started climbing the world’s highest peaks you would get rather disorientated and may forget to climb a mountain or two wouldn’t you especially if it is the last one and some one has called you on your rather outdated mobile phone to tell you that the Shin Ramyun is ready?

Actually I have to confess to getting confused when travelling recently. As I have been writing my latest blockbuster, my wonderful “Travelogue” I have accidentally taken a wrong turning or two myself, but usually I have to add, aided by Dave the Cat’s dreadful directions and appalling map reading skills.

You know, I vote that we vote that poor dwarf-like Oh Eun-Sun be crowned Queen of the Mountains or whatever useless title she is after and let’s brush the Mt Kanchenjunga ‘incident’ under the carpet shall we? After all isn’t it an achievement to climb nearly all the highest mountain peaks in the world? I should say so. Between you and me I get out of breath and giddy just climbing the stairs when slipping off for a snooze on ‘their’ bed so I think that the precocious vertically challenged Korean climbing wonder should get the cake or whatever the prize is don’t you for climbing all of the tallest mountains in the world after all who really cares?

PS

I may have got the exact height of the Korean tiny terror of the Alps wrong, there is nothing in the news to suggest that Oh Eun-Sun is as small as I imagine, except of course the word ‘Korean!’ And that is said with love, Koreans and other tiddlies are really rather nice and happily the Cat can look some of them in the eye without them bending which is handy.

I think the captions says “I need to go to the loo can you turn the camera off for a minute!” But then I might be wrong!

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Here in the middle of Europe people are back in shorts as I said a few blogs ago, the tops of cars are down if they are soft, and that is before the last frosts of the year have finished doing what frosts do.

But it is not only the mad central Europeans who have displayed phototropic responses, happily more and more people have obviously decided to grab a good book, namely mine and sales at places such as Amazon.com and my wickedly wonderful website or www www.thecatsdiary.com have just exploded. What excellent taste you humans have, well the ones who’ve bought my masterpiece of feline literature.

It seems the sun has also had a wonderful effect on my Prize Giveaway because the donations are rolling in and someone even donated more than a dollar har ha, if you haven’t had an opportunity to look closely at my Prize Giveaway why not pop along to this page on my wickedly wonderful website or www www.thecatsdiary.com here the giveaway and join in the fun.

Even Dave the Cat seems to have caught the Sun and changed his hat for a more summery one although between you and me I am a little worried about Dave the Cat and that is because he seems to be leaning the other way if you see what I mean and that is only the start of it, what about his choice of hat? The only thing you can really say is that it is “consistent” isn’t it!

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By either buying my book or donating as little as a dollar (yes just a dollar although who would be that mean to a Cat?) you can win one of a number of wonderful prizes, the first ‘biggee’ is an iPod touch.

Yes you read that correctly this master of philanthropy is giving away an iPod touch – “Wow,” yes you took the words right out of my mouth!

So what are you waiting for click over to be part of the giveaway now and join in.

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