Tiny Planets app

I thought I would introduce Midnight to the subject of 'play'. I have never seen him play not even with a leaf.

I have some cheap ping pong balls. Which I bought because I use sticks/canes in my vegetable garden to support plants as well as some more towers of those strawberry plant pots (but they are for other things). And I was a bit worried if I fell over on to one of those sticks. So, I wrapped some old cloths on top of them and wrapped with duct tape. They were beginning to look like another art installation, and so I bought these cheap ping pong balls. They neither ping nor pong, but just lie dead on the ground when I try to bounce them. 

So, I tried one with Midnight. Rolled it along the ground to the side of him.  He impaled it with one claw. So, he is waving this ping pong ball around, ready to do the ping pong dance. But I removed it from his claw, and it was now much easier to make that small hole bigger.  My earlier efforts to make a hole just resulted in a squashed ping pong ball. So, now rolling ping pong ball number 2 on the ground towards Midnight...and in this way I got all my wooden stakes tipped with  cat impaled ping pong balls.

I gave him a treat which he took back to his favourite hidey hole place in the leafy undergrowth.

Yesterday was a very warm day. The regular customers (cats) came to the diner early. By 6 am, it was tidied up and dishes put to soak, because the flies are horrendous this hot weather. Just cat biscuits are out until evening, when there is a queue of customers for wet cat food. Something spooked Midnight badly a few days ago when I put the bowls of wet cat food down, and he dropped to the ground in complete fear. I didn't touch him because he might not have realised it was me. So I took the cat bowls away that day and put the wet cat food on a flat paper plate (no sides) and Midnight recovered from his fear and began eating. I don't know what triggered his extreme fear off that morning, but there had been a sudden noise as I put the cat bowls down. 

I was thinking yesterday that I am not seeing much of the smaller birds, but as soon as I thought that, they all - bluetits and sparrows and the two blackbirds - burst into song from the leafy bushes and trees. That made me smile.

The birdsong app keeps telling me I have an owl. However, I have never seen one. But there are acres and acres of ancient woodlands all around here. So, the birdsong app might be right.

With that in mind, my creative (of a snapshot of my bathroom plants, put through Tiny Planets) this morning has an owl in it! 

A cuppa is needed.