Thread: Mummy's pet
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Old March 14th 07, 05:18 PM posted to rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
Jack Campin - bogus address
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Default Mummy's pet

Poppy, the first out, who looks very much like her mum (dark tiger
stripes with a mostly-white face and orange splotches under the stripes)
Gerald, pale ginger stripey tomcat, the fattest and slowest one
Eccles, black and white tom with big whiskers, the skinniest and most
curious
Siouxsie, grey and white with a punkish orange streak on her head.

They're just big enough to start looking like cats, and starting to
be mobile enough to get in trouble. Keep a lookout for kittens in
usual places!


Yesterday morning I was standing beside the bed when I felt a tickly
sensation on my toes. Siouxsie was licking them, and the others were
lined up behind her in a nose-to-tail queue for their turn, wriggling
from side to side like a conga line. Makes it hard to finish getting
dressed and go off to work.


What great names! How do you pronounce "Eccles"? Does it rhyme with
"freckles"? Or rhyme with "reckless"? Or sound like "eck-leez"? Or...?


Rhymes with "freckles". The association was with Marblecake's name -
Poppy is darker (like a poppyseed cake) and Eccles is mostly black
like the inside of an an Eccles cake (which you may not have come
across outside the UK - it's a thin flaky pastry shell with a filling
of currants). There was also a rather geeky character called Eccles
in the 1950s BBC radio show "The Goons" who regularly got disastrously
injured in some way or other, at which point he would squeak "You
dirty rotten scoundrel, you deaded me!". (Usually the person
responsible was his dimwit boss Colonel Bloodnok, which would also
be a good name for a cat). Eccles is not a very sensible-looking
cat, with enormous whiskers and asymmetric white face markings like
a weird leer.

Eccles cakes are named after a town in Yorkshire. The name of the
town ultimately comes from "ecclesia", Latin for "church", as it was
a significant centre for early English Christianity, so 1500 years
ago it was probably "eck-leez".

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