Category: The Continuing Adventures of a Wayward Meerkat Kit

This morning, Kit asked me, “Can we have pizza for dinner tonight?”

I answered carefully, “Pizza’s junk-food, Kit. When do we eat junk food?”

“Only on the weekend,” he said dejectedly.

“Just two more days to go, then!” I said brightly, and offered him a celery stick as he glared at me.

“Come shopping with me, and ride in the trolley,” I offered as a consolation prize.

He cheered up, and we set off to the supermarket.

Kit loves trolleys. Usually, he treats the kid’s seat more like a Director’s Chair, telling me what he would like, and occasionally begging me to put something back (usually something green).  He stays in the trolley, as he is so small that he could easily get lost on foot. Actually, I once lost him in the trolley behind a head of cauliflower.

Today, Kit decided it was time to be lost somewhere more interesting than the bottom of a trolley. I don’t know how long he had been gone when I turned to where he had been to ask if he would prefer spinach or lettuce. I was greeted with a strange look from an Elderly Gentleman, apparently convinced that I was addressing a bag of potatoes. Unwilling to disappoint him, I smiled at the potatoes, said, “Spinach it is, then!” and rushed off to find Kit.

I circled the supermarket like a shark, acutely aware of Kit’s potential to be a total embarrassment. I finally located him. He had built a pyramid from various items on top of a shelf. He was perched at the top of it like a Christmas angel on a tree.

“Mum! Look at meeee!” he called, waving with both front paws.

Just as I called, “Kit! Be careful,” he lost his balance, and fell. The pyramid collapsed beneath him, collecting other items as it went like an avalanche. Fortunately, he landed on a packet of incontinence pads. Dodging a tin of sardines, he scurried towards me as the rest of his tower transformed itself into a traffic hazard.

As is always the way when you are trying to avoid someone, they keep appearing, forcing you to jump into rubbish bins, or become very interested in what is behind the nearest hedge. Coincidentally, the Elderly Gentleman had caught up with us, and he was blocked from the aisle by the ruins of Kit’s pyramid. He shook his walking stick at me, and shouted, “Lunatic!”

“Run, Mum, run!” Kit hissed, as I scooped him up.

I’m ashamed to say, I abandoned my trolley, and did as he suggested.

It turns out that this lunatic and her meerkat are having pizza tonight afterall.

“Mum! It’s snowing,” Kit called, rushing inside all excited.

We live in Perth, Australia. It doesn’t snow here. Ever. It doesn’t even try. In fact, it is as if snow has a phobia of Perth. Perthverts (as they are affectionately known) consider 10 degrees Celsius to be ‘freezing’.

“Kit, it’s the middle of spring. It’s 30 degrees!” I exclaimed.

“I know. It’s weird. It must be climate change,” he continued, “They say that it will create more extreme temperatures. It might be 30 degrees now, but it must have been freezing two minutes ago.”

“Um,” I said.

“Look. I’ve got snow on me,” he persisted, proudly displaying his shoulder, which, admittedly was covered in a white substance. The penny dropped.

“Kit,” I began, “Were there any birds around when it was snowing?”

“Yeah. There were heaps of seagulls,” he admitted, “Why? Do they like snow?”

“Well,” I said carefully, “If you look at the ‘snow’ on your shoulder, do you wonder why it isn’t melting?”

“It’s probably really good quality snow,” he replied.

“Actually, I think that what is on your shoulder is something that came out of a seagull,” I said politely.

“Oh,” he said.

He thought about it for a bit, “You mean its bum?” he asked.

“How come you never told me that’s where snow comes from?”

Today, Kit asked me, “If we remember, why don’t we have rememories?”

“You might as well ask me who ate all the ice-cream. I have absolutely no idea,” I replied without displaying a trace of guilt.

Kit peered closely at me. “It was you!” he squeaked. So, maybe I displayed a little guilt.  But my point is….I can’t remember my point.

When you reach a certain age (45), you tend to find that all your exercise consists of running around looking for things, that you didn’t lose nearly as often when you were younger (44). Things like your phone, your car… your mind. There are several tried and true ways to get around this.

By far the most popular technique is blaming a loved one for moving (hiding) things (this technique is ineffective for those who live alone- I know because for the first few months I tried it, I spent my time muttering, “Who the bloody hell put that there?! Oh…that would be me.”) The second technique is to live in a single room and own so few possessions, that if you lose anything, you just stand in the middle of the room and turn around until you see it. This method is recommended by Kit, who is always banging on about meerkats not needing possessions, despite owning a whole room full of books, toys, bread crusts and dead beetles.

Widely accepted as the most sensible (boring) technique is writing down everything, and referring to it often. Kit has devised a better method, solely for my benefit, as he informs me he is too young to be stupid enough to forget everything. It relies on me telling him everything important. The consequences of this vary between comical and disastrous depending on who is listening. The following incident is an example of this.

Before a recent grocery shopping trip, I had asked Kit to remind me to pop into the pharmacy, as I needed to purchase several items unavailable at the supermarket. I did not ask him to remind me what the aforementioned items were. I was as pleased as punch when he reminded me in a crowded supermarket, in his most officious voice, “Remember to go to the pharmacy for haemorrhoid cream Mum.” When I say pleased as punch, I mean as pleased as being punched. Quite hard. In the face. Why couldn’t he have reminded me about the second item on my list, face cream?!

In future, I will be utilising the method of remembering that is widely considered to be boring.

Last weekend, Kit distracted me with a joke on our way out, and I (displaying all the intellectual capacity of a buttered parsnip) locked my keys inside.

What he said was, “What’s genealogy?” and I started to explain, and he interrupted with, “No, duh! It’s a joke. I know what it is.”

So I played along and said, “Okay. I don’t know. What is genealogy?”

And he said, “It’s when you get anaphylactic shock from a guy in a lamp!”

I laughed. He was pleased about that because, he then informed me, “Some people think it’s called geneology, which isn’t even a word! But if it was, it ought to mean the science of genes. But even though all the other sciences are ‘ologies’, gene science is called ‘genetics,’ which probably should be pronounced ‘jean-ticks,’ not ‘jenny-ticks.’ But, anyway, if you thought the word was ‘geneology’, then then my joke wouldn’t be funny.”

It was about then I realised my keys were missing. “Fluffy bunnies!” I exclaimed, “I’ve locked the blistering keys inside.”

“I don’t remember you saying that,” Kit interrupted.

“…or something like that,” I conceded to mollify his righteous indignation.

And then Kit said, “I suppose I will just have to rescue us!”

Due to uncooperative topography, we live on the third floor on one side of the building and the first floor on the opposite side. As we circumnavigated the building, looking for a way in, we spotted a window I had left open.

I started thinking about drainpipes. I weigh about twice as much as you should if you intend to climb one any higher than you would like to fall, but they could easily support Kit’s weight. As soon as I said ‘drainpipe,’ Kit started experimenting. After undertaking a short course in Inventive Ways to Fall Down, he finally was able to wedge himself in between a pipe and the wall, and shimmy up that way. He was off like shot. He had it all planned out.

“I had it all planned out,” he explained, “First I climbed the drainpipe at the bottom, which was pretty easy. Then I got to the first roof, and I had to find the next drainpipe. It wobbled, but I climbed it, and I wasn’t even scared.”

“Then I had to jump onto the window sill. That was the bit where you were running around in circles screaming, ‘Don’t fall!’ Then I chewed a big hole in the window screen and jumped inside. I climbed the bookshelf by the door for a good view, and saw your keys on the couch. I had to jump onto a chair to get down from the bookshelf, because you weren’t there to help me down. Then I climbed the couch and got your keys.”

Back on the ground, I was still trying to work out how Kit was going to reach the door handle when my keys hit me on the head.

The latest season of The Bachelor involved Nick Cummins aka The Honey Badger, seeking the love of his life in a group of twenty-something young camera enthusiasts. If you are not familiar with the show, I must explain that Nick had not carelessly lost the love of his life, and then forgotten what she looked like. The show is based on the implausible premise that if you introduce a desperate single to a mansion full of desperate singles of the opposite sex, the love of their life is bound to be in there somewhere!

I only know all this because Kit begged to watch the show. I had wondered why he was so keen to follow this wine-swilling, arse-bearing snogging circus, until he asked, “How did they find so many ladies to go out with a honey badger?”

Kit has studied honey badgers, and he has learned that they will eat pretty much anything with a central nervous system. Any system, central or otherwise, has a right to be nervous around a honey badger. As far as Kit is concerned, they would probably eat their own grandmother. Feet first.

“Aren’t they afraid he will kill them and eat them?” Kit asked earnestly.

I laughed and explained, “They call him Honey Badger because he is a fearless rugby player. He’s not a real honey badger.”

Kit exhaled, “I thought it might be because he was a cannibal. So, I suppose I don’t need to worry about how to get into The Haram…”

“Mansion,” I corrected.

“…to warn the contestants,” he finished.

During a screening of one of the compulsory cocktail parties, Kit asked me, “Why don’t they like wearing clothes? Couldn’t the producers afford much?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, baffled, “It appears to me that they love clothes. They’re wearing all the latest glamorous fashions.”

“But their dresses don’t cover much,” he clarified, “And I don’t think the weather could be that warm every day. Clothes that don’t have a lot of fabric in them should be cheaper than ones that cover you up properly to keep warm.  If you took all the nude bits from each lady, and put them together, you could make a whole new lady completely nude.”

“Yes,” I agreed, and wondered if, perhaps we should be watching The Wiggles.

In an unusual twist in the final episode, this week, the Honey Badger, declined to select a mate, and left alone. Kit said that he was not surprised because, really, how likely are you to find the love of your life from a group of twenty people?

“After all, Mum,” he added, “You dated hundreds of guys before you met Dad.”

Thanks, Kit. Be sure to tell your father that!

Once on top of a time (as Kit says), First Aid Kit, and his vegetarian pet T-Rex, Tiddles lived in the middle of The Preposterous Forest. One day a Courier Pigeon with delusions of being a fighter pilot dropped a delivery card into Kit’s burrow. When he recovered from his head trauma, Kit read that a package was waiting for him at the Forest Post.

Kit also wanted to check on his winter stock of breakfast termites in a small mound in his safety deposit box. While they had a freezer of meat trees for Tiddles in his converted aircraft hangar, come wintertime, Kit preferred his food fresh. So Kit and Tiddles set out into the forest towards the Forest Post. Their journey was largely uneventful. Trees, rivers and mud appeared in all the usual (if not desired) places, and Nothing tried to eat them. Tiddles repaid this kindness by eating Nothing in return.

When they arrived, Kit hurried to his safety deposit box. Each box is closely guarded by a small (but toothy) Ferocious Animal, who is trained to bite anyone approaching too closely, except for the Rightful Owner. (This is why stolen goods that end up in Forest Post boxes never end up benefitting the thieves; the Ferocious Animals somehow know they are not the Rightful Owners, and bite them when they try to retrieve their ill-gotten gains. Some call it karma. They call it ‘lunch.’) Tiddles waited outside, partly because the Ferocious Animals made him nervous, but mostly because he couldn’t fit through the door.

Kit quickly discovered that his box was missing a bit; quite an important bit, it seemed. When he peered inside, he saw an uninhabited Termite-free Mound, which would have been preferable had he been on a diet, and not just walked 15 kilometres. He inspected his box more closely. Although it was thickly painted bright red, the perimeter of the hole revealed that it was made entirely of wood!

Suddenly there was a sonorous burp. It was about then that Kit noticed his Ferocious Animal looking rather more rotund, and self-satisfied than usual, with a dead termite stuck in his little beard. Apparently the Ferocious Animal was only there to guard the box. Ironically, once the termites had escaped beyond his Designated Biting Area, they were fair game. At least Kit had taken out insurance. He sighed, and went to collect his package.

Kit’s friend, Bahati had sent him a lovely new set of saucepans. He took it as a sign, and brightened a little. He now had everything he needed to cook scrumptious recipes from frozen termites, to sustain him during the icy winter. Upon receiving such an obvious Serving Suggestion from the Universe, who was Kit to argue?