The law of inverse proportions

It’s becoming clear to me that there’s something about inverse proportions when it comes to cat rescue and blogging.  The more that’s happening in the rescue the less time there is to blog about it.

It’s the height of kitten season and is complete mayhem around here.  There’s been a lovely video clip doing the rounds on facebook that I’ve thought about often over the last couple of weeks. It shows a cleaner / nursery worker with  4 young  Pandas (watch it … its cute).  She valiantly but rather hopelessly attempts to sweep up leaves in the panda’s house whilst they relentlessly ‘help’ her with the task.   Translate this into rather less exotic circumstances and it could be us …. sweeping up cat litter with not 4 but 8 delinquent kittens.

Tobias likes to sit in the dustpan whilst Simon Timothy and Tomas play with the brush.  The younger kits like to play with the plastic bag I’m putting the rubbish into.  They randomly take it in turns to dive into the litter trays while I’m cleaning, kicking more litter around like they were playing in a sandpit.  If you put the litter trays into the context of the rest of the rescue its a little like the Forth Bridge ….. no sooner have I finished cleaning than someone has another wee …. and we’re off again.

Apart from exotic, and white wellies instead of socks, the big difference I see between me and Panda Woman, is that that appears to be her job.   I have a day job in the NHS which is nothing to do with cats … well not officially anyway …..

So 7am this morning sees me with the brush and dustpan scenario in the T and M kittens room, and then repeating it in the X Teams room.  Then try to get showered, dressed and ready for work.  As I’m sorting things out in the bathroom, two of them are wrestling in the bath, and another is playing with his shadow in the bath side.  Another is rolling up the bath mat and kicking it to death.  I climb in, rescuing both kittens and spiders from the water.  One kitten runs off with the body puff whilst another wraps herself in the towel.   I climb out the bath, trying not to step on kittens or their numerous toys, retrieve towel from miffed kitten,  and dry myself as various of them try to shin up my legs and onto my back.  Some of them make it onto the window sill and start throwing candles, clock and tea lights off and into the wash basin.  Stage left ….. other kittens sail their pirate ship down the stairs and crash it into the door.

All the time …. eye on the clock ….. how on earth am I going to negotiate this obstacle course and get to work on time.   There’s a couple of hooks on the back of the bathroom door and at the moment they’re more or less the only place on the house where you can put things and be reasonably confident no one will pee on them or cover them in cat hair.  So we juggle between work clothes, pyjamas and wet towels hanging up there. The clean underwear sits vulnerably on the floor or top of toilet cistern.  I come to get dressed and there’s a gang of kittens trying to kick my clean pair of socks to death whilst another drags my pants down the stairs.

I scramble to get ready and go to work with cat hair in my knickers and an annoying piece of cat litter inside my left sock.