One autumn weekend, several years ago, the forecast was for fine weather, so I optimistically washed virtually everything in the apartment and put it on the balcony to dry. Some of it objected vociferously and bit me; I told Kit it was a splendid opportunity for his fur to air dry.
Kit has invented and perfected the art of Sulking Loudly, which he promptly commenced. It involves ignoring everything you say, whilst talking contemptuously about you but never to you, whilst ensuring you are in earshot, like so:
“My Mum is trying to kill me! It’s autumn, and she dunks me in the water, and tries to drown me. When that doesn’t work, she puts me outside with wet fur!”
“So, now she’s trying to kill me with New-monia, which is way worse than Old-monia. You get it from having a bath in autumn, and sitting on the balcony with wet fur. If you get it you will definitely die, sometimes twice!”
“It might not be too late for me. If Mum really cares, there’s still time to revive me with the hair-dryer.” He attempted a pathetic cough (and accidentally farted).
A sucker for a marathon guilt trip, I sighed and touched his fur, ready to get out the hair-dryer.
I eyed him with a raised eyebrow. “Kit!” I said incredulously, “Your fur is completely dry.”
“I was testing you,” he said smugly, “But can you please blow dry me next time?”
I laughingly agreed and went inside, while Kit sunbathed on the balcony.
A short time later, I heard rain on the roof. As I rushed, cursing, to the balcony to bring in the washing, I passed Kit rushing inside, alarmed and dripping wet. He turned to me and squeaked, “I don’t know what you did to them, but the neighbours are hosing your washing!”
Although his first birthday was fast approaching, it seemed that the last time it had rained Kit was too young to remember, so we sat down and had a little talk, while the washing got another rinse.
Once I had explained what rain was, Kit asked me if this was caused by climate change.
“…because it never used to rain in Perth. It hasn’t rained in Perth in my whole life, which is a very long time now I’m almost one!”
He added that he didn’t really mind the rain now that he knew what it was, but could I please blow dry him, now, as he could feel a bout of typhoid coming on.
A woman of my word, I blow dried him till he was nice and fluffy, and free of all imagined diseases.
This morning, Kit asked me A Most Unexpected Question.
“Is all our furniture gluten-free?”
“What? Why?” I asked, perplexed.
“Because My [imaginary] Friend, Pammy Pig has coeliac disease. She can’t have gluten in anything,” he explained.
“So, why would it be a problem if there was gluten in, say, our couch?”
He looked at me scathingly.
“I just said she can’t have gluten in anything. It gives her diarrhoea. Furniture is something. So if she sat on our couch, and it had gluten in it, she would get diarrhoea on our couch. Is that what you want? Because if you’re not listening, and there is gluten in it, that’s what will happen!”
“I think you’ll find most furniture is gluten-free, including all of ours. So you can tell Pammy Pig she is welcome to visit.”
“You tell her; she’s right here,” Kit said tetchily.
“And how do I know when one of your imaginary friends is here?” I enquired.
“Well, duh! They’ll say hello to you,” he replied abruptly.
“Ah. I see,” I nodded sagely, not seeing at all, and acutely aware that I am more likely to be greeted by a piece of gluten-free furniture than one of Kit’s imaginary friends.
“It was a bit rude that you ignored her when she said hello just now,” he added.
“Sorry, Pammy. Hello.”
“And is all our white-ware fat-free? Especially the fridge. Pammy likes to keep her fridge fat-free. She says it is ‘…a perilous assault on my will-power to do otherwise.’”
At this point, I surrendered to the absurdity, and assured him that it was. Kit explained that Pammy’s diet was also low fat, and he relayed to me a conversation that he had had with her that very morning. It went something like this:
Pammy: I really want to lose weight.
Kit: What size do you wear now?
Pammy: A ten….ish.
Kit: Well, that’s ok. How big is the ish?
Pammy: It’s thriving, unfortunately. Gets bigger every year.
Kit: And what size would you like to be?
Pammy: Well…I would like to lose the ‘ish.’
Then Kit decided to have a joke with her to cheer her up.
So he said, “The best diet is when you cook the food, admire the food, photograph the food, post the pics on social media, and then throw the food away! You never eat the food because you’re already full…of yourself!”
Seeking a general apology for that comment, I said, “Hey! I post food pictures on Facebook.”
“Well, you can shove them up Where the Thermometer Goes!” said Kit.
It seems an apology is as likely as a greeting from his imaginary friend!
My Partner and I recently took Kit to his first music concert. It was held at Edith Cowan University, and Kit went around boasting to any person who would listen (and even a few who wouldn’t), that His Dad got tickets from the Illuminati Association. Or was that the Aluminium Association? Anyway, it was a very long and impressive word, and Kit was very proud indeed that he had almost learned it!
The concert consisted of a number of different bands playing covers. Kit chatted excitedly, giving a Very Amusing Commentary, much like I don’t during movies (according to My Partner).
When they played Blame it on the Boogie, Kit sang along enthusiastically. Except that he didn’t sing, “Blame it on the boogie.” In Kit’s universe, the song consisted of screeching, “Blame it on the booger,” while thrusting one claw up his nostril. Once we cleared that up, he stopped picking his nose and had a good old boogie.
Personally, I have other issues with this particular song. I have always thought that Michael Jackson singing, “I just can’t control my feet,” was a bit disingenuous. Frankly, if the man who invented the moonwalk felt he had lost control of his extremities, where did that leave the rest of us on the dance floor? Kit thinks that when I dance, people are less likely to call me a good dancer than they are to call me an ambulance!
Later, a brass band came on stage. Suddenly, Kit’s muffled voice came from halfway up my trouser-leg (out the bottom of which his rear end was still poking), “Why don’t they keep that Yellephant in an enclosure?!”
After some intensive probing (of the questioning, not abducted-by-aliens style), it became apparent that, when I had read him the story, “Horton the Elephant,” he thought I was saying, “Horton Th’ Yellephant.” Moreover, we once took him to the zoo, where he saw Putramas, the elephant, trumpeting loudly. He thought that they were called ‘yellephants’ because of all their loud vocalising!
As a result, when Kit looked at the stage, he saw not a saxophonist playing a solo, but a Yellephant with a trunk, thrashing around on stage, menacingly stomping its feet (albeit in time to the music), and bellowing like a train at a signal crossing. He was terribly concerned that we were about to be caught in a Brass Band Stampede.
I assured Kit of the safety of his person, and pointed out the emergency evacuation route (just in case I was wrong). He then settled back happily to enjoy the rest of the concert, secure in the knowledge that the beast on stage was not a Fierce Yellephant, but in fact a human with a gigantic brass nose adornment.
Kit and I recently mounted an expedition into the bowels of the fridge. Me because it had a decidedly murky air about it, and I intended to clean it; him as a search party for his last Easter Egg that he believed had become separated from the main group, and got lost in there.
I believed his egg was very unlikely to turn up, but that was because I had inside information, being that I had eaten it, thinking he could not possibly finish all the eggs he had received, and he wouldn’t notice.
It had quickly become apparent that I had underestimated Kit on two counts.
Firstly, according to a Timetable he had written, he felt did have the capacity to polish off the eggs, provided he remained disciplined, and didn’t let anything else, like vegetables or bath time, get in the way. (I confiscated The Timetable when I found it hidden My Partner’s guitar, along with three picks two raisins and a dead bee.)
Secondly, I was under the misapprehension that he did not have the capacity to count as high as the number of eggs he had received. Wrong again! Kit had counted his eggs accurately, and sadly, one remained unaccounted for. His Treacherous Mother remained silent.
During my Cleaning Frenzy, I identified a piece of green slime that had once belonged to a cucumber, hidden underneath a wilted lettuce leaf. This gave me a Good Idea.
A few months back, I acquired a cactus, Spike Milligan. Suspecting that he needed plant food, I scooped up the contents of the bottom of the vegetable bin, and made him a delectable dinner of compost. My intention was primarily waste minimisation. But within a week, he had started to grow!
Soon, he had outgrown his little plastic pot. So, I took Kit to the garden centre to buy a new pot for Spike. Kit enjoys an outing, but he does prefer to be the reason for it.
“Can I have a new pot, too?” he asked.
“How would you walk around with both legs and your tail stuck in a pot?” I replied. He went into a deep sulk for the next minute and a half, after which he got bored, and hurried off to undertake a thorough investigation of the topsoil.
Upon our return, I left Spike on the balcony ledge to catch some rays and went inside.
Suddenly, I heard an anguished squeak from the balcony!
Part 2
Racing to the balcony, I left my coordination, dignity and a trail of destruction behind me, like a dog in a cone collar at dinner time. Kit staggered through the doorway, forlornly holding up two paws covered with tiny puncture wounds. (I had a few, myself from unexpected encounters with furniture edges. You always seem to have just the right amount of furniture until you are in a hurry, when it suddenly starts to seem awfully crowded!)
“Spike did it!” Kit cried, “He was going to jump off the balcony. I tried to save him, but he spiked me.”
I comforted Kit, and went to fetch The First Aid Kit. It is filled with fun stuff to play with when his parents aren’t looking, like needles, scissors and all manner of things that get stuck in your fur or up your bum!
Kit informed me that it is named after him, rather than the other way around. Quite why he imagines anyone would name their offspring after a collection of tablets, ointments and wound dressings is anybody’s guess. When I tried to tell him about synonyms, he said, “I love Synonym Buns,” so I gave up.
I sat him down and tended to one paw at a time, trying to distract him with Disney sticking plasters. This was completely ineffectual, as he still bit me when it hurt!
In truth, I felt his story was about as convincing as a Drag Queen with a beard. “What made you think that Spike was going to jump?” I asked.
“He’s standing right on the edge of the ledge! You told me if I see someone doing that I should ask them if they are ok, in case they want to jump,” Kit explained.
“Did you ask Spike if he was ok?” I enquired.
“Of course I didn’t! He’s just a plant. Plants can’t talk.”
“In case you had forgotten, they can’t jump either,” I remarked casually, “Are you sure you didn’t push him just a tiny bit?” I asked gently.
“Maybe,” he admitted, “You’ve been Pampering him like a Princess, and ignoring me all day. Spike Milligan gets a new pot, Spike Milligan gets to sunbathe, Spike Milligan gets a special dinner!”
“Well, how about I make a special dinner just for you?” I asked him.
“No thanks!” he exclaimed, quickly adding, “I don’t like compost.”
“Don’t worry,” I laughed, “No compost. What would you like?”
“Can I please have Land Prawns?” Kit asked excitedly, using his name for scorpions, a meerkat delicacy.
And so it was that later on, we sat down to a dinner of Land Prawns, Normal Prawns and Synonym Buns. Spike Milligan was not invited.
One fine November day, I was sitting at the table minding my own business when Kit did his best to burst into the room (a rather Herculean feat given his size compared to the size of the door!) He righted himself, assumed a dignified pose, and declared that I was in Big Trouble! With him.
“It has been brought to my attention,” he said haughtily, “That the name Kit just means ‘baby meerkat.’ Firstly, I am nearly four years old; I ought to be just Meerkat by now! And thirdly [his numbers go a bit random when he gets excited], why couldn’t you be bothered to think of a proper name for me?! Parents are supposed to have arguments about what to call their kids. You did when we were naming your cactus! You love that Spike Milligan more than you love me!” He started sobbing theatrically into his paw.
“Oh dear! Poor Kitten,” I said soothingly. “You had better sit down and let me tell you the real story behind your name.”
“It had better be good! And don’t call me Kitten,” he sniffed grudgingly. So I began.
“Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a girl named Kathleen. She had five brothers (poor thing). Her mother thought that Kathleen was the most beautiful girls’ name in the whole world, so she bestowed that name upon her only daughter.
But Kathleen disagreed. She thought it sounded indecisive, like a dithering halfwit of a name that wanted to be Katherine, but halfway through changed its mind to Eileen. She didn’t like it at all. By the time she was a teenager, she had begun to insist on being called, Kit.
When Kit grew up she had a daughter, who she named Karen. Karen is my mother. So that means that Kit was?”
“Your great-great-big-aunty-twenty-oneteen-times-removed on your mother’s best side?” Kit guessed.
“Close!” I said kindly, “Kit was…. my grandmother!”
“That’s what I meant,” said Kit.
“She died a few years before you were born at the ripe old age of 99 and three quarters (a fact which would have irritated her a great deal, had she not been dead). But I loved her very much, and I thought it would be an honour for you to be named after her.”
“Hmph!” said Kit. “You named me after a girl!” And he stomped off to sulk.
I called after him “Aren’t you lucky we didn’t name you Kathleen?”
Recently, Kit had a minor mishap, which he would later insist was a Major Calamity. This caused him to take to his bed for…oh, I don’t know; it must have been at least an hour, which demonstrates what a Serious Injury he sustained.
His Father and I had been unpacking from a recent hiking trip, which Kit had accompanied us on (but that is another story). Kit was ‘helping.’ [Kit has just informed me that he knows exactly what I mean by ‘helping,’ and he was in fact helping by spreading out everything all over the floor to enable us to see exactly what we had to put away. Thank you, Kit.]
When you are carrying everything that you need for several days, it is important that it is well secured as you walk. Otherwise, you can end up hiking a Very Long Way in the wrong direction, desperately seeking some Important Item that fell from a pocket unnoticed (such as a Very Angry stuffed meerkat). Over the ages, there have been many wonderful inventions designed to fasten things in place, including buttons, zips, domes and chewing gum.
As we were unpacking, we were treated to a sustained and piercing squeak of the sort of volume guaranteed to give you tinnitus for a week. Kit had discovered another invention designed to fasten things in place, and boy was it fastening things in place all over him! The poor Furry Little Fellow had discovered the velcro on my jacket, and he was as stuck as I was last week when I tried on a pair of skinny jeans!
So, His Dad and I spent the next half hour gently extricating him. Kit spent the entire time barking detailed instructions, telling us precisely how we were doing it wrong, and squeaking, “Ow! You’re hurting me!” Other than that, he was a joy to be around.
Afterwards, having lost a little fur, Kit took to his bed. It turns out he spent that time using my phone to surf the internet. He thought velcro was such a dumb idea that he decided to research why some numb-nuts had invented it in the first place. He later presented us with the following offering, his very first poem!
On Velcro
Designed to keep things in place
in outer space.
It is shit. Everything sticks to it.
It should all go back to outer space
and get off of my face.
“What a clever poem!” I said.
“But, surely velcro has its uses,” I said.
“…of which, none currently spring to mind,” I added.
“I can think of a few,” said Kit, “And I never want to do any of them ever again!”
The whole family was reading in the living room, when Kit asked us, “Why do people chop up plants to give other people?”
“You mean like firewood or more like salad?” His Dad asked him.
Kit looked pensive, “No, the dead bits have flowers on. And then they don’t even eat them; they just stare at them with a soppy smile for a week, and then throw them away.”
“They’re not supposed to be dead,” I explained.
Kit was bemused, “But they’re chopped up!” he exclaimed, “I might only be three and a half, but I know that when you chop things up, they get pretty dead!”
His Dad interjected, “They’re considered a nice romantic gift, Kit.”
“But why do they kill the flowers before they give them to you. You can get pot plants with flowers on! Who wants a bunch of corpses?” He looked to us for answers. Getting none, he continued his rant.
“It’s like…it’s like a killer giving away bits of people as presents. I like you so much, here’s a bunch of thumbs! How is that romantic?!”
“Actually I agree with you, Kit,” I laughed. “I would much rather be given a living plant. Especially a cactus. They’re really cool; I’ll show you one some time.” At this point in time, I don’t believe Kit had ever seen a cactus.
Several months had passed, when one day My Lovely Partner surprised me with….a cactus! I recognise that there are a number of ways for this to occur that would probably not be a Most Enjoyable Experience. Indeed, my own sister was once surprised by a cactus; it left her quite traumatised. However, in this instance it was actually a Rather Pleasant Surprise.
Later that same day, I was sitting admiring my prickly new companion, when Kit came barrelling in. He stopped dead in his tracks and did a double take.
“Yikes!” he squeaked, “That is one Scary-looking Cucumber!”
“It’s a cactus, Kit. Your Dad gave me a cactus,” I explained.
“I think I had a nightmare with one of those in it,” he said.
Approaching cautiously, he asked, “Is it tame?”
“Absolutely,” I assured him, “It’s just a plant. Come and help us choose a name for him.”
So we pondered, and we mused, and we deliberated. There was arguing, and sulking and raising of voices (and that was just the grown-ups). But at length, we agreed on a name befitting this, frankly, absurd-looking plant. A name to honour a great comic and writer, that also suits our scary little cucumber perfectly.
A few months ago, I was trying on lingerie in front of the bathroom mirror (for Valentine’s Day). I was unaware that three and a half year old Kit was within earshot. Being now in my middle years, to put it delicately, everything is not where it used to be. Nonetheless, I was attempting to titillate, not terrify!
I muttered under my breath, “Oh my gosh! I look a bit heavy.”
Kit peered around the door and asked, “What’s a heifer?”
I immediately corrected him, “I said heavy! I said, Oh my gosh! I look a bit heavy.”
“You did not!” he said indignantly, “You said, Oh my god! I look like a heifer! I heard you. So what’s a heifer, then?”
I sighed and replied, “It’s a big fat cow.”
He eyed me appraisingly.
“Then you don’t look like a heifer,” he said.
“Thank you, Kit.”
“Because, they have brown eyes, and yours are blue.”
“??!”
“And they don’t wear fancy undies. I saw all those cows in that great big, enormous, huge field one time. They stretched as far as the eye could see; it must have been most of the cows in the whole world” he exaggerated.
“When did you see them?” I asked.
“When you took me down to the Funny Farm, and we drove past them on the way” he explained.
I suppressed a laugh. “Kit! It’s called Strange Farm. Strange is my friend’s surname.”
“Well I was close!” he said, “Funny means strange.”
“True. But Funny Farm means something else.”
“Oh! I nearly forgot,” he interrupted, “You don’t look like a heifer because you’re not fat.” He peered at me intently for a few seconds.
“You’re wearing you’re Too Little, Too Late Face” he announced. “Dad warned me about that.” And he quickly scampered out the door.
On Good Friday, as I was preparing breakfast, Kit asked, “Are we having those Angry Hot Buns, like we had last year?”
“They’re called Hot Cross Buns!” I laughed.
“Angry Hot Buns sounds like someone who is annoyed about getting sunburned in the nether-regions. And yes, we are.”
“Can you even get sunburned in the nether-regions?” he asked. “I thought it was so cold that it sometimes snows there.”
It has certainly never snowed on my nether-regions! I mean, what kind of idiot?!
…..The penny dropped as I realized that he was thinking of the Netherlands! So I explained to him that he had better remember the difference because Dutch people might not appreciate you comparing your bottom to their country!
Somewhat subdued, he asked if he could borrow my laptop to write it out ten times, so he would remember not to offend Dutch people. “Sure. Go ahead,” I said, and forgot all about it for two days.
Yesterday morning (Easter Sunday), I flipped my laptop open to discover that Kit had carefully written out the following ten times (bless him):
Rimemba not to iffend duch peepil.
I was pretty sure that, for all his good intentions, it hadn’t helped. So I quizzed him, “Kit, what is the name of the country we were talking about the other day?”
He pondered briefly, and proudly announced, “The Nether-regions!”
Sorry, Dutch readers! I promise he will have geography lessons when he is old enough.
Then he asked to borrow the laptop again to type out his first message to you all. And this is what it said:
ngwuert-uu1’jiWF GEMOEROIlo,ioyelgh nhfmon
He said you would understand…
I’m not so sure.
When I asked him what it said, he got all uppity, and said that the whole point of writing is so that you can read it, and can’t I read?
So, apparently if you can’t read that, you must be illiterate. Let’s just imagine it says:
A Very Happy Easter to you and yours with love from Meerkat Kit.
