A news story on the BBC website under the headline “Polar bears have maternal Irish brown bear ancestors” seems to imply some strange evolutionary time shifts:
It reminds of the theory that insanity is hereditary – you get it from your children.
Category: animals
paws for thought
Years ago, I used to have an orange-brown tabby. She was a perfectly normal short-haired cat, but skinny and delicate. She had one or two pink pads, but mostly her paw pads were black, and I always suspected this indicated that she had Siamese ancestors.
At last count there were five black cats ranging around the finca and, although I haven’t got close to the two smallest, when I saw these paws on the windowsill, I was struck by the fact that the three siblings born 15 months ago all have black pads.
After some brief on-line research, I find that this is to be expected, although, if I’ve understood correctly, it would theoretically be possible for a black cat to have pink paws.
Continue reading “paws for thought”
time to stand and stare
Travelling in the UK, I seem to be in headless chicken mode, with no time to sit and think or write, and yet achieving very little. Yesterday, though, I took a walk , as it was a glorious, slightly blustery, English summer afternoon.
I’ve commented before on the monkey puzzle in my mother’s village, but I’d never seen it with cones before:
ever so umbel
About a month ago, some lads brought a horse to graze on the plot of land alongside ours. Sadly, though unsurprisingly, la yegua isn’t doing a very good job of clearing the brambles.
There’s another plant, too, that she seems to be studiously avoiding, and the other night the car headlights caught this pale army standing menacingly tall on the other side of the wall:
missing
Well, the post title says it all, I suppose, though the photo is a little misleading as the cat in question is now over a year old.
He was one of the more docile of the semi-ferals who keep down the rodent population in our over-sized garden.
I was particularly fond of him as he reminded me of the cat who was the inspiration for Clementine, a poem you can read in the post nine lives, from last year.
Continue reading “missing”
don't confuse the narrator 