......and nobody is getting fat except MY TWO CATS (do doo....do doo.....do dooo)

But hang on there. Could there now be a THIRD? Oh NOOOOO!!!! (I jolly well hope not. But read on!)

In these days of financial stringency when we're all having to count our pennies - unless you happen to be a member of the jury in a TV 'talent' show, a member of the British Cabinet (21 millionaires out of 29 at the last count - or maybe it's down to a mere 20 since the recent ignominious departure of the Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox?) or a banker slavering after his/her forthcoming bonus. But if you're not one of these then too bad! But there is another group which ought to be mentioned as inured against the financial constraints the rest of us have to suffer, viz. domestic pets, and in particular, my own 'Dynamic Duo', Blackso and Noodles, above.
   We've known for some time that even Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen, regularly glides around Buckingham Palace at night like a phantom, switching off the lights in needlessly illuminated rooms. I have no doubt that when she is succeeded by the lovely Camilla (bless her jodhpur-clad royal thighs!) that this practice will continue unabated.
   Meantime my pussies expect, nay, demand, to be fed at any and every hour as though money grew on trees.
 And now, not only my regular two, but bang on cue, after the prolonged absence (and, surely, sad demise, of one of my several regular window visitors), comes yet another one - and this one owns the biggest appetite of all! :-

  I've no idea where it came from. I suspect with the timing, that it may actually be a replacement for the dear recently-disappeared pussy. I haven't established its sex yet but, with staggering imagination, I've been calling it 'Ginger', which it now responds to. And boy, can it eat!
     It wears no collar but I'm hoping like anything that it does have its own home. It comes in at least twice a day, sometimes more frequently, - every time with an appetite as great as it itself is small. A really forward, cheeky little thing (much smaller and, I'm sure, much younger, than my own two) and with such a loud voice. Blackso has a soft, croaky miaow, Noodles a high-pitched but 'polite' one. Ginger just bellows its little lungs off - and if the kitchen window is shut and it sees me in the room it'll cry out there for attention like it's a life-or-death emergency. Seeing as though I get up at around 5 a.m. when it's still dark, and I can't avoid going into the kitchen, this is not a neighbourhood-friendly cat. So in it comes - and it just will not shut up until I attend to it, never mind the other two who are sitting silently, patiently, looking on curiously The other day I had to open no less than FOUR food sachets because what I'd offered was not good enough for it. And did it eat after the fourth serving? Did it hell! A flick of the tail and it was gone!.
     If I knew that it didn't have a home I wouldn't be able to resist taking it in. Trouble is, I'm not supposed to have any pets at all. My landlord has been aware for some years that I'd got Blackso (who'd left his own house down the road, preferring to move in with me) and said he'd turn a blind eye to that one. Then a couple of years ago when he was in here he noticed Noodles. His reaction led me to believe that he's also a cat-lover, though he didn't say anything to me directly about him. (Noodles, like Blackso, had decided to leave his own home - a different one, on this same road - and also to move in.) But now for me to take in a third? That really would be stretching things. With the cold weather coming I do hope Ginger will be less frequent in presence. But if it's going to be perched on my window sill in frost and snow, crying, I know there's no way I could to refuse to let it in.

      So, while we are all having to tighten our belts (me literally, as through eating less in order to save money, I soon expect to have the flattest tummy in Sussex - West AND East!) my pussies just carry on as before, letting the world's economic problems just drift by them - and even smiling at it. What a life!