Cats, stoats (or possibly weasels) and a birthday newt

I shall start today's blog with a joke that amused my Auntie Pollie enormously when I told it to her yesterday...

Ahem...

'How do you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel? A weasel is weasily spotted but a stoat is stoatally different!'

This was in response to Auntie P's revelation that she had seen a stoat, or possibly a weasel, in her garden, she wasn't sure which. I hope the joke has proved useful for identification purposes.

'I knew a weevil once,' says Tybalt. He is sitting on the chair next to me and staring really hard.
'A weevil?' I say. 'I was talking about weasels.'
'Were you? I do apologise,' says Tybalt. 'I think my hearing must be going, what with me being older and all that.'

Tybalt has been behaving very oddly this week. There has been an excess amount of door banging occuring. He has taken to sitting perilously close to the seedlings in Growing Facility Number Two (the 'conservatory'). He's been eyeing up my tray of baby basil plants as though it would make a very good cat toilet. (This thought was causing me so much angst in the middle of the night that I got up and moved the basil to the greenhouse in case Tybalt did decide to poop on my seedlings whilst I was blissfully asleep upstairs.) He's also taken to dribbling on my head in the evenings when he sits behind me on the back of the sofa.

'It's because I'm thinking of cake,' he explains. 'Thinking of cake always makes me dribble.'
'Okaaay,' I say.
There is a silence.
'You're being incredibly thick today,' says Tybalt. He jumps off the chair and stalks off, banging the cupboard-under-the-stairs door as he passes. I check my biorhythms.
'Ha!' I call after him. 'You are WRONG, Mr Smartypants! Intellectually, I'm above par today. But I am a physical and emotional wreck,' I say, only not quite so loudly.

What is bugging that cat, I think. I drift into the garden to water the plants in the greenhouse. Some runner beans are showing their shoots and the leeks are also starting to emerge. And, to my surprise, so are the sweet peas, which I was expecting to come up ages ago. I was getting to the point of thinking they were a dud packet.

And then I suddenly realise. I forgot Tybalt's birthday! It was on Saturday, the same day as Chris's. In fact, it was a deliberate move to give Tybalt the same birthday as Chris so I wouldn't forget it.

'Oh cripes!' I say.
'What?' says Mrs Miggins, who has been standing with her beak pressed up against the glass because she is desperate to get inside the greenhouse and demolish every plant she can.
I explain the situation.
'Oh,' says Miggins. 'Door banging?'
I nod.
'Threatening to knock your seed pots over?'
I nod again.
'Tut, tut, tut,' says Miggins. 'Still, never mind. He's only a cat.'
'You wouldn't like it if I forgot your birthday,' I say.
'True,' says Miggins. 'But I'm a chicken. '
As if that makes all the difference.

What do I do, I think. I have to make amends. I'll make him a cake of course. His favourite - banana and catnip with cheese and pilchard icing. I look frantically around the garden for a potential birthday gift. A jalapeno pepper seedling? A hanging basket planted with strawberry plants? An egg? Two eggs? Mrs Miggins reappears. She is holding something wriggly in her beak.
'Here,' she says, spitting the wriggly thing into my hand, 'give the cat this. He'll like it. Trust me.'
I look at the contents of my hand.
'Are you sure?' I say.
'As sure as eggs is eggs.'
'Are eggs,' I correct.
'Whatever,' says Miggins.

Inside the house, I apologise profusely to Tybalt for forgetting his birthday. I promise him a cake by lunchtime, a pool table for his bachelor pad under the stairs by the weekend and then I hand over the wriggly thing in my hand.

Tybalt looks at it. His eyes mist over. He pats it with a gentle paw.
'It's a newt,' he says. He and the newt gaze at each other. It is love at first sight. Tybalt's first pet.
'I thought you were old enough to be responsible for a pet,' I say. 'Now you are six. Or whatever that is in human years.'

Tybalt looks at me and smiles. 'I shall call him Tiny,' he says. 'Because he's my newt.'