OK, it’s official.  I am now Britain’s Champion Kitten Bore.  They really should give me a cup.  In other words, skip this if you’re not the kind of person who goes ‘aaahh’ when you see a kitten.  But Douglas and Archie have completely taken over my life recently, and I seem to be consumed by them at the moment.  I don’t remember being like this when my beloved old cats were kittens, and I don’t know why I’m fretting so much about these two.  At least, I probably do know why – I’ve got plenty of amateur (and professional!) psychologist friends ready to identify my current obsession as displacement activity for other anxieties – but once I get into the morass that is my emotional state at the moment, it’ll all get very messy, so it’s best not to go there at all. 

Meanwhile, back at the kittens, things are moving on, although still very slowly with Archie.  The Bridegroom Boss duet which is out this September and October is about two sisters who get labelled early on as ‘the sensible one’ and ‘the pretty one’ and I’ve often had intense conversations over a bottle of wine about how difficult it is to shake off family labels sometimes, but am obviously going to do exactly the same thing with Douglas and Archie.  Douglas is ‘the friendly one’ (and he really is so-o-o sweet and purry, you can’t help but melt with him) and Archie is clearly going to be ‘the difficult one’ (there’s always one in a family). 

Alas, the breakthrough I reported in my last blog hasn’t become a habit and he is still determinedly playing hard to get.   I hope that when he does come round I don’t fawn over him too much, with shades of the prodigal son.  I’ve always thought that parable was very unfair.  There he is, anyway, posing with my Rita (sorry, couldn’t resist) and looking as aloof as a kitten can,

They are both getting leggier, but are still gorgeous, so much so that they were asked to model for the new brochure at the vet’s surgery when they went for their second vaccinations.   There was no way Archie was going to get out of the basket again, even with the gauntlets I took along to hold him with, but I proudly picked Douglas up.  Sadly, he turned out to be camera shy and every shot had him looking manic or hunted.  I was very disappointed that he didn’t seize his chance of stardom.  Lucky I never had any children or I would obviously have been one of those pushy mothers determined to get their child a starring role in the nativity play – or, indeed, the kind of parent who would post a whole gallery of pictures of their precious offspring on their websites.  A bit like the one the webmistress is going to put up later this week, in fact, which is just for those who DO go ‘aaahhh’.

Both kittens are now roaming the whole house, but are not allowed outside yet.  I’m still having to regulate encounters with Mungo, who is fascinated by them.  Unfortunately, he’ll chase them whenever they run, which has ended in a few kerfuffles, none of which helps my concentration on the book in hand.  As you can  imagine, I’m not getting a lot of writing done at the moment.  I did a rough draft of the Scottish book, and am now on the next draft, the one I always intend to be the final one but which ends up being rewritten in a panic a matter of days before the deadline.  Or being abandoned at Chapter 7 and started afresh from scratch – I hate it when that happens, but I haven’t had the Chapter 7 crisis for a while (touch wood) so fingers crossed this book will be the same.  I must admit that I gave up on the first chapter after ten muddled pages, but it’s very much a scene setter so I told myself that I would deal with the beginning at the end, and have carried on with the hero and heroine arriving at their ruined castle.  I’m currently on Chapter 3, and it feels like there’s a long way to go.  As always, summer is getting booked up, and my writing days are disappearing, not helped by the fact that I’ve just taken on two temporary part-time jobs.  This means that I will have to give up my leisurely lifestyle for a bit, but the theory is that the busier I am, the more productive I will be … but in my experience theories don’t always work in practice!  We’ll just have to see.