Cat Wars

Well, I was more than a little depressive in my last blog so today I'm writing about something entirely different.

We are at War. With our neighbours cats.

When we moved into our house it had a rather large garden and, to be honest, I ain't big on gardening. I can barely tell a plant from a weed. So there was never going to be neat little rows of bedding plants or luscious bushes with latin names.

What we did want though was a garden where all wildlife would be welcome. So while we kept the grass cut and the garden relatively weed free, we did allow a few patches of nettles for the butterflies and a rotting log pile for anything that fancied taking up residence. And for our effort (or lack of effort, I should say) we were truly blessed. We saw hedgehogs scuttling by in the evening. Squirrels pinching nuts from the nut feeder, the odd heron landing near our pond. A pond in which newts and frogs thrived. But most all we attracted birds. We even got a family of Hawfinch, which here in Britain are on the decline. We loved doing the RSPB big bird watch thing because we could proudly list all the birds we had atttracted to our garden.

One day I counted 17 yellowhammers sitting in our tree. The tree looked like it was in flower. Hours and hours we spent watching the wild birds. We did everything we could to help them survive the hard winters and they rewarded us by bringing their chicks to feed at our bird table.

And then...

Our neighbours acquired SIX cats between them.

Two of the cats were quite clearly natural born killers.

This is one of them. She's called Sharpay. We call her Shar-killer.

These two cats flung themselves at our bird table, snatching birds in front of our very eyes. They were so fast and so agile.

'This is war,' my husband said, rolling chicken wire around the bottom of the bird table. 'Trying getting up that!' he added, smugly.

'No problem,' came the retort ten minutes later when we saw Sharpay flying through the air like Jet-Li. She knocked a bird off the table, grabbed it in her mouth and took off down the garden.

'I don't believe it!' Husband said, horrified. 'Did you see that?'

Plastic cat proof spiky things were nailed onto the bird table.

'Put your paws on that!' husband said. 'You won't be in such a hurry to jump up next time will you?'

'What was that you said?' asked the other killer, a black and white cat (don't know its name), as it snatched a chaffinch and belted across our deck.

More rolls of chicken wire were rolled around the garden (this is all based on the googled fact that cats don't like chicken wire, I add)

'Trying getting in now, you little blighters.'

A few minutes later Sharpay strolled across our lawn as if to say 'you have got to be joking.'

'I'm not giving up,' husband said with gusty determination.

More spiky things were nailed to the tops of all fences.

Did it stop them getting in? No!

We have two little dogs. One of whom knows the word 'cat' very well and takes off at great speed down the garden if we say it out loud. He even did two laps round the pond with the black & white cat before it scurried up a tree.

Did he scare the cats off?

No. The cats take great delight in teasing him from a safe distance.

'I'll buy some lemon balm and plant it near the bird table,' I suggested. 'Apparently birds can't stand the stuff.'

'Don't bother,' my mum-in-law said dryly. 'Lady at church planted it all over her garden. The cats sleep on it.'

'There's nothing for it,' I said. 'We'll just have to stop feeding the birds. Putting food out is like luring them onto a sacrificial alter.'

'I'm not letting those cats win,' Husband said emphatically. 'We'll all have to take turns.'

'For what?'

'Sentry duty.'

'You do mornings. I'll do tea-time,' he instructed.

So now if we put out any bird food, one of us has to stand guard.

And while I've never pined for the type of garden that would have featured in Homes & Gardens, I also didn't want one that resembled a barricaded compound.

The only ones that can't move around the garden are us! Trying to reach the washing line is like partaking in an army assault course.

And worse, we have noticed lately that the two killers have started working together - like a couple of highly trained assassins.

Fortunately, the two youngest cats haven't quite got the hang of killing yet - thank goodness. They are still at the Shrek's Puss in Boots stage. If you catch them in the garden they just look at you all adorable.

I love cats. I just don't love them when they kill. There is one next door called Ryan and he is a lovely. He can't be bothered to chase after birds. He's more interested in exploring our house. I found him sitting in our bath one night and my son says there has been conspicuous cat hairs on a warm patch on his bed and the sighting of a fluffy tail leaving through the bedroom window.

But as for the other two. We despair.

Apparently in order to thwart a cat you have to think like one. So that's the next plan. So for now.

Meow!

Ratko Mladic

So the long arm of the law has finally caught up with Ratko Mladic, the evil creature (I won't dignify him by calling him a man) who is accused of genocide.

When I saw the frail sixty-eight-year-old being led away I didn't feel jubilant that they'd caught him at last, my mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of the people he'd mercilessly ordered to be killed. Devoid of any conscious without pity or compassion he sent thousands to their graves. One of the ruthless killers who brought horrific ethnic cleansing back to Europe less than half a century after Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews.

I read an article by Phillip Sherwell (Daily Telegraph) who wrote about Mladic and how his campaign to kill Muslims reached its climax in the summer of 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces led 7,000 men and boys into fields where they were executed and buried in mass graves.

I tried to imagine the fear that went through those poor people being led to their deaths and the mothers, wives, sisters who watched helplessly.

I thought about the moments in my life when I had felt true fear. The day at the seaside when my little boy went missing (thankfully he was found). The doctor telling me I had cancer. The moment I realised my mum was dying.

That fear was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A cold terror that ran up my spine and enveloped me. The most terrible, all-consuming dread of what was about to happen. We all get scared sometimes but true fear is indescribable.

Imagine for a moment what those people, and millions more in history like them, went through. The reality of what Mladic is accused of comes crashing home and we should never forget victims of such atrocities.

It doesn't matter what happens to Mladic if he is convicted he will never pay for what he has done. Nothing comes close to punishing such people and there have been many throughout history. Without giving it too much thought I can think of the obvious ones such as Stalin and Hitler. Bin Laden and Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Not to mention serial killers such as Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, The Countess Bathory and many, many more.

If I had just one wish it would be that those people would be able to feel the fear they inflicted on their victims. A magic drug whereby they could walk in the shoes of those that suffered at their hands. But they never will feel that fear and the world will never learn. There will be another Mladic. Somewhere. Someday.

And while I am feeling so sad. I'd like to point out something fleet street fox said in her blog the other day. While we have been preoccupied with celebrity news. The super-injuction saga and now Cheryl Cole getting kicked off the X-Factor. Fleet street fox points out that buried in the back of the newspaper this week was the news that 1,000 women, girls and boys have been raped in Misrata, Libya on orders of the officers of Gaddaffi's regime.

Sorry to be so maudlin but just for a moment, I think we should all spare a thought - and a prayer - for the victims of these evil beasts.

Maria Shriver join the club...

She's not the first and she certainly won't be the last and right now having a massively healthy bank balance will be of little comfort, but we all can sympathise with Maria Shriver.

Finding out your husband (or wife) is a Grade-A love rat is devastating no matter who you are. It must be a million times worse when it is done on the public stage.

I don't know Maria Shriver. I don't know Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he certainly appears to be a man who thinks monogamy is a type of wood. And twenty-five-years is a long time to be married to someone and then find out he's fathered a child by a long-standing member of your household staff.

Accordingly to a British newspaper, Maria confronted the 'member of staff' in question and asked if her child had been fathered by Arnie and then confronted Arnie. I would have liked to have been a fly on those walls!

I've read all the press. Seen the photographs. I've heard that Maria and the 'other woman' gave birth within days of each other. That Arnie poured money on his mistress, presumably to keep her happily schtum. The picture of the house (double garage, swimming pool) that he bought her, which is considered 'modest' Maybe by American standards it is but by our standards, here in Britain, it's pretty palatial! And I've seen photos of the 'other woman'and compared to elegant Ms Shriver she looks well...not pretty. Although maybe ten years ago she may have been a HPOA (I have to admit I had to look that acronym up!)

But then Arnie is no oil painting is he? His chiselled face has always reminded me of a Thunderbird puppet.

And Maria looked a quite scary when she did those tourist adverts for California. The ones that tried to entice us Brits to visit California.

Come to California.

'Er...no.'

So we don't know anything about these people, only what the media tell us. No doubt if he was in Britain we wouldn't know anything at all because he would have slammed a super-injunction on the press (bet he wishes he lived here!) What we do know is that a marriage that I have always thought amazing because it has lasted so long - is now over and there are clearly some very hurt people, including children.

Maria is largely credited for helping Arnie to election as the Governor of California in 2003. She said 'I wouldn't be standing here if this man wasn't an A-plus human being...' she mentioned words like 'extraordinary. Honest. Sensitive. Sincere.' I bet she is eating those words now or did she not mean them and was just helping him get elected? Who knows?

Arnie probably needed Maria a lot more than she needed him. She's a member of America's royal family - The Kennedy's, had a successful media career and authored of several books. A respected journalist who gave up her duties at NBC news in 2004 because her job conflicted with her status as First lady of California. She has amongst other remarkable achievements, had been a life long advocate for people with intellectual disabilities and has earned herself two Emmy's for works she had produced.

And now she has joined the club of women (and men) who have been humiliated by their spouses, only in Ms Shriver's case - publicly. I hear she has retained celebrity divorce lawyer, Laura Wasser and that Arnie has put his movie career on hold. Well, if I was you Arnie, I'd get my butt back to work because I hear this divorce might cost you between $200-400 million.

Will that money make Maria feel better? Maybe not. She, like millions of us who have been cheated on, will still feel sickened. Even if she no longer loves him or hasn't been happy with him for years, she will feel hurt and denigrated. Even if she knew full well his vociferous sexual appetite had been well-documented and has maybe turned a blind eye on the odd occasion. Even if she did all these things, she will still be absolutely gutted that he fathered a child and kept it secret for years.

And if she STILL loves him, her heart will feel as if he has cut it out of her chest with a rusty bread knife, thrown it on the floor and stamped on it.

Irrespective of whatever Ms Shriver might be like in real life she has been disrespected by her husband and treated as if she is of no consquence.

I have been there and I clearly remember how demeaning it was and how my self-confidence was shattered. I used to lay in bed at night planning my revenge on the man that had up sticks and moved in with a woman younger than his socks. I mentally pictured writing the word RAT in petrol on the lawn of the house and setting it alight so it was branded into the grass for all his neighbours to see. I wanted to fill a bag full of dog dirt and put it behind one of the radiators in his house. Cut up all his clothes and post dead fish through his letterbox (I clearly have a revengful side)

But I didn't do any of those thing.

What I did do was lose weight, buy myself the best suit I could afford and a pair of killer heels, get my hair and make up done and walk into the divorce court with my head held high. And then I got on with my life. Which as it happened meant that I eventually met a fantastic man who has been by soul-mate for the past twenty-one years and a brilliant step-dad to my kids. And I suspect Ms Shriver will do the same.

P.S.

What goes around. Comes around. My ex-husband is now on his third marriage.

Botox for kids?

Eight-year-old Britney Campbell says she checks every night for wrinkles and when she sees some she wants more botox injections.

Yes, this is the story of the little girl from San Francisco whose mother has been regularly injecting her with botox. In an interview with a U.K newspaper Britney says she also wants a breast and nose job soon so she can "be a star"

Can someone please tell me what wrinkles an eight-year-old has??? Britney's mother, and I used that term loosely, is clearly as mad as a hatter if she thinks her daughter has lines on her face.

Or is she? Is this a game to get famous?

Could it be that Britneys mother, Kerry Campbell, has staged this whole thing to get fame for herself? We hear she is a reality-programme-obsessed woman who apparently wants to be famous herself. She allegedly said she was injecting her daughter for beauty pageants, but authorities can find no evidence that Britney has ever been in one. And it appears Ms Campbell also has several alias's - so the plot thickens, as they say.

Or is this another parent trying to live through their child?

But either way if she has been injecting her daughter with botox, the message that is being sent to this young girl by her stupid mother is 'you are not good enough'

The only way a child should receive botox is on medical grounds to put right a squint or facial problem. Never for cosmetic reasons.

If you're an adult and you want to inject yourself with a toxin from a bacteria that is so dangerous it could actually kill you then that's up to you. Personally I would rather have a face like a Rhino's backside than have someone stick toxin-laden pins in my skin. And don't go telling me I'd feel different if I was older. I Am older.

But if, as alleged, this woman has given botox to her daughter she should be thrown in the stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes! What a terrible thing to do to the lovely firm skin of a pretty little girl. This child is going to grow up thinking she is imperfect and has to have all these awful treatments to make herself pretty.

Little girls are growing up way too fast as it is. What has happened to childhood? When I was not much older than Britney I was playing in the field behind my house with my best friend, Shirley Goddard. We'd drag a whole bunch of dolls and pots and pans and goodness know what and set up in the farmers field and pretend we were next door neighbours. I can't remember caring two hoots what I wore or how my face looked. I was way too busy having fun.

Now we've got kids under ten wanting boob jobs so they can be a celebrity when they grow up or worse - marry a zillionaire footballer. And there is all the controversy over stores going out of their way to sexualize clothing for little girls. What are we doing to our kids?

It's crazy. Those precious few years of childhood, when you shouldn't have a care in the world, are being snatched away by stupid parents like Kerry Campbell who are already planning for their daughters to be celebrities.

There is a columnist who is suggesting it is probably wrong to take Britney away from her mum just because her mum's stupid. He says if we start doing things like that we might as well take peoples kids away because they drink sugar-laced soda drinks. Are you mad? there is a hell of a lot of difference between giving your kid a can of Coke and telling her we've got to prick her face with needles because she isn't pretty enough.

I'm getting a super injunction!

Oh my word! Super injunctions are hot news and I'm lovin' the person who is spilling the beans big time on twitter. But Jeremy Clarkson and Jemima Khan? No, that can't possibly be true. In Clarkson's dreams, maybe.

I plan to take out a super injunction next August. A gagging order on 'football' in my house. No one will be able to discuss it, watch it on television or even mention the word. I might even take out a few more. No one will be allowed to talk about or report to others on my cooking, driving skills or weight.

Unless you've been living on Pluto, you will all know that a super injunction is a gagging order in which the press is prohibited from reporting even the existence of an injunction.

It's a way the rich and famous can gag anyone from blabbing about their salacious affairs by preventing the media from reporting on them.

They say it's because they want to protect their privacy. Huh. Who are they kidding?

They don't give two hoots about their privacy when it makes them look good or earns them a few squillion. I don't see many of them slamming a super injunction on the press for reporting on them when they are caught shopping in Bond street or baring their bronzed chests on the beaches of Dubai.

No. Let's be real. All they care about is their image.

Thing is. Most of us don't give a flying fig about their image. And the rich and famous flatter themselves if they think we do. Our opinion of most of them won't be affected if we find out they are carrying on with someone other than their wife/husband/partner because most of us think they are talentless big-heads with egos the size of the Grand Canyon, anyway.

Personally, as far as footballers are concerned, finding out one of them is having a torrid affair will not change how I personally view them. They will always remain, in my opinion, over paid, egotistical wusses who drop to the floor and writhe in agony if so much as a feather brushes past them.

And they are ALL at. Andrew Marr, who has a face only a mother could love, took out a super injunction against The Independent newspaper for reporting on an extra-marital affair with a female journalist.

Here's a thought. If you don't want the press to report about your little affairs. Then DON'T have them. Do something different - be faithfull.

What kind of world do we live in when a person can go to jail for uttering the name of a super-injunction-protected-celebrity, yet a reckless driver who kills someone doesn't?

What would happen if an entire football stadium of people started chanting the celebrity's name? Would they all get arrested?

But seriously for a minute. Super injunctions have a far more sinister side to them. Sometimes the press are prevented from reporting on things that really matter. In 2009 the oil trader Trafigura prohibited the reporting of an internal report into the 2006 Cote D'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal and that's something the public SHOULD have been told about.

Injunctions were not invented for celebrities by lawyers and judges. They were created by the Attorney General on behalf of the government to protect notorious criminals such as Mary Bell and the killers of James Bulger, whose crimes were so terrible that, if they were released, their safety could be in peril.

I understand an injuction when it's say for example, to prevent the press from reporting that Prince Harry is serving in Afghanistan. But to protect the image of a celebrity by supressing news of their sexual peccadillos, well that is just ridiculous.

But, whether you agree with them or not it seems that right now super injunctions are being handed out like confetti. Even as I write this today, two more celebrities have taken out super injunctions to prevent their behaviour becoming public knowledge. If I feel sorry for any celeb, it's the perfectly innocent celebrities who are being dragged into the scandals as people speculate the indentities.

It's now getting so ridiculous it's a joke.

Celebs/judges/football players/managers/politicians - listen! Save the thousands it costs you to slam a super injuction on the press because, quite honestly, WE JUST DON'T CARE - OKAY?

It's only rock and roll...

I - unashameably - love rock music. Everything from Avenged Sevenfold and 30 Seconds to Mars to Led Zeppelin. I also like country music. I've seen Martina McBride twice and think Sugarland are brilliant. I have even got Billy Ray Cyrus's autograph and know the line dancing moves to Achy Breaky Heart. (Okay, maybe I shouldn't be proud of that last bit.)

But rock music is my first love and I get incredibly annoyed when people say that, at my age, I am too old to like it and waaay toooo geriatic to go to any gigs!

When one of my friends turned forty she was told by her mother that she had to stop listening to that silly top forty rubbish and listen to classical - as was befitting her age.

Dear me. Are we supposed to reach a cross roads in life where our musical tastes are cauterized and we're reprogrammed to listen and, worse still like, Daniel O'Donnell?

I once sat next to an old aged pensioner, with a grey-haired perm and a long-suffering husband, at a Squeeze concert and she was having a ball. Her husband told me she loved New Wave music and dragged him to all the gigs. I watched her singing along - she knew all the words - and thought I want to be like that when I'm old. I wanted to go to gigs with my kids and keep up with new music and I'm proud to say that I do.

I never wanted to get stuck in an era of music. Some people do that. I know, I'm married to one. My other half is still firmly in the 70s. 'The best music was in the 70s' he says proudly (yeah, like 'Agadoo')

I know someone else who got to the 80s and stopped dead in their musical tracks and from then on didn't want to listen to anything else. And that's fine - if it's what you like.

But some of us have gone merrily through life adapting to musical changes quite happily, adding new bands and songs to the ones we already love. I'm not very keen on rap or crap with a missing C as one of my customers insists on calling it! But I get it.

I just get really angry when I'm told that I should 'grow-up' and stop listening to bands that kids are listening to. Why not???

I have dragged my son to concerts where he has turned to me and said. 'I bet everyone in here thinks I've brought you when really it's you who's brought me.'

Of course, I have also been known to be the kiss of death to some bands. There was a time when one of my other sons was listening to a band and I said I liked them. He recoiled in horror, looked at the CD as if it was covered in anthrax and never listened to it again. There was no way he was going to listen to the same stuff as his mother!!!

I suppose I understand that. If my mother had said she liked the Beatles I would definitely have thought twice about having that picture of Paul McCartney on my bedroom wall.

But I'm not my mother. I like to think I've got my finger on the pulse. My favourite music channel is SCUZZ. I've got a 30 Seconds to Mars T-shirt and an MCR button-badge.

Music is so important, whatever it is. An old lady told me she remembered the day when people were always singing and there isn't nearly enough music around us today. And I agree.

We were cleaning at an old people's home last week and could hear an elderly man singing hymns in his bedroom and boy, was he singing with gusto. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. Everyone should definitely sing more. And listen to more music, too. Whatever you like, whatever age you are. Explore music. The site 'Spotify' has opened up a whole world of different genres of music to discover.

And if anyone says 'hey, aren't you a bit old for that stuff' just tell them this: