TALES FROM THE SHED

Ah, optimism. I remember it well. I always reread last month’s Shedisode to remember where we’re up to in magazine time. In the same way that dogs and cats measure their lives in years which are somehow different to human years, so it is with life in The Shed. Our older cat, the most excellent if slightly ill-humoured Ms Kibble, seems to be about a decade old. We’re not really sure, as we have no idea how old she was when she appeared one morning, eating the peanuts we put out for the benefit of passing parrots and other, lesser birds. Cats rarely eat peanuts raw, preferring to enjoy them after they’ve been chewed and partially digested by rodents and small birds, as you may know, so her very skinny shape and evident appreciation of peanuts was a clue to her being homeless. So she moved in, as is the way of cats. We didn’t argue, as is the way with stupid humans – which appears to be Ms K’s view of lesser species.

So if Ms K is indeed about a decade old in mere human terms, this is apparently the equivalent of sixty years in cat terms. This is a remarkable subject, and reading it up has delayed my admissions of woe and disaster in Sunbeam land. Even more remarkable is the notion that the first year of a cat’s life is equivalent to the first fifteen years in the life of a human. I well remember my first fifteen years: cramming all that