Enter Calliope, from a manbag

At last something even more attention seeking in the Twitten than I am... Calliope the kitten.

A morning mooching around in Brighton, where Lorraine and I bumped into Anton and Anna, and my Godbairns. We saw some of the festival that was going on as the streets had been closed in part of the town. This included bands, and people wandering about with signs saying "free hugs" (I scored one), and lots of children's activities, like chalking the road, and painting Wendy houses. Particularly liked the big green elephants by the Pavilion.

Lorraine drove us to Eastbourne for the main business of the day. A visit a lovely Polish (I think) lady, and her family who had cats aplenty. In fact they were mad for cats: there were two litters of kittens, and ten adult cats. The kittens were all extremely pretty, but I handled a few before I chose mine on the basis that it seemed chilled and happy to be handled, and it has beautiful colouring. It is seven weeks old and so, appropriately enough, must be a Leo.

Then off to a nearby pets superstore to buy a cat bowl (pleasingly with a skeleton fish on it) and other cat paraphernalia.

I felt quite guilty for a short while, tearing it away from its family. Made me think of that bit in the Color Purple where the two sisters are torn apart sobbing. However, on the drive home it happily sat on my lap, and was generally purring and sleeping. Lorraine stopped the car at the end of my Twitten and I popped it into my canvas manbag for half a minute before getting indoors and letting the cat out of the bag. It seemed happy straight away, and wandered about assessing the place, and purring. I cooked and it fell asleep on Lorraine when I was cooking.

Calliope had not come entirely alone, however, and Lorraine de-flead her right away too with Frontline.

Lorraine left at tea time, it has for the last few hours followed me about, played with me, climbed up my legs as I did the washing up, played with a pencil, perched on my shoulders like a furry parrot, and repeatedly rubbed its face in mine. As as far as I can tell, it seems completely happy, and is dozing with its ears just touching my sleeve as I type this.

She was named after the Greek muse responsible for inspiring Homer to write the Iliad and the Odyssey. What's the point of being a writer if you can't be pretentious once in a while?

Below Calliope's first photoshoot... For some reason, she's looking a tad more fox-like and grown up in these than she does in real life. Elephants in Pavilion Gardens.