Where I have grown accustomed to a lethargic cat in the mornings, firmly fused to the bed and requiring a personalised invitation to even consider leaving it, I am now witness to an early morning training regime being put into practise.  The pool makes an ideal lapping shape and what could be more exciting than chasing your sister (or being chased by her) around a high-risk, water area.

Chicken has a phenomenal trump card she pulls out each summer. She manages to max her beguiling beauty by increasing the intensity of those gorgeous blue eyes of hers. Her wish is my command.

unfurling frondly whisker-tips

Sometimes a cat just can’t get close enough to that elusive source of heat. And sometimes a cat is forced to shuffle up irresponsibly close. And sometimes a cat is overcome with blissful sensations of warmth and is mesmorised by the glow. It is precisely at these times that a slight fizzing-pulling sound can be heard if you listen very closely. The sound of whisker-tips curling up into a beautiful display of frondliness.

There is that glint in the eye (only caught at a 47° refractory angle) which could be interpreted as being mischievous but you know there is a energiser-hamster on a wheel behind those eyes and it is working overtime! Scheming, inventing, solving and some plotting, no doubt. That languid paw stretch that just “happens” to pat you across the face when attention is deemed due. That not-so-subtle siamese voice, not beckoning, not calling, not asking nor inviting. No, that siamese voice demanding you report to her at once! Who thought I would ever be playing a landlubber version of marco polo with my cat?

I felt I needed no further proof of her intellect, what I never anticipated was her intelligence.

I have spent the past few days intermittently looking for a nice (read stable, light and basic) twitter widget for wordpress (I feel a little odd saying this,  but yes, chicken tweets). After a few failed attempts resulting in me being sucked into the intertubes, I finally pick what I think is the winning widget. I jauntily click the install link and prepare to watch in utter amazement as chicken clucks and a tweet appears. Ok, not really, but I did have pretty high hopes.

After abandoning that widget after figuring out what they meant about this WP version being bleeding edge, I set off with renewed determination to find a plugin tested against this here bleeding edge version. Lo and behold, there it is. Complete with shining endorsements based on the quick spot check I did and suitably crisp documentation. Did I mention a 5 star user rating? (What was that about lemmings again?)

Once again I find myself, finger poised above the install link and hope gurgling like slight heartburn, deep in my chest. I take the leap, click the link and set off to configure it. I am suitably impressed! Just like that crunchy, or was it crispy? documentation promised, a simple, intuitive interface allowing me to control exactly what and how I want to display the clucks (surely that’s a more suitable verb for chicken). In principle, it is beautiful.

I save my changes and cannot ctrl-tab-4-F5 fast enough.

I F5 again. Wait. Let me rather make that a ctrl-F5, one can never be too certain.

Finally when I could no longer fool myself that the page was indeed reloading and that no, there was still no twitter feed, I head back to admin to poke. Oh look at that. Widget doesn’t seem to save. So I try again – I mean, perhaps I clicked cancel, thinking it was save. I painstakingly pay careful attention to each and every keystroke and satisfied that all is well and click save. And this time I am 100% sure it was save.

This time around I am spared the hope-disguised-as-heartburn and twack the F5. No suprise, there is no difference. *sigh* My mind vaguely latches onto something I remember running across regarding pulling tweets in as RSS feeds. Not ideal but I figure it will suffice until I get to the bottom of this plugin business.

So that’s what I did. And I was mostly happy with the result (it was an interim solution after all). Sure each tweet is its own link, there is no control over format not to mention no twitter functionality such as replies or retweets. Yet it is functional. Or at least it was.

I notice this evening that chicken kindly clucked and thought I would check it out on her blog. Could I believe my eyes when that latest tweet was not there? I can promise there has been much ctrl-function-keying.

I will get to the bottom of this. I will get a beautifully sleek and functional plugin or baring this, I will downgrade to the latest stable version of wordpress.

chicken learns activity diagrams

I have always suspected chicken of being more than just a cat. What owner/slave doesn’t harbour secret aspirations of their cat quietly plotting world domination? She is cunning though, got to grant her that, and catching her in the act of self-education is often, well let’s just say, difficult.

I was rather amused to return to magpie one day and find chicken avidly absorbed in the activity diagram on the screen.

All I can say is that is that I am immensely proud of her wanting to design and model her plan out before she even considers executing it. Perhaps I have been more influential than I previously realised.

I am notoriously slack at closing Magpie (my laptop) and Chicken is notoriously good at taking full advantage of this fact and getting in some one-on-one Magpie time. There have been far too many times I have sat and stared blankly, completely flummoxed at what could possibly be wrong with Magpie (aside from the fact that she is running Vista, but we don’t say that out loud very often). I suspect Chicken might be sitting quietly chortling behind a svelte brown paw while I frantically toggle screens and hit buttons whilst steadily building up to a panic.

So it’s for those special times, when she pulls all the stops out, that this blog has been created. This is Chicken’s little platform to the outside world. Wouldn’t granny be so proud?

Chicken striking a pose

My slaves have understood their task presented and created for me this platform of utter joy. It is from here I can share my genius with the world!