Batcat, Elvis and the Voice of God
Kittens in the valley...and then there were eight
“Mais animais” as they say around here – more animals.
Shortly after sending out last week’s despatch, Val Kilmer’s kittens started appearing – we counted them one by one with an increasing sense of fear and foreboding, but thankfully she stopped at a conservative five.
Not content with being a teenage mum it was also clear that there wasn’t just one father, but three or four. Imagine.
And so a small bundle of different coloured blind fur rats have been squealing at us all week from the safety of a crib under the daybed constructed from Simon’s old globetrotting kennel, and occasionally from the bathroom towel cupboard when Val breaches the defences and makes it into the house with a kitten in her mouth.
The dogs have taken a bit of battering as Val understandably wanted to keep prying pooch noses from getting too close, so I guess they’re giving her a wide berth while their cuts heal.
Garfie – at 65kg – went very quickly from licking his lips in interest to nervously dashing past and outside before the strangely fast moving thing with pins in its paws pounced.
The plan has always been for Val to be more of an outdoor cat once the kittens are old enough and so we’ve been containing them to our indoor/outdoor room much to her frustration.
But I was still surprised to be woken up at 5am by one of the kittens mewling loudly having found itself alone and hungry buried amid the towels under the sink.
We had a chat with Val about parenting.
We intend to keep two of the kittens and believe we have homes for the other three, but the issue of names has now been raised...
Old-school pet names are definitely out of fashion, but human names are undoubtedly in.
Val Kilmer was an odd choice for a cat – it was Oda’s choice after her frustration with our decision to go with Garfunkel for the big dog – but it was her call, and it does open up interesting opportunities for Val’s progeny.
It strikes me as obvious that each of them now needs to be named after one of the characters played by Val Kilmer during his long acting career.
I mean who doesn’t want a cat called Jim Morrison, Iceman (either Admiral Ice or Lieutenant, depending on whether we want to go original Top Gun or remake) or “Bruce Wayne aka Batcat”?
I’ll be honest I had to turn to The Google to help me out with the rest.
I had no idea Val Kilmer had played Elvis Presley, Mark Twain, the Voice of God and Moses...twice.
And while we can’t call two kittens both Moses and “honey, can you hear the “Voice of God anywhere?” would be an unusual thing to shout down the valley, I’m sure we could train one to thrust over to his litter tray when we do an “uh-huh-huh” Elvis impression, and hopefully make it back alive.
But nothing will be decided until their eyes are open.
Please let us know which ones get your vote, or if there are any other hidden corners of Val Kilmer’s filmography that may have passed me by.
Lionel was back in the valley this week with his chainsaw and an ambitious project – cutting up the fallen 150 year old oak tree in a way which might allow us to turn it into something useful like a table, a bench or a bar...or ideally all three.
One of our two big and beautiful cork oaks fell when the fire got into its roots and smouldered away for a week.
It wouldn’t have burned if it had been healthy, so we approached the exercise expecting a rotten trunk, a load of firewood and a vague hope of recovering some useable sections.
Working quickly, the sad silhouette of a slumped, grand old tree was soon gone and the logs were tractored over to a spot on the hill for me to calculate the planking possibilities and get to work with an axe on the rest.
Constantly looking for new and exciting outdoor gym opportunities I ordered a book recommended by Dom last week and settled into some practical Scandinavian advice for wood chopping.
“Norwegian Wood” is an unusual subject for a best-seller (it sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Scandinavia...and beyond), but to me it’s an extremely helpful and practical manual for wood stacking, chopping, chain sawing and storing.
And it’s always nice to have a pre-packaged, pocket-sized analogue rabbit hole to disappear down in a quiet moment.
Anyone who thinks chopping wood is as easy as it looks in the movies would no doubt be as frustrated as I was, buying an axe and then successfully chopping precisely nothing except a few small chips off an old block for all that effort.
And anyone who ordered the book on Amazon expecting Murakami’s weird novel of the same name might be marginally more confused than if they’d received what they were expecting.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Murakami but his parallel worlds through the walls of a well have become less fascinating since we discovered a deep well on the opposite hill.
We’ve moved on to Operation Hoover Dam this week in terms of outdoor projects to put new blisters on top of our olive grove-planting old blisters.
Ana and I took to the clay dam with medieval throwing spikes and shovels to prepare some holes for the fig trees, nespras (lowquat or Japanese plum), marmelos (quince) and a couple of soon to be acquired avocado trees.
All the bulldozing we did last year to create a new terrace was great, but the dam was mostly fortified with clay and so it takes a lot longer for things to seed.
It’s still somewhat bare despite our best efforts with a few sacks of oats – hence Daniel’s description of it as looking like the Hoover Dam from his house.
Not having an insanely hard-working volunteer like Dom here to encourage us to set a landscaping schedule means we’ve not been as motivated, and I really must prune the table grapes this week (before the full moon, apparently).
But Ana’s brother Erik is heading our way next week and is renowned for his excellently green fingers...so there’s hope.
The temperatures here certainly seem to be drifting up towards proper Spring, despite a short and surprising hail storm and we managed a couple of beach visits with our guest and friend Aislinn Laing, Hugo and their three boys from Madrid.
Aislinn is the bureau chief for Reuters for Spain and Portugal and so they set off on a cross-country road trip to reach us with a stop on the route each way to explore our wild coast.
We didn’t manage much more than a paddle, but I’m happy to report the birthday beach is as beautiful as ever, the meat from the local butcher is as good as always, and a wine taste off between a Spanish Tempranillo blend and Portuguese Aragonez (the same grape) leaned in Portugal’s favour (although it was close)!
If you’re interested in wine do sign up for The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure - I’ve just written a new story called Hard Graft on how America saved Europe’s wine and there’s more to come this week on three new and unusual grapes.
We start the week with a huge stack of new quotes from our builder to decipher, with huge congratulations to daughter Oda in LA on the occasion of her 27th birthday and to boyfriend Derek Day and Classless Act for making it to the pages of Forbes...and with an amazing new single.
Got to go...Val Kilmer’s making a rush for the door again. “NO! Leave the kittens there Val! We’ve talked about this…”
LOVE the names! & congrats to Classless Act!
We had pondered that Geoff, and I even had a line in my despatch which I edited out, but one Simon (the dog) is enough in our household...unless, of course, we call one of the kittens Garfunkel as well. But there's a limit to the amount of Simon & Garfunkel I can deal with if truth be told...if any of the kittens turns out tube a Saint, I'll be surprised..!