Puddy has a favourite place to sleep. It’s on the top of the arm chair closest to the front door.

If you put anything on the top of the chair (like keys, wallet, etc) Puddy will sleep around it. Sometimes on it. She loves that chair so darn much. I take great delight in watching guests who are sitting in the chair freak out as she hurtles up to them, leaps into the air, scurries up the arm and flops down behind their head, all within a space of a few seconds. It’s definitely not a chair for the skittish.

Yesterday I was running late for work because I couldn’t find my car keys. Fifteen minutes later, I found them … underneath Puddy. Whoops. I guess that’s what I get for leaving them on the top of the chair! After that, I thought I had seen it all, but today she topped that.

Observe:

Yes, that is Puddy sleeping with her nose pressed into a crusty old smelly sock.

I had found it in the garage during a clean-out and placed it on the top of the chair as I went into the kitchen to grab the rest of the rubbish, intending on dumping it all in the bin on my way out. Well, I got distracted and after hanging the washing out, I came back inside to find Puddy sleeping on it.

It smells, people. How on earth she could sleep like that is beyond me. All I know is, the sock invaded her chair and hell, it was not going to prevent her from sleeping on it! She could have scooted down a little bit, or curled up, but I guess she wanted to prove a point. Either that or the sock was actually quite comfortable and fragrant?

I had to use the flash because you wouldn’t be able to make out the sock otherwise. And you can see how crusty and gross it is - I mean, it’s hard. Socks shouldn’t be hard.

Needless to say, the sock is now in the bin and Puddy, well, she’s sleeping on the chair.

And you think your pets are weird…

Weekend Cat Blogging hosted at What Did You Eat?
Carnival of the Cats hosted at Bad Kitty Cats
Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos hosted at Sleeping Mommy

I am supposed to be writing my essays but I started procrastinating. I decided to go through my Akismet spam to make sure no valid comments had been sucked in there, and OH MY GOODNESS, you’ll never guess what I found - FOUR wonderful Weekend Cat Blogging participants were in there!

I am so so sorry! I had no idea the evil Akismet had marked you as spam and not even put you into the moderation queue - you were in the deleted section - the BIN - that I virtually never visit! You must have all thought I was being so rude, not including you in the round-up, but I promise I didn’t know!

So here is a mini-round-up, with a shout out to the four cat bloggers who missed out a couple weeks ago when I last hosted WCB.

The first ones are China Cat and Willow, from sammawow, who were intently looking at a bunny through the screened-in porch. Then Willow saw a squirrel, which is very exciting since we don’t have squirrels where we live and Puddy would love to see one one day. In fact, we don’t generally have bunnies either!

I love the way the cats are so mesmerised, yet the bunny doesn’t appear to notice them watching. Or maybe the bunny is quietly confident because it knows there’s a screen between the cats and itself and it knows it’s safe. Who knows?

The next kitty cat is Fracas, from Artsy Catsy, who is demonstrating the perfect way to relax (and I think all kitties, and perhaps some humans, will agree with these steps!). There are special (and hard to pronounce!) names for each pose, so you should go on over there to read them, but they all sound so official!

Above I have selected a photo of my most favourite pose, which is called the Kittapraisa Lickatailsa and I think it is definitely one pose that Puddy has perfected. I didn’t realise there was so much involved in resting and eventually going to sleep - for me, I generally roll into bed, snuggle up in the warmth and go to sleep!

Rikki, who lives with Sanjee’s Uncle Milty, was the guest of honour over at House of the (Mostly) Black Cats bloggy. Sanjee’s Mum is looking after Rikki while Uncle Milty is away, which is very nice of her! But the kitties needed proof that she’s not just running away and playing, so she took some photos with her phone. And look at Rikki scoffing down that stinky fish goodness! Mini (and Puddy) are very jealous!

I wonder if Uncle Milty is back yet? I’m so late with finding this post that I think he might be, which means their Mum should be back to looking after them again! Although I do enjoy seeing Rikki around…here’s hoping it’s not the last time she’ll be the guest of honour on their bloggy!

And last, but not least, of the poor forgotten kitties, is Jenny’s kitty, who apparently loves to get into cupboards! Of course she likes to investigate open cupboards because often there will be warm, clean laundry that’s perfect for sleeping on and kneading! Or there might be cat food that can be ripped open!

Sounds like there’s a real investigator in the making (Puddy is proud!). Jenny has a food blog called Foray into Food, and it’s got some awesome pictures and recipes on there, so check it out and don’t forget to say hello to her kitty while you’re there! (She might be hiding in the linen closet, hehe!)

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I hope you will forgive me for not including you in the round-up! It’s definitely taught me a valuable lesson that I should be checking Akismet more often, in case valid comments have been accidentally marked as spam and deleted! As I said, these comments weren’t even in the moderation queue - they were in the Akismet BIN!

So please, if you leave me a comment, especially if I am hosting WCB, but it doesn’t appear within 24 hours, send me an email at magikal_dust@NOSPAMhotmail.com (taking out the NOSPAM) and ask me where it is! And don’t forget that I really try to reply personally to each commenter in the comments section, so do drop back a day or so later to check out my response.

So once again, sorry to those adorable kitties who weren’t included in the round-up!

I did my final two practical assessment items today. One was a mini-exam on cello and a mini-teaching demonstration and the other was a 15-minute micro-teaching of a section of one of my lesson plans.

My 15-minute demonstration was to get the class playing along to a CD of Aboriginal music and it went quite well - I was worried I wouldn’t have enough content to last the whole time slot, but it was spot on, so I was thrilled. I woke up every few hours last night, worried that I wasn’t prepared enough and worried that everything would go wrong. Some of the teaching demonstrations today were fantastic and some were…not so fantastic.

The cello demonstration went well too. I had to play scales and some pieces, and halfway through I had the monumental realisation that “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” are actually the same melody, just different rhythms. Sad, I know, but it had never really “dawned on me” the way it did mid-exam. My teacher was amused. She gave me back some results from last week’s assessment and I’ve done quite well; from memory I think it was 22/25 and 9/10, so I’m pleased.

I often stress and worry about exams and assignments, always feeling I could have done better. Even since visiting a school and seeing a class actually presented, I’ve been thinking that I should have jammed more activities into each lesson plan, or done things differently. But I guess that’s why it’s a learning experience - we’re supposed to get better and more confident.

Hopefully my teachers see it that way too and grade me well!

I have two essays due on Friday and then I’m on prac from next Monday for six weeks. My supervising teacher and I have already begun to discuss the classes I will be teaching from week two…I’m nervous, but excited too. I guess you’ll all be hearing about how that goes… (lucky you!)

But before then, it’s Saturday night, which is going to involve drinking, resting and Guitar Hero. I’ve just got to get through the next couple days…

I was searching for apple pie recipes and stumbled across a website that discussed phone phobias. No, I don’t know how that happened, but it did. Anyway, I found the website extremely interesting because I have a weird fear of answering machines, and it was nice to know that I’m not the only one!

I hate talking on the phone. I’ll do it, but reluctantly. I hate long conversations, I hate saying goodbye, I hate worrying that I’ve hung up on the other person, I hate not being able to see their face and read their eyes. While talking on the phone isn’t my cup of tea, I can deal with it. That’s not the biggie.

My biggie is the answering machine.

(photo from here via here)

I hate them with a passion.

My worst fear is to come home and hear that dreaded continuous BEEP that means there is a message waiting. It makes me feel sick to the stomach and I wish that I could run away and hide somewhere I can’t hear it. I have to force myself to press “play” and usually I don’t even hear the message because I am breathing so heavily and freaking out so much. I don’t know why they terrify me, but they just do.

I’ve been thinking about it lately and I think I can pin-point where it started: at college.

I lived on campus for a couple of years and our telephones had an answering machine service, which also doubled as a way for the head girls to send bulk messages to all the college girls. Sometimes there would be more than ten messages each day, and as I wasn’t very involved in college life, I didn’t find them interesing at all. Parties, fundraisers, sporting events … yeah, that’s just not me.

When I started staying over at Phill’s house, the messages tripled because I was checking them less frequently. I got the odd message from the Principal asking me where I was the previous night - we were supposed to sign out due to fire safety issues, but to be honest I was in a bit of a “phase” back then and was rebelling, since it was my fourth year living in that kind of all-girls structured environment and I was over it.

It got to the point where I would get back to college and systematically delete every message without listening to them. (Sorry Mum). I remember sitting there one afternoon and deleting seventy-five messages in one go. I just couldn’t deal with it - I had to continously press the delete button over and over so I wouldn’t accidentally catch the beginning of a message. I’d often have to have some music on to drown out the beeps.

When I got my mobile phone, it came with a message bank. After a few months of panic attacks every time I had to check a message, I phoned my provider and asked them to remove the service. I’d rather miss an important call than have to check my messages - I figure if they’re desperate to reach me they’ll keep trying.

Yes I’m weird, but apparently I’m not alone.

Make me feel better? Share your phobias with me?