Birthdays

It seems I’ve had something called a ‘birthday’.  I’m not actually sure what a birthday is and there isn’t anyone around, apart from Mum that I could ask.  It seemed to mean a lot more to her than it did to me.  I was smothered in kisses and millions of photos were taken of me in various poses and she gave me some good cat nip and a couple of cat nip toys.  ‘Nice,’ I said, giving her my best birthday smile while trying to organise my nethers into some sort of order.

So what is a birthday?  We cats don’t really do birthdays.  We’re born, spend up to 8 weeks with our cat mothers and siblings before going out into the big wide world with our new families.  If we’re lucky, we get a good family.  If we’re not so lucky, well – I don’t want to dwell on the negatives.

Mum said she chose 21^st June for my birthday as it’s the longest day with the most hours of sunshine and the shortest hours of night time.  She wanted me to have the best of all days and the longest amount of daylight hours in which to celebrate it.  That’s all very well but I’m not sure what I’m actually supposed to do with a birthday. I don’t think it’s something you can eat, and you can’t really sleep on it, so it seems to me that a birthday is a rather impractical thing to have.

I was four by the way.  Four what? Four years old.  Oh, ok. Actually, when I pitched up on the decking and Ollie told our Mum about me and she started putting food outside for me, I was probably something called 1 – 1 ½ years old and by the time I was brave enough to go through the cat flap, some months had elapsed.  When Mum took me to meet Kevin so that he could add my ‘down there’s’ to his collection (Ollie told me that he had taken all the Daily Mewsers’ ‘down there’s’ although he had no idea why Kevin would want that many and what he intended to do with them) Kevin seemed to think I was between 1 and 2 years of age.  As this was about February Mum decided my 2^nd birthday would be 21^st June and it’s been that day ever since.  I’ve obviously been living with her for a few years now because I’m four years old.  

As I said before, cats don’t really do birthdays but I’ve noticed that humans make a big deal out of them.  When it’s Mum’s birthday the postman knocks on the door and hands her a huge bundle of cards which she goes through, one at a time, smiles at the words, and dots them around the room.  The first time I saw all these cards placed around the room I had to look at each one and read them all for myself.  Some of them were a bit naughty and fell off the shelves and I quickly left the room so that Mum wouldn’t think I had done something to encourage the cards to commit hara-kiri and jump to their deaths.   

I don’t know if I’ll have any more birthdays.  I mean, it’s not as if I need any more, is it? Catnip, well, that’s a different ball game.  I could indulge in catnip all day long and it still wouldn’t be enough.  Maybe that’s why I’ve got the longest day so that I can have as much catnip as I want and I’ll have longer to enjoy it.  So Mum’s not as silly as I sometimes think she might be.  A cat does like being appreciated and being smothered with kisses is better than living a life of neglect and abuse, so I’m not knocking it.

Ok then, just to please her, I’ll have some more birthdays.  I’ll let her kiss me as long as the catnip is flowing freely.  Roll on next year!

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