Baby schema

People sometimes wonder how early a baby's schemas might be able to be identified. It seems to me that there are a number of scholarly ways to answer this question - depending first on how you define schema!

For Ewan right now, I notice how he bursts into giggles and becomes incredibly animated as he watches his big siblings race around the room. He exclaimed in delight as Orla threw wooden toys through the air to hit noisily against the glass of the cabinet. (My exclamations at this point were somewhat different). He jumped up and down in my arms as Orla burst open her train, scattering carriages and engines in all directions across the floor.

Trajectories, anyone? And a touch of the disconnect. Sound familiar?


And in other news, he really likes eggplant. And the cat. (But not together. Yet).

Son of Bully Cat

There's a new cat in town.

A large tabby Tom, like Bully Cat in appearance, but a bit smaller. We have called him Son of Bully Cat.

Son of Bully Cat has been beating up Houdini and the neighbour's cats. SoBC is not just a toughie, but is cunning. He creeps into our laundry at night, opens the sink cupboard door, pulls out the packet of cat food, rips it open and eats. The cat food is now kept up high on a shelf.

Woman Who Drives The Blue Car down the road told me that this cat had bailed her up in her laundry a few times. She has the scars to prove it. She managed to capture it and took it to the SPCA.

But the cat came back. The very next day. Apparently it was microchipped and is a local. (We don't know exactly which house yet).

Although this cat does seem to have the upper hand on Houdini, he is a bit smaller than Bully Cat. Accordingly, Houdini seems to be able to give him enough grief that she's probably not in immediate danger.

In the meantime, I have my hose at the ready. We are considering new cat door options.

Thanks for the heads up

Oh! It feels like there's a bit of a wet patch on this seat. Just where I'm sitting.

Yes Mummy. That's where the cat vomited.

(Pause). Oh.

Saturday night in

It's very quiet here at the moment.

Aidan and Orla are asleep on the couch, having cunningly evaded my attempts to get them to go to sleep in their beds. I think I've lost my touch (if I ever had it!).

Orla fell asleep in my arms. Given that I can't lift her yet, this was always going to present some problems with getting her into her cot. Luckily, I had the foresight to sit on the couch rather than my favourite breastfeeding chair, so it was just a matter of wiggling out from underneath her and repositioning her cuddle rug.

Aidan wanted to stay up until Daddy got home. He was asleep within minutes, curled up next to Orla. He has since been joined by Houdini.

Brendon and Isabelle are at the ballet. This was not exactly how I had planned it. I was supposed to be 37 weeks pregnant, and this was supposed to be a special mother-daughter outing - Isabelle's first real ballet show.

I booked the tickets about an hour before my waters broke.

However, special father-daughter time is no bad thing. Neither is staying at home looking after three precious bundles (and one precious fur-bundle).

Maybe next year for the show.

Nice pussy cat

On Thursday I got a telephone call from the vets to tell us we had won the prize pack in their Frontline contest! Yay for Houdini and her fleas! (Not that she has fleas of course - merely preventive).

Anyway, we got a chair, two caps, two drink bottles and two bright blue towels. Houdini politely declined the opportunity to be photographed with them (I managed to capture the escape).

This is the second time Houdini has won us prize - we got an Easter pack about seven years ago with various goodies in it.

Nice pussy cat!

More snippets

We have a bellbird in our garden.

Orla speaks in Orla sentences. Her first: "Where cat gone?" (cute!). Also heard: "Shut the door" (promising!), "Read me book" (aahh!) and "Kick the cat" (not cutie cutie).

Aidan's wound is just little now.

Isabelle can't wait until her birthday.

Close encounters of the bird kind

This morning we completed the NZ garden bird survey for 2008.

Isabelle and I got ready with pen, paper, binoculars, timer, and bird identification chart. Aidan came out to join me later (once Isabelle's enthusiasm had waned!).

We saw 8 species of birds, 4 of them native. Admittedly, some of the identifications are probably a bit dodgy - "Oh, that's a female blackbird. Or maybe a thrush. No, a starling. Which one hops again?". But overall I'm confident that we did see everything we said we did!

Here is a female blackbird who hung around for a good portion of the hour, pulling bugs from the lawn and showing herself nicely.



Naturally we were soon joined by the family's most skillful and interested bird watcher.








By far the most dramatic moment belonged to one of our tui sightings. Soon after being spotted, the tui flew down towards us at speed, dropping a load on the way past. Naturally it landed in my hair!

Ah well, shit luck's good luck (as the family saying goes).



And the prize! One kereru.










Even Orla got in on the act, proving that age is no barrier.














Our final count:
Blackbird 3
Chaffinch 2
Fantail 2
Goldfinch 3
House Sparrow 6
Kereru 1
Silvereye 3
Tui 2

I'm surprised we didn't get any gulls flying overhead - but then how on earth would I have decided whether or not they were black-backed or red-billed?! And it would have been nice to see a kotare (kingfisher) - we frequently see them perching on the power lines down our street.

Isabelle says: "I liked it because it was fun".

Aidan says: "It was fun because I liked all the birds".

The saga continues....

So, this morning we were happily engaged at play inside, when a yowling and a howling was heard from the side of the house.

Bully cat!

I raced to the rescue, pausing momentarily at the sink to fill a bowl with water.

Bully cat was down the side of the house, having just seen off the neighbour's cat. The neighbour's dog was barking excitedly.

I ran towards Bully cat, hissing and brandishing my bowl. Bully cat stood his ground and hissed back. I threw the water and yelled, but Bully cat was unmoved. I refilled my bowl and threw another load. Bully cat shook himself and trotted a couple of steps.

Suppressing (on animal welfare grounds) the very strong desire to apply foot to fur, I ran to the hose, connected it and aimed:

"Take that, Bully cat!"

My hose spluttered impotently, released a couple of drips then disconnected itself from the tap.

Curses! Undone by technical incompetence! Round one to Bully cat.

Bully cat crept into the bushes as I reconnected the hose. I gave the general area a good blast, but I fear it was to little effect.

Meanwhile, Houdini dozed on our bed in the sun.

(Word from the hood is that Bully cat was captured one morning, having spent a lovely evening sleeping on a neighbourhood couch. There is a phone number on his collar, which was duly rung. Apparently the conversation was not a happy one. So I don't think I'll be approaching the owner about keeping BC in at night).

We thought he was a gonna but...

...the cat came back.

Bully cat that is.

Another cat

While we're on cats....

Brendon did some work under the house yesterday installing some underfloor insulation.

Under Isabelle's room, he found a dead cat.

It had been there a while, and was only skin and bones. It is now resident down the far end of the property, awaiting a return to the soil (an eco-burial of sorts).

I imagined some poor family waiting and waiting for the return of their pet....

(This is the type of secret knowledge our cats have. Houdini likes spending time under the house, and no doubt found and inspected the body on one of her first forays many years ago. What else does she know about that we are yet to discover?)

Wanted

Well blow me down if Bully Cat's visage wasn't looking out at me from a poster stuck on one of those green electrical boxes down at the bottom end of my street. You might remember Bully Cat from posts like this. (Scroll down to New Year's Eve...).

It looked like one of those "Wanted" posters from a Western. But no, Bully Cat had been found wandering our street and was now resident at the SPCA.

Given his past form, I wonder if he actually was "lost", or if sometime, in some house nearby, he just stepped over the line once too often.

I do hope Bully Cat is reunited with his owners, whoever they may be. Perhaps a bit of gelding might be in order to stop the wandering....

Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve was always going to be a quiet one as we are still in quarantine. After tea, and once the children were in bed, Brendon and I settled down to watch King Kong on the computer. We didn't get to see all of it - midnight, and Aidan and Orla waking up intervened, but there's always tonight!

Just after going to bed, I heard a cat fight outside. Bully Cat!!

I raced outside in my nightie and ended up chasing Bully Cat off down the side of the house after Houdini had herself been chased to her cat door.

"PSST! GET OUTTA HERE BULLY CAT!" I shouted. Bully Cat hissed at me menacingly from the darkness. I couldn't see a thing, so abandoned my saucepans plan and went back to bed.

Although between multiple T-Rexs, giant apes, creepy crawlies and Bully Cat, it's a wonder I managed to get to sleep at all.

Cat story

The story began when Dopey Cat (as we started to call it) started paying our home visits. Dopey Cat is a large grey cat who must live close by. Dopey Cat attained this moniker due to its inability to understand the usual polite requests to move on and return to its own domain (such as "pssssst!" or "get away!"). Upon hearing this, Dopey Cat would simply look at you and continue with whatever it was doing.

Inevitably, Dopey Cat and Houdini did not get along. And Houdini is not a fighter, and is small. So I am in the habit of gently, but firmly, seeing off neighbourhood cats to reduce cat fighting and foreign cat pooing.

Anyway, twice I found Dopey Cat inside our house bailing up poor Houdini. The only way to remove it seemed to be picking it up, putting it out the door and emptying 2 saucepanfuls of water upon it. (One saucepanful only made it move briskly a couple of metres. Dopey Cat would then stop, appear to forget why it was running, and look back at me in a dopey kind of way).

Things took a turn for the worse when we heard a cat fight inside the house one night. Come morning, I was just about to dump a load of clean, unfolded washing on the couch so that I could do more washing, when I spied cat poo on a couch cushion (amongst cat fur and claw marks in the cushion threads).

Counsel was taken over what to do about Dopey Cat.

It was decided that during our absence, Houdini would have to be confined to the wash house rather than having the run of the lounge as was usual. But what if Dopey Cat ate her food? What if Dopey Cat bailed her up in the wash house and she could not escape?

On our return, Houdini looked fat and happy as she emerged to greet us from under the house (from a hole too small for Dopey Cat). However, that night...cat fight inside again. Mercifully we were spared the deposit...but the thought of poor Houdini possibly being assaulted every night we were away! From now on, Dopey Cat would be Bully Cat.

Counsel was taken over what to do about Bully Cat.

"Get it with our car" suggested Aidan. "Get it with Grandad's guns". While both of Aidan's suggestions would, no doubt, have been very effective, they were vetoed for legal and practical reasons. His third suggestion ("Get Houdini to get it with her claws") would also be effective had Houdini showed sufficient mettle.

Houdini spent last night in our bedroom safe from Bully Cat and very content. We are now faced with reconstructing our cat door to lock out Bully Cat (which means Houdini won't be able to exit, or re-enter if we get a one-way lock). We don't know where Bully Cat lives, or we might be able to ask its owners to consider keeping it in at night. Although in reality I would be reluctant to do this.

Meanwhile, late last night, from the comfort of Aidan's bed, Houdini pondered what to do about Bully Cat.

But where's the rest?

"Mummy, there's a mouse foot on the floor!"
"A what?"
"A mouse foot. There on the kitchen floor".
"Oh. So there is".

Cat water

Like all responsible pet owners, we supply our cat with fresh water every day. It is placed in a clean bowl, next to her cat food.

Before our bathroom do-up, she would prefer to come into the bathroom each morning, slip under the shower curtain and lick the water that remained on the shower floor after Brendon and I had washed.

However, a new shower complete with shower door has meant that her favourite flavours are now unavailable.

She has decided instead to lick the windows in our bedroom after eating her morning cat biscuits.