The Garden Chair
An afternoon's gardening today - the first for weeks. I've been out there every day over the summer, and most days I've managed to sit and look at it, though actual gardening hasn't been taking place so often.
But sitting and looking is just as important, as we all know. I prefer to look at the garden from the comfort of a cushioned chair, the kind with arms that you feel like you're able to relax in. Unfortunately at the moment we only have one of these, as we had to get rid of some decrepit old garden furniture, and I haven't found anything I like enough to replace it with. So - though we have a garden bench - we only have one comfy garden chair. This doesn't matter most of the time - the garden's not big enough to socialise in anyway - but occasionally it's a problem. Because any comfy chair with a cushion has "This is The Cat's Chair" written on it somewhere. It must do, I'm sure.
Now we're back to the usual changeable British weather, the garden chair is brought back inside fairly often, as it's raining a fair bit, and wicker chairs and their accompanying cushions need some protection from torrential downpours. So when deciding to sit in the garden, I need to get the chair and carry it out, then go back inside and get my cup of tea. Inbetween these two short journeys, Rosie the cat is skilled at occupying the chair in a "We Shall Not Be Moved" kind of manner. She lurks in the foliage, awaiting the arrival of The Chair With The Cushion. Once The Chair is placed in a sunny position, she magically appears there, and settles.
I'm not that soft that I'd let her stay there, and remain standing. I'm a human, and I work harder than Rosie does, so really I think she should give up her seat voluntarily, seeing me there all tired and in need of a rest. But she's a cat, and so she doesn't.
So having put down my cup of tea I have to remove her from The Chair. I'm sure she makes herself deliberately heavy at this point. Having struggled to disengage her from the comfy cushion, I feel guilty and have to resettle her in my lap. At which point she decides not to settle, but to stand up and move around a bit, and wave her tail in my tea. This is obviously a plot to get me out of the chair, as cat hairs in your tea make it immediately unappealing, and you have to get up and go and make a fresh one. This, added to the Pressures of Work (which Rosie is of course blithely unaware of) means that in the Battle of the Chair, Rosie usually wins.
So today, while Rosie slept, curled up on the cushion of The Chair, I did some gardening. And it was only in doing so that I found buds and fruits I didn't know were there. So perhaps she knows best after all.
posted - Sunday, September 03, 2006
