A rambling vignette, inspired in equal parts by last night's nightmares and Davey's post on censorship.
I've been woken the last two nights by horrible nightmares; blurry ones with lots of screaming and scary monsters. Nothing new there, but then last night I was out on the balcony enjoying a cigarette when I heard the very same sounds coming from the apartment block's underground car park. The hairs rose up on the back of my neck. Perhaps the last week and a half's cocktail of over-the-counter cold remedies was finally taking its toll and causing hallucinations? I stuck my head tentatively over the parapet to see if I could identify the source of the wailing (deciding that real-life scary monsters would be slightly preferable to ones that exist just in my head).
I saw a streak of ginger tear across the tarmac. Mystery solved. It was the fucking Bin Cats. These mangy moggies live in the basement, warming themselves on car bonnets and eating from the communal rubbish dumpsters. I make the Swede take the bins out in the apartment because on more than one occasion I've swung a bag up over the lip of the dumpster* only to have the shite frightened out of my by a caterwauling and clawing furball leaping out at me because I've accidentally smacked it in the nut with a week's worth of empty wine bottles. To be fair though, they keep the rats down and bother no-one but the lily-livered such as myself. Except for this week. For the Bin Cats appear to be in heat.
I remember the first time I heard cats indulging in some tender lovemaking. I was about 9, maybe 10 and staying overnight with my aunt in Dundalk. I was in a strange house, in a strange bed, with an overactive imagination. I wasn't quite asleep but I was getting there when I heard this sudden keening, answered by a mocking yowl and it sounded like it was coming from the house next door. I convinced myself that my aunt's neighbour was a witch and was torturing a baby, mewling back at it every time it cried. The neighbour (whom I'd met earlier that day) was a perfectly nice lady who displayed no outward signs of being an evil witch but for reasons best known only to child psychologists I decided that she must be sticking pins in a baby.
I did nothing about it at the time bar worry, I remember looking crookedly at my aunt the following morning and wondering if she was in cahoots with the neighbour, deciding that as she must have heard it too and had made no mention of it then she probably was. In which case I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up; they might end up boiling me for soup.
It was years later before I saw the neighbour's cat at home getting his rocks off with some cute wee pussy and heard those same yowls and screams. I'd forgotten about the night in Dundalk til then, banished it to the recess in my brain where I keep the things that haunt my adult nightmares. Last night's feline symphony and the previous night's disturbed sleep brought it rushing back again and I'm wondering now what prompted such dark and morbid thoughts in a bright and happy 10 year old.
One of the few songs in my repertoire as a kid was one that I remember hearing sung at home, Wiela Wailia. The Dubliners had done a version of it and though I haven't heard it sung in years, I remember the psychotic words and the jaunty air perfectly. The full lyrics can be found here but in summary; There was an old woman and she lived in the woods, she had a three month old baby and a penknife long and sharp and she stuck that penknife in the baby's heart.
It's the kind of catchy tune that sticks with a kid.
*Wrong word? I don't think we have "dumpsters" in Ireland but "big fuck-off bin" would have made an already overlong sentence even more cumbersome.
I've been woken the last two nights by horrible nightmares; blurry ones with lots of screaming and scary monsters. Nothing new there, but then last night I was out on the balcony enjoying a cigarette when I heard the very same sounds coming from the apartment block's underground car park. The hairs rose up on the back of my neck. Perhaps the last week and a half's cocktail of over-the-counter cold remedies was finally taking its toll and causing hallucinations? I stuck my head tentatively over the parapet to see if I could identify the source of the wailing (deciding that real-life scary monsters would be slightly preferable to ones that exist just in my head).
I saw a streak of ginger tear across the tarmac. Mystery solved. It was the fucking Bin Cats. These mangy moggies live in the basement, warming themselves on car bonnets and eating from the communal rubbish dumpsters. I make the Swede take the bins out in the apartment because on more than one occasion I've swung a bag up over the lip of the dumpster* only to have the shite frightened out of my by a caterwauling and clawing furball leaping out at me because I've accidentally smacked it in the nut with a week's worth of empty wine bottles. To be fair though, they keep the rats down and bother no-one but the lily-livered such as myself. Except for this week. For the Bin Cats appear to be in heat.
I remember the first time I heard cats indulging in some tender lovemaking. I was about 9, maybe 10 and staying overnight with my aunt in Dundalk. I was in a strange house, in a strange bed, with an overactive imagination. I wasn't quite asleep but I was getting there when I heard this sudden keening, answered by a mocking yowl and it sounded like it was coming from the house next door. I convinced myself that my aunt's neighbour was a witch and was torturing a baby, mewling back at it every time it cried. The neighbour (whom I'd met earlier that day) was a perfectly nice lady who displayed no outward signs of being an evil witch but for reasons best known only to child psychologists I decided that she must be sticking pins in a baby.
I did nothing about it at the time bar worry, I remember looking crookedly at my aunt the following morning and wondering if she was in cahoots with the neighbour, deciding that as she must have heard it too and had made no mention of it then she probably was. In which case I wasn't going to be the one to bring it up; they might end up boiling me for soup.
It was years later before I saw the neighbour's cat at home getting his rocks off with some cute wee pussy and heard those same yowls and screams. I'd forgotten about the night in Dundalk til then, banished it to the recess in my brain where I keep the things that haunt my adult nightmares. Last night's feline symphony and the previous night's disturbed sleep brought it rushing back again and I'm wondering now what prompted such dark and morbid thoughts in a bright and happy 10 year old.
One of the few songs in my repertoire as a kid was one that I remember hearing sung at home, Wiela Wailia. The Dubliners had done a version of it and though I haven't heard it sung in years, I remember the psychotic words and the jaunty air perfectly. The full lyrics can be found here but in summary; There was an old woman and she lived in the woods, she had a three month old baby and a penknife long and sharp and she stuck that penknife in the baby's heart.
It's the kind of catchy tune that sticks with a kid.
*Wrong word? I don't think we have "dumpsters" in Ireland but "big fuck-off bin" would have made an already overlong sentence even more cumbersome.
