I seem to be writing about cats pretty much full time now, which is rather worrying. Still, they are entertaining - if a little perverse - and just batting on endlessly about books can pall a little, if one isn’t careful. Beachy Bede [a.k.a. the Fonthill Fiend, a.k.a. the Assassin], came to visit me in my study again last night, presumably to congratulate me on having sold [or had sold on my behalf] 50,000 copies of The Nostradamus Prophecies in Britain and around the English-language-speaking world [bar the US] since it came out at end July [there - I've got the book bit in - phew! - my publisher will be pleased]. Anyway, there he sat, as good as gold, beside my left arm, the proverbial slab of butter intact in his mouth. After a bit, though, he got bored, and tried his creeping trip - destination, my lap. He’s convinced that I don’t notice how he puts first one paw, then the other, paralysingly slowly onto my leg. Then he eases his body across [convinced that I am still entirely taken up with my work], until fully half his body is on me, half still on the rocking computer box I use as my mouse stand [and which he SHOULD be sleeping on - that's the deal - ha!].

When he was half on, I decided that enough was enough - I’d lift him up and put him in his floor level snug basket [he usually doesn't mind and goes straight to sleep]. Unfortunately, he’s beginning to put on a bit of early autumn condition [i.e. he's a bloody large cat], and the extra weight of him in my arms suddenly tripped the catch on my office chair which converts it from being an upright, busy-sort-of-a-chair, into being a bendy-backed, rocking-sort-of-a-chair, suitable for watching things on BBC IPlayer, and bouncing while one does it. I shot backwards, the cat shot upwards, the chair shot downwards. At the last possible moment, thinking that I had finally flipped on him and had turned assassin myself, the Bede launched himself desperately even further skywards, using my legs, forearms, and stomach as a take-off pad. Once in motion he twisted in the air like a leaping salmon, and, somehow, human canonball style, flew, like a homing pigeon, straight into his igloo basket, from which he then emerged [I'm running out of similes here] like a bat out of hell [cliche!!!] to go and sit over on one of my leather armchairs and ponder his next move.

Bleeding copiously - something that is obviously becoming a regular habit with me- I calmed him down, apologised, then limped off, in the absence of my wife, to get the hoemoplasmine again, images of hardpad, septicaemia, and feline dropsy seething through my mind. All’s well that ends well, however. I don’t have the dropsy, and the Bede was back in my study again this morning, acting as if nothing had happened. He avoided my mouse platform, though, I noticed, and now he’s sleeping on the spare bed. Cats, you see, don’t need to master the power of speech, as their actions speak louder than words.

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