Life with a Siamese Cat ............

........ is never dull !  Mia had a very quiet day yesterday, she snuggled up on my dressing gown most of the time and didn't fancy going out much at all.  But oh, didn't that change once it was our time for bed !  At that point she decided it was time to play, zapping round the house, tagging us, chasing and retrieving balls of paper (one of her favourite games) - okay, that was fine, but the next thing there was a loud crash from downstairs and Max (my son) and I rushed downstairs to find out what had happened, putting on all the lights and checking in every room.

Oh yes, I finally discovered what Mia had done - she must have been chasing a little fly or midge (I had heard her chunnering a little earlier in the evening) - and she had obviously jumped onto the windowsill in the front room to catch it, knocking over a large metal bowl and its contents, as well as completely shredding the net curtains !!!  (Not for the first time, I might add, but now completely beyond redemption and so I'll be ordering some new ones shortly - nets aren't my favourite decor but are necessary in our front room to provide privacy from the outside world ..... I already discarded the ones in our bedroom completely because Mia had ripped them too ...... not sure how long new ones will last though *LOL*) !

How can a creature as gorgeous and beautiful as this (err, the furry one in the picture of course!) .......

wreak this amount of havoc ......... !

Mia definitely keeps us on our toes and, like I say, there's never a dull moment.  As my husband says, there are cats and then there are "Siamese" cats and anyone who is owned by one will utterly understand and sympathise.  (I can highly recommend the very funny books by Doreen Tovey about living with Siamese cats). We've had glass nightlight holders knocked off the mantlepiece and smashed to smithereens (at 3 in the morning ..... now that was a grand way to be woken up!), the sides of the bed shredded, found a diverse assortment of goodies (pens, wire, paper, and other things we'd been looking everywhere for) pushed under chairs and sofas and she's an expert at sniffing out any wool I've got stashed away and tangling it into an unusable mess.  Not to mention her trick of jumping vertically onto the top of the kitchen cupboards, then dropping down suddenly next to you whilst you're making a sandwich!  But of course, we're all totally besotted with her and she gets away with "murder".  (Right now butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, she's all curled up fast asleep on her cushion on the floor next to me).

Well, what else?  Not a lot happening, artistically speaking, at the moment ..... any creative inspiration I've had has deserted me at the moment and I'm waiting for it to come back and visit again. Done some sock knitting, that's about all.  Mind you, I was laid up with a bad back for a week - not something I normally suffer from. All I did was bend to dry myself after a shower and that was it, obviously wrenched something I shouldn't have, and it led to several very painful days, dosing myself up with painkillers and keeping a hot water bottle against my spine.  The worst experience was when I tried to get out of bed one morning, I'd managed to roll onto my back, but I literally could not move and I ended up feeling quite panicky. Graham tried to help best he could (he has a permanently bad back so you can visualise the scenario - at least he understood how much pain I was in).. I kid you not, it took me 35 minutes to finally manoeuvre into a position where I could ease myself out of bed with a bearable amount of pain. I think it was the fact that Graham threatened to call the paramedics in 5 minutes and they'd stretcher me out and take me to hospital that made me have one last final shot at getting up. Not much fun I can tell you, but we did have a laugh about it afterwards.

This week I have a cold and sore throat, so I've been staying home and keeping warm - hopefully I'm on the mend now, but I'm fed up of all this not feeling 100% fit nonsense.

Attended a Remembrance Day Service with Lindsay on 11th November - it was the anniversary of our Dad's death too, so it was a particularly poignant and moving ceremony for us both. Hard to imagine that a whole year has passed since his death.

Then last week Lindsay and I went for a meal and to The Grand Theatre in Blackpool for a ballet performance of "A Christmas Carol".  Something a little different for us to enjoy, with all the dance, music and costumes.  We'll be there again next month too, for a Christmas Brass Band Concert, to get us in a festive mood.

So ...... better go and sort out some net curtains, I think.  Wonder what other mischief Mia has planned for us?