For the last week or so, there has been a wailing, hungry young tom prowling round our neighbourhood. The Mogret is a bit bemused by this and hasn’t reacted with her normal anti-Other-Cat fury. I’d almost call her behaviour coquettish, if I didn’t know that she can read English and would skewer me for such cheek. It’s cute.

Random Cat was abducted by us last week, and trapped in the kitchen for several hours, whereupon he turned from a terrified, haunted-looking cat, into the most affectionate and friendly young cat I’ve ever met. He actually wailed when I stopped stroking him. Bless. But, as the evening wore on, I began to feel that maybe he wasn’t a stray: he was just too affectionate to be a truly random cat. So, I let him go.

I’ve been pining for him ever since, and subsequent attempts to entrap him again, have met with naught but bloodshed. Poor philb has some lacerations on his arm that will take a fair while to heal. But, my sympathy lies with Random Cat. He’s just too hungry to be being fed and adored on a regular basis. He’s so terrified of humans that you can actually see the internal battle between the hunger and the fear, and the hunger is powerful enough to let him come within a foot of a human, just to eat. That saddens me. All cats should have a human slave.

It’s so bitterly cold out there, that I worry about the poor mite. He doesn’t have the lush fur of the Mog and I bet he’s cold out there.

Hopefully, we will manage to bring him in and reassure him. In the meantime, he will continue to be fed by us. It would be so nice for Mog to have a friend to chase around. Us human creatures do try, but we can’t climb furniture and hide behind things in the same way that a cat can, so we let her down in the cat-entertainment department.

I’m doing another Open University course at the moment: Relational Databases. Admittedly it is more for light relief, but it is still 30 points towards a degree. So far I have read through all the materials and am impatiently awaiting the next batch. Due to be posted 7th April. Bah.

On previous courses there was a certain amount of discourse, between members of a tutor group, via the conference systems run by the OU. The relevant conferences would be available from your ‘desktop’ when you logged in to the conferencing software. For this course there is nothing. Oh, there is the normal ‘course news’ conference, which is read-only, but nothing else. I’m doing a level 3 course (3rd year of degree level) so maybe you are just supposed to fend for yourself now. Who knows. Personally I miss the amusing putdowns and one-up-manship (where does one hyphenate that?) that went on. Also, I’m feeling just a little bit alone on this course.

I’ve received a reminder from my tutor that there is a tutorial this Saturday (the first one), so hopefully there will be Other People there. If I hurry, I can get my first assignment done and handed to my tutor too. For some reason this course doesn’t use the fabulous e-TMA system, whereby you submit your files electronically; this course requires dead-tree versions to be snail-mailed to the tutor. No more minutes-before-cutoff-time frantic assignment-attempts. I will have to plan things. Yeesh.

Our precious drama-lemons have all suddenly sprouted thorns. In the last two days.

Well I’m not much of a lemon-parent, clearly, as I was unaware that lemon trees grew thorns. Seeing as our lemons are only two years old, well, almost three years old, they are really only trainee-lemons; but they seem to have bounced back from their winter of discontent. Even SpindlyLemon (yes, they all have nicknames) seems to have perked up again, and having shed all his leaves, has started to grow some fresh baby leaves for spring.

What a relief.

I mentioned some time back about having to have a tooth extracted shortly. Well, the day of DOOM was yesterday. I spent most of the previous night, and most of yesterday, in a state of wide-eyed terror. Luckily one of our directors had a (home) PC full of nasties that needed cleaning out, so I didn’t have to do any actual think-work. Just as well really, as my brain was too full of “eeeeeeek!” to actually do anything useful.

The whole tooth-removal process took half an hour, as the tooth was reluctant to leave me, and I spent that entire time crying like a baby and shaking. It was pathetic. I’m not actually afraid of the pain, I think it’s more a case of the lack of control, and the fact that I have a vivid imagination and sit there imagining all sorts of horrible dentistry accidents. One slip of that drill…. *shudder*

The net result was a tooth-count-decremented, ghostly-pale, teary, wobbly heap of a woman. I was deemed unfit to cycle the four or so miles home. So, my dentist bundled my bicycle into the back of his estate car, and drove me home. You certainly don’t get service like that on the NHS!

Seriously, he is a fantastic dentist and does his best to reassure the nervous (terrified) client. He’s so patient and comforting that I almost feel guilty for being so scared. I shall write and thank him, as his excellent customer care was most appreciated, and people don’t get thanked enough, I find.

In other news, I’d like one of these please.