Jack – Page 2 – Ramsay Family Classics

Jack-larm clock

As it approaches summer it has been getting light earlier and earlier around here, and Jack’s time keeping system seems to be photonic rather than chronographic (and afer we bough him that nice watch for his birthday and all…). He seems to think that 8am is plenty late enough to be sleeping in and not paying him any attention, and so he has taken it upon himself to be a mobile furry alarm clock.

He jumps onto the bed in a heavy way intended to make it shake, walks over you making sure to press his paws into your side/back/stomach (which ever is uppermost), and then stops on the bed just next to your head and stares at you.

Now I don’t know if this is a universal thing (I suspect it is), but I can’t sleep when I feel that someone is staring at me, so having Jack just sitting staring at me is more effective than prying my eyes open with a crow bar. And as soon as I open my eyes he delivers the coup detat, going “Mrow” and rolling onto his back for a belly scratch.

And if you try to ignor him he gently but intentionally scratches you on the back/arm/foot/other exposed surface.

It is a most effective strategy but has gotten him shut out of the bedroom a couple of times, because dammit, I like having a sleep in now and again.

Skink’s nest

Lately Jack has taken up the time honoured and reputable cat sport of Skink hunting.

All our cats when I was growing up would do it, and now Jack’s got in on the game.

The only difference is that the Skinks around here are the largest I’ve ever seen. They’re HUGE.

The first one I saw Jack drag in and bat around the floor was big, but I thought that perhaps it was just a one off abnormally large specimen. After the third one I began to wonder if perhaps skinks lived communinally in nests, and perhaps Jack had stumbled upon the Skink King’s nest.

Whatever the story, Jack hasn’t dragged any in for a few day so perhaps they’ve learned to hide better, or Jack has lost interest in hunting skinks for the time being.

Fathers’ day

I was working overnight on the night before fathers’ day, and came home to find Simone asleep and Jack on the bed with a card in front of him.

Curious, I opened it, and found this: 1157

and inside was written this: 1159

My first fathers’ day card!

It was a lovely sentiment, and Jack sure has good handwriting given that he lacks opposible thumbs.

Several Tales of Jack

Jack was running around the house this morning and he sounded like he was buzzing. I couldn’t figure it out. Every time he came close by I could swear that the buzzing got louder and sounded like it was coming from Jack. I was starting to get a little confused until he opened his mouth and the fly that had been in there flew out.

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For some time now I have been at the mercy of a cruel and mischevious sock fairy. I bought some new socks a few weeks back, wore them a couple of times, and then one of them just disappeared. After looking high and low I put it down to an act of sock fairy. Every couple of days I would define insanity by doing the same thing again and again (ie looking for said lost sock) and expecting a different outcome from the last time I looked in a given spot. I had pretty much given up when one day I walked into the spare room to find Jack playing with said previously missing sock in the middle of the floor. Now I suppose that it is conceivable that the sock fairy returned the sock (which goes against his previous modus operandi), but it seems to me that the more likely explaination is that Jack in fact IS the sock fairy. Especially given his previously commented on fascination with socks.

In a discussion I had with Simone later on we were theorising that perhaps the sock fairy that we know as an indistinct etherial entity is in fact just the collaborative efforts of a number of cats acting in the roll of sock fairy. They all have slightly overlaping teritories, so the sock fairy acts upon everyone, and can be in multiple places simultaneously.

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I don’t know if you all can remember the Simpsons episode where Marge gets a Pretzel making franchise. In her office in the garage she has this “inspirational” poster that she sticks up in front of her desk which shows a cat hainging onto a clothes line by it’s front paws and it’s head just looking out over the top of the line, with the phrase “Hang in there baby” across the bottom.

Now Jack has always been quite a jumper, and the other day I was reminded of Marge’s poster when jack tried to jump onto the top of the wardrobe in our bedroom. Now this wardrobe is probably 7 1/2 foot tall, and Jack was jumping from the top of the 3 foot high laundry basket. He jumped, got his paws onto the top, but didn’t have enough momentum to get the rest of him up, and there wasn’t enough traction for him to try and claw his way up the rest of the way (although he gave it a damn good try), so he just hung there for about 30 seconds. Eventually he decided to let go and drop back to the basket, and then slunk off to sit on the couch and ignore the indignity of me laughing at him. Sometimes he’s soooo cute.

Waiting at the door

Since Simone has left for Nambour, Jack has taken to doing this rather cute thing when I arrive home. I’ll switch off the car, get out, and be greeted by a little “mroowww” and a furry little face poking itself around the corner of the fence, before he follows me inside.

It’s almost as if Jack’s decided that since Simone’s not around to ask me how my day was when I arrive home, he’ll take on the responsibility (and extract a few belly rubs while he’s at it).

Trial separation

After 14 months together we are having a trial separation.

Now before you all go getting startled, this is simply a stupid work thing.

Both being doctors on career paths, we knew and had discussed even before we got married the probability that at some point we would be sent to different places apart from one another for some period of time. It’s a sad reality, and it’s just a little irritating that it’s had to happen so soon.

Simone has finished her job doing paediatric surgery at the Mater, and is now set to spend the next 6 months doing general surgery at Nambour hospital, about 2 hours north of our house.
I’ve been scheming constantly for most of the last week, trying to figure out a last minute way out of it, since I frankly rather like having my girl around to come home to in the afternoons, do stuff with in the evenings, and snuggle with at night (and while Jack is admirably fluffy, friendly and cuddly, he isn’t quite up to the task of substitution).

It’s close enough that we can spend weekends together, and as it involves significantly less on call than the Paeds job did, we will hopefully be able to have good quality time on those weekends, but it still kinda sucks.

On weekdays however, since I no longer have a moderating female influence around, there will be frequent parties, poker nights and keg offs. Jack tells me he’s got a huge one in the works for wednesday already, and all his biker mates are coming, so if you don’t have other plans, drop in, bring some vodka, and don’t forget your pool cue for the inevitable end of party front lawn fight.

And when that’s done I’ve heard rumors about teddy organising jelly, handcuffs, and a limosine load of strippers – frankly I’m afraid to ask. Still, Jack and teddy do throw the most happening parties, so perhaps I shouldn’t question, and just go with the flow. 🙂

Foolish things to do with cordial

A few weeks back I did something rather stupid.

I was drinking a glass of cordial and put it down on my desk as I was playing on my computer.

Jack being his usual rumbunctious self jumped up onto the desk, and started sniffing my cordial with a view to drinking it (he likes human drinks, but thankfully hasn’t figured out how to get into the grog cupboard yet).

Simone trying to be helpful shifted the drink closer to me so that I could stop Jack from drinking it, and somewhere in the subsequent confusion Jack moved, I reacted, and the cordial spilled onto my computer’s keyboard.

Now in the past I had heard stories about people drying their keyboards and continuing without any problems, but that didn’t seem to work.

Then I recalled some-one who swore that they had washed their keyboard and hung it out to dry, and had it back working the next day. Obviously they didn’t have a laptop keyboard, because that didn’t work either.

In the end I just had to bite the bullet and buy a replacement keyboard.

Turned out to be the most expensive cup of cordial I’ve ever had.

Anyway, for everyone’s amusement, here is a pretty picture of my keyboard in the bathroom sink. Kids, don’t try this without asking your parents first.

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Jumping Jack flash

It seems that Jack has (finally) realised that he is capable of jumping up onto the kitchen bench.

It has always somewhat amused me that while Jack has grown into quite a large cat he has, up until now, seemed to operated on the assumption that he simply wasn’t capable of jumping as high as the bench, so he simply didn’t try.

Then last night he was chasing a moth around the house and it flew above the bench and without thinking Jack followed it up. Then he kind of paused on the bench, looked back at the floor, and you could almost hear him think “Whoa… I never knew I could do that. That was cool.. and this could be useful.. hmmm”.

Then this afternoon when I got home Jack had obviously been practicing all day, because he made sure I was watching, and sauntered slowly over to the kitchen, paused, and jumped up onto the bench, as if to say “Aren’t I clever. Look what I can do”.

And he is clever, but perhaps we shouldn’t be encouraging him to be clever in the area of jumping onto benches.

A better cat trap

When I was a chhild I had a book entitled “My cat likes to hide in boxes”. According to the book, the cat from france likes to sing and dance, but my cat likes to hide in boxes.

Now in reality, the cat from spain flies an aeroplane, and my cat (Jack) likes to jump into our laundry hamper whenever we leave the top up. The amusing thing about this is that he always does it in a fashion that causes the lid to drop shut, thus trapping himself inside. The hamper itself is a pretty light and airy wicker affair (a feature which is aided by Jack’s pre-existing love of using it as a scratching post), so Jack doesn’t seem terribly concerned by getting trapped it in, he just can’t manage to extricate himself.

Although I can’t be sure of what it might be yet, I’m sure there will come a time when my newly discovered “Better Cat Trap” will come in useful (perhaps when we need to take him to the vet), but in the interim it will just have to remain a source of sporadic amusement.