Cats

Apparently a cat called Oscar has been stealing underwear from washing lines in Southampton and bringing them back to his owners. They are astounded by its kleptomaniac tendencies. And certainly not stealing their neighbours' knickers. Oh no. I wouldn't suggest that. Although it does seem a bit convenient. I'd like to blame things turning up in my apartment on a cat. Like, I don't know, stacks of cash or bearer bonds or small gold ingots. Knickers are small beer compared to what a cat could hypothetically steal. It would just be a matter of properly training it.
Although cats aren't amenable to training, even hypothetical ones.

Then again, most hypothetical cats tend to be in boxes full of possibly poisonous gas, which means they can't get out to rob the till in our local hardware store.

On the positive side, we now have a cat in our apartment. One of the comedians from the club is taking three months off to go round the world and decompress from her old job, and she needs to store her cat while she's away.

So at six this evening, a cat, a bag of dried food, and a vast collection of feline paraphernalia arrived. Our new housemate, Lila, spent the next hour prowling the apartment, sniffing things and crawling under furniture.

She's a very cute cat; sometimes slightly ungainly, particularly when pausing to hop over some of the piles of stuff in our apartment, and a little shy, but she has an adorably bemused look to her face and seems sweet-natured enough. Certainly it's very nice to have an animal to purr in the apartment.

To celebrate, we went out to the Wooden Table in Tin Hau, which has a vaguely baffled staff who forget to bring food out, or bring things out only after they've been cancelled, or have to come back and ask what you've ordered. Prices are very reasonable but I'm glad I didn't order the full set meal; even after a soup and a pasta dish, I fill fit to burst. Now I'm sitting on the sofa, slowly digesting while watching Office Space.

It's interesting how this film has dated in some ways (old CRT monitors, ten year old Mac software) but in other ways so contemporary - TPS reports, the iconic red Swingline stapler, and, strangely, Bill Lundberg saying "mmmkay?" which seems to predate South Park; although given the chronology of films in the late nineties based on cartoon series, who can be sure?

Or perhaps if you're familiar with TPS reports, that's a message for yourself that you should heed.