Why do we keep them?

Mooncat has just deposited what looks like at least 2/3 of a fir tree on my desk -- or, more accurately, on the page I'm currently working on. She was preceded by Ish, who seems to have teleported from the cat flap (at the back of the house) through two downstairs rooms and up the stairs, without leaving any trace whatsoever of his lovely muddy paws before arriving on my lap. And on the desk and the windowsill and the pile of the marquis's clean laundry. Last night, he performed the same journey, but ended it in the airing cupboard, which I opened for less than 5 secs solely to get him a towel as he was in full Mog Soggoth mode.
Bah, rain and wind and mud and stuff.
And long-haired cats who get trees caught up in their bloomers!

Have written three pages this morning, which is moderately pleasing: this breaks me solidly into chapter five, and most of the way to bringing my two plot threads together (heroine now in the underworld, hero about to meet the shapechanging ferrets who set off the entire chain of events). Owing to a fountain pen incident, I am nearly as covered in tobacco-coloured ink blots as I am in muddy pawprints and bits of tree. Before this, the marquis and I sorted out our overly large un-played CD pile, filed those which had, in fact, been played, and reorganised their storage drawers. As a result I am listening to a lyrical Breton folk act whose CD I picked up last year at the folk festival and then failed to remember. It's good. And it's only 12.30. At this rate I may even get the kitchen cleaned and the ironing done today (and there are pigs taking off from our airport neighbour).

Oh dear, Aamir

Okay, I realise not everybody who's likely to see this shares my taste for Hindi cinema, and, indeed, for Aamir Khan. But this is just too funny, *especially* when you realise that the film in question (*Fanaa*) is a blood-stained tearjerking box office blockbuster about doomed love and, umm, terrorism.
http://bollywoodfugly.blogspot.com/2006/11/fanaa-or-song-of-scarf.html