Busy Bee at Work

PABLO MABLO. Nak? call. cepat.

Nowadays, I am so busy. Every morning, shima will gag me with antibiotics for the urinary bladder infection I am supposed to have. And at night, when I see her pretty face come back from work, I gulp in fear because its going to be another episode of choking on medicine. They don't know that my bladder infection is a mental problem brought on by Pablo. By the way, Pablo is the new addition to the family. Pablo acts like the new superstar in town. He used to be blind but now that he's got 20/20 vision he seems to be high all the time. High up in the air jumping, not marijuana.

But I forgive shima, because even though her medicine-feeding technique seems like she's trying to kill me in a not-so-subtle manner (in which case she certainly did everyone a big favor by not being a doctor), Jah is even worse. Jah cannot even get a single damn pill down my throat (and there's four of them). Jah should stick to Pablo and his conjunctivitis.

Because Pablo is so frightfully active, Grandma Opah is always yelling for us to stop playing with Pablo and feed him. Believe me Opah ku sayang, we are not messing around with Pablo. And Pablo does not want to eat because we shoved a whole bowl of premium catfood under his infected eyes and he did not even sniff it. So now Grandma Opah is adamant that she take Pablo back to the village with her and Jah disagrees, mainly because Jah feels Pablo will be better of at the RSPCA than choking on durian seeds.

[Try Pablo Bush]

And here I am now looking over shima's shoulder watching her slaving away at some powerpoint slides she's supposed to present tomorrow. She should go to sleep and continue the next morning. Pablo had just entered and exited with his crazy street dance technique and I'm feeling that bladder infection come back on. Oh no..

I am not well

Dear people,

For several days now I am not well. I suspect its the ear mites but shima and the doctors at the clinic suspect that its a bladder infection. I might have got it off Comu because he's 100.

Now I have to eat antibiotics twice a day. I wish Mama Boss was here. Because if she was, she would not let Jah and Shima choke me on those antibiotics. She would make me some medicine from herbs and ribena. Now that would really make me well -- fast.

I know Jah plans to lock me in her balcony for five days because the doctor said I should stay away from all the other cats. And eat Science diet C/D everyday which contains less sodium and good for my high blood pressure. So now I am staying clear of Jah and her new leather sofa.

Once this stupid infection is gone and I can control my call of nature, I am going back to the clinic and scratch that doctor because she said I am 63 years old.

yours affectionately,
koko

Breaking News

Pe'ah dah beranak..

koko is uninspired

Dear Koko fans,

please stop visiting this blog until I am once more inspired. See, Ocu has gone to KUIS and I am so sad. I am sad because if I puke, no one is going to clean up the mess. And if I stand by the fridge door for milk, no Ocu comes to pour me the milk. If I wait for shima to come back from work I'd be growing a beard already. And I know that grandma Opah is sad too. Because Ocu sleeps in her room all the time and they listen to korean songs together. And only Ocu tells grandma Opah to eat her nasi or she'll be babapped. Nobody else in the house knows how to use the babap word because Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka haven't published it in the latest BM dictionary yet.

I've promised Ocu that I wouldn't write about her anymore so I will change the topic. Peáh, that cat version of tarzan, has done it again, just like Britney. She's gotten pregnant and most probably will beranak on the 3rd floor, again. This means that her new kittens will run all over the plaster ceiling, like the last batch, and freak everybody out at night. And just like last time, no one knows who the father is this time around either. Actually, last time everybody thought the kittens were Fasha's but they all came out looking like Dimot. But now that Dimot's been snipped, Dimot should certainly be innocent. Unless Dimot got clever and untied his fallopian tubes, which is highly improbable because he's male (the clever part).

With Ocu so far away in Bandar Seri Putra, and Mama Boss and Big Boss even further away in the Arab continent, I think shima's feeling the general sense of boredom cause she says she's going to Penang for some serious brain racking activities and adventure, literally. Jah must be sad too cause she wants to go sun bathing in Phuket and get a tan and Armand says he's going to Terengganu to hunt some wild boars by Bukit Depu. Grandma Opah also said she wants to go to Perak, but thats what she says all the time so I'm not sure how serious she is. So if everyone's going away, I wonder who's going to feed me and clean up my litter box.. If I was one of Peáh's kids I would be flinging myself against the sliding door trying to break free (thats what happens when you grow up on the third floor of someone's house for 12 weeks). But I'm smarter than that so I think I'll just kick Dimot around and make him cry. Hopefully Tok Non or some other paid bodyguard will be around to let me out and refill the milk bowl. And maybe this time I can totally scratch that new leather sofa in Jah's room without being told off.

I need to find Comu and get some things off my untrimmed chest.

signing off,

koko
the anti-Peáh

And you are....?

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who scream in delight when they see me, and those who scream in fear. There's a third group of course, the ones with no emotional reaction whatsoever. I know there's something wrong with these people: either they have no excitement in  their life and their spouses are chewing grass in boredom, or they're just holding back.. Let me just tell you people, not letting it all out can lead to high blood pressure and stress, and perhaps a real chance at happiness. At least thats what I read from the many works of Prof Azhir. So just let it all out, scream in delight when you see me or run in fear. I promise you no one in this household will laugh out (in front of you).

But I know I did one lady a big favour. And she can probably thank me the rest of her life. This lady, parked her car at the side of the house and she left the driver's side of the door open while she buckled up her baby in the back seat. So, I conveniently jumped inside and settled in the passengers seat.

When she sat down and put her seat belt on, she suddenly noticed me sitting next to her with a big grin on my face and she screamed so loudly the whole street came out to see what was happening. Of course, shima locked the front door and denied she ever knew me so Jah had to become braveheart and save me from the screaming lady and her baby.  But that scream was 345 megaWatts of stress released right there. You're most welcome lady.

Whenever there are guests at the house, my first gut reaction is to lie down and stretch before them on the table and see what'd they do. Usually, I'd get pats and praises and ooooohhh..she's so cute, which really feeds my ego. The one time I tried stretching in the middle of the road though I nearly got killed. Thank goodness one driver had the sense to stop but that resulted in a mile of traffic jam. I was waiting for him to come out of his car, pet me and tell me how cute I am but all he did was *honk* *honk* *honk*. No manners, apparently. Of course Jah had to run out and get me out of the way, after which I got a flick on the ear from shima for being so brave.

See, this is why I used to go to pubs. At the pubs everybody makes me feel like the real me, i.e., a Japanese popstar. They let me strut on the bar counter like a Versace model and if I suddenly flop in front of them, they go all crazy and swoon. The trick is not to go to the same pub twice, because a new audience is always more enthusiastic. Besides, I don't want shima to figure out my pattern, cause if she gets bored she might dump me for one of those scottish fold cats that look deaf.

[Dream on, Helmi]

Once I've covered all the pubs in Soton, I thought I might as well go to that big pub at Shirley, which is where the Bingo house is and only about 30 minutes away by car. After all the applause and kisses, at 2 am the pub owner finally decided I should go home so he rang the number on my tag. It tickled me pink as I peeked out the window and saw shima and jah arrived outside in the grey BMW on a cold winter night in their pyjamas. Then of course I watched cheekily as they spent another half hour arguing about who should go inside into the crowded smokey room and face all the big men with tatoos all over their arms and backs, and holding snooker sticks. In the end, Jah had to come in and fetch me because shima had done her share the week before at the pub in Portswood. By the way, that was my last pub before shima finally sent me on that long trip home to live in rural Bangi. Why did you think I was miowing so much on that trip back? I thought she was going to kill me.

So which one are you? Are you a runner or a fan? Just don't use this last line on shima cause the last time someone said this to her, she put me in a cage, gave the person a killer look and didn't speak to Big Boss a whole 24 hours.

boleh tak you kurung kucing you sebab kalau i tengok kucing i rasa macam nak mati....aah aahh.. takut takut, pergi pergi, jangan jangan, tolong, tolomg, pakcikkk!!! suruhla anak you simpan kucing nie, i nak mati, i nak mati, tak bleh nafas...

You can click here to translate.

A night to remember...

Well we all know Ocu sleeps at 3 am every day because she has jet lagg since she was born. But apparently sometimes Mama Boss and Big Boss sleeps late too, because last night at 3am, as I was stretching outside the master bedroom, I overheard Mama Boss telling Big Boss that she thought she heard me being strangled and dragged down the stairs. This resulted in Big Boss hitting the alarm button on all his cars and waking up the entire neighbourhood.

Mama Boss's exact words: "Koko menjerit2 macam kena cekik, pastuh makin lama makin jauh" according to Big Boss

To tell you the truth I wasn't really being strangled. I was just choking on the grass I had earlier. And these darn hairballs on my chest aren't helping either. They make me look like a man too.

Following last nights episode, Ocu suddenly had a confesion fit at the dinner table today. The night shima's laptop got stolen, she was actually awake and heard the thieves talking outside her room. That's right: Ocu had kept this secret from Shima all along. No wonder she was losing 1 gram a day and starting to look thin. Slowly.

Well of course, now everyone was drilling her about why she didn't fly out of her room and propel herself on the thieves at 3 am in the morning like Angelina Jolie did in SALT. She had the skills right? That white belt in Taekwando should be put to good use. Okayyyy., the white belt may be the lowest level of achievement in Taekwando but if you've been at the same level for like 10 years and watched all the karate kid movies you should be a killer puncher/kicker even though you suck at dodging. So there were two men? well just throw one guy at the other. Then sit on them. Problem solved.

[Ocu will be ready for them next time.]

Over the long discussion on Ocu's apparent lack of bravery, Zahir confessed feeling guilty too. See, zahir had placed two knives under shima's desk in her bedroom, two more in the back room on her dressing table and one under the passenger seat in her car. Apparently zahir thinks all the crazy males in the universe is going to attack his eldest sister (na'uzubillah). He also had an additional parang kept under his own bed for his wife's protection. But he forgot to place one under Ocu's bed. This led to a handicapp on Ocu's part. This was the real reason why Ocu hesitated. Ocu couldn't just run out of her room and attack the theives without any weapons. Where would the drama be in that? No point hurling one guy on top of the other if they were gonna come right back up and attack her like no tomorrow.

Then Big Boss had an idea. Next time this happens, he said, lets dial the Bangi cops. That must be the most sensible idea in the entire conversation. Possibly because Big Boss is in his late 50's. All we need to do now is get the Bangi cops direct phone number. And remember folks: its not 999 cause that will only get you to the switchboard, where the operator asks you all sorts of questions the first half hour cause they're not sure if you're a prankster or really gasping from a heart attack. The problem is, the last time shima called 999 the next door neighbour died before the ambulance arrived.

But we couldn't get hold of the Bangi police's direct phone number. And the Final Solution? Big Boss says that next time this happens, Ocu can scream PEROMPAKKKK!!! from her room, and Big Boss will hit all the alarm buttons on his cars, again.

Problem solved. I love this family.

The bold and the beautiful

Now that I've introduced you to every important cat in my life, its time to talk about me for a change. Oh wait, we're forgetting someone here...Fasha. Fasha is important too, for when I tell you the story of when Dimot fell in love.

Fasha. No misai kontot here eh..

When Fasha arrived at the back door last year, all the humans in the household thought she was bold and beautiful, so they called her Fasha, you know, after that hot malaysian actress who, according to Mak Yang, breaks up everyone's relationships (Mak Yang is where we get all our Malaysian artist's news from, cause everyone else can't be bothered). It turns out later that Fasha was a he: Jah watched Fasha from behind one day and made the announcement during dinner: Fasha jantanlah!!! something like that anyway.

 [No comment]

Assuming Jah was talking about Fasha the cat, well, of course I knew that already, and it wasn't a big deal for me either (being neutered and all). But even though, Fasha is perhaps the epitome of male cats. Handsome, cool, macho and orange. Now to Ocu, that would be like the hunky guy from that silly Korean group Suju, she paid 500 ringgit to see just so that she could scream in front of him in concert (without telling Mama Boss, ---oops sorry Ocu). I mean, 10 people in a group? come on. To Jah, that would be the hunky guy she married, cause now she doesn't have a choice. To Ini, that would be the hunky doctor she met yesterday in class and sent a fb message to shima just to say how devastatingly cute he was. And to shima, that would be the hunky.... ok lets forget shima, she's just confused.

See, let me demonstrate how hunky Fasha is. Fasha would open his mouth and the miow sound wouldn't even leave yet and he'd be served food. Peáh and half the female cat population in Bangi and the surrounding areas were wobbling themselves all over Fasha. I mean, nearly all the restaurants in Bangi had frightful orange kittens with Fasha's walk or miow. Fasha was king, just like Jacko was king, minus the plastic nose.

But one day Fasha showed up with a huge bump on his face and it was so big he almost looked like he had two heads. Comu told me--over three suspenseful days--that Fasha had a fight with some beruks and probably got an infection. I sat silently and watched as Shima and Jah took him away in a box, probably to that pet clinic who shaved me shiney and killed my self-esteem.

But Fasha died a few days later. I really want to blame Ocu for forgetting to give him his antibiotics, but lets leave the past in the past. (*Ocu is guilty*). Before he died, Fasha tried to hide in the back room but Tok Non a.k.a Mr Clueless shoo-ed him away. I found the remains of Fasha's bright orange fur and skull at the bottom of the hill. Apparently Jah did too, cause she made the announcement at dinner that night: Fasha dah mati!!

Arwah Fasha Sandarr

Since this piece of old news still makes me choke, I will go now and have a nap.

I miss you

Yesterday Jah and Izzat took grandma Opah back to Teluk Intan, and suddenly I miss her very much. I go to her room and stare at her bed, it's empty. You know, grandma Opah is the only person in the household who throws rice, chicken and durian seeds to me under the table, even though Jah complains it'll make the floors sticky and shima says I'll get a stomach ache. If I go sit on the chair next to grandma Opah, she will put her hand on my head and softly whisper Payyyyyy áh. I don't feel too bad. She doesn't remember Ocu sometimes either.

Grandma opah likes to tell stories and she tells them all the time. When she was young & beautiful, seven handsome eligible young men asked for her hand in marriage. And they were all denied because, well mostly because they couldn't afford her. One of them even went out to sea and died of a broken heart. Poor guy. Then along came Grandpa Lope, the head of two villages, all experienced and established and successful and according to Grandma Opah, with three other wives in three different parts of town, two of whom she would never meet. The first time she met Grandpa Lope was on the bridal pelamin itself and she said to herself, oh-- so this is my husband. Then she went on to give him 11 kids. How cool can grandma Opah be. I can imagine shima running off if she met her husband the first time on the pelamin, good looking or not. Ini would probably disappear before they could even get her to the pelamin, she wouldn't give the poor guy a chance. Jah would crash and burn the pelamin, she wants to scare him away and Adeq would lose her breath and pengsan, then wake up and then pengsan again. Hopefully some of grandma Opah's other grandchildren have inherited her cool genes cause I'm not seeing any signs of it here in this household.

Grandma Opah is pretty generous with advice too. She gives them out freely during dinner. If you eat on two plates at once you'll be honey-ed. If you sing while you cook you'll marry an old man. If you change places at the table while you eat, you'll marry more than once. Shima must not have been paying attention to that one when she was younger. The whole table is like a merry-go-round to her.

[Grandpa Lope was 20 years older than grandma Opah, but greatgranpa Tok was 10 years younger than greatgrandma Onyang. I don't know who these people are, but old men shouldn't be wearing necklaces. Unless that's a tag with his mom's number on it.]

Then there's the more horrifying words of wisdom: if you lie on your belly and point your feet to the sky your mom will die. If you sharpen a pencil on both sides your mom will die. If you take a picture of three people one of them will die. If the food you cook is too salty you're getting married soon. Who was the creative git who came up with that one.

I'm so glad I eat pre-packed food on my little mat at the corner of the kitchen. It's so complicated to be human with all this superstitious nonsensical-sounding knowledge passing around. I'm still missing grandma Opah though, and the durian seeds.

Winkie the evil nice guy

I love cornering squirrels into the toilet and watch them commit suicide by jumping into the toilet bowl but let me tell you, Winkie is even worst. Winkie is like the cat version of dracula....he kills kind daddy birds and sweet mummy birds and cute baby birds, bites their heads off and then leaves the remaining bodyparts on the mat by the front door as an offering for Mama Boss. See, this is what happens when you mix siamese and persian together: a monster.

But I like Winkie, in the mornings he would sit by the window in the back room and stare at the hummingbirds that peck at their own reflection in the glass and I can just feel Winkie's imagination go wild at the idea of killing them. According to Shima, Winkie may have some damage in his pre-frontal cortex or perhaps a shrunken amygdala due to the apparent lack of empathy he feels for other creatures (too technical for ya? me too). Winkie should try killing squirrels for a change; they are easier to catch cause they don't fly. [We could have been best friends Winkie. You could have been the brother I never had....*long sigh*. ]

[This is how it should be. But nooooooo....you had to go and complicate things]

Winkie was just a baby when he arrived. He was a gift of true love from Izzat to Jah, so Winkie is obligated to live forever. The pressure is probably too much for Winkie. Perhaps thats why Winkie doesn't hang out with me and Comu much. He kicks Dimot around then goes adventuring down the next two streets, possibily looking for kill (or his shrink). I'm telling ya, the guy is a monster.

I don't have any pictures of Winkie. Shima's camera is with her RO. I can post a semi-look alike of Winkie though. Actually, this guy looks 80% kinder.

Winkie's evil twin. Currently residing in Sing Sing.

DIMOT DOMOT DIMIT DEMIT

Why does everybody love Dimot? I do not understand. Dimot's original name is D.M, an abbreviation for some medicinal plant Mama Boss was working on. The name got expanded to Dimot, but you can fit in any vowel in between to make it work. Mama Boss calls Dimot Da Iman. Shima calls Dimot Dim Dim. I'm so jealous. Two repeating syllables is my trademark. Get a life Dimot. You can't have all the names in the universe.

Dimot didn't arrive at the house by himself. Big Boss picked Dimot and his brother, K5, up in a stinky gutter by Shell. People usually dump cats at Shell because it is right by the pasar malam and satay samuri. Dimot and K5 were lucky because Big Boss don't usually do favours. Thanks to my royal cuteness Big Boss now can't see cats without picking them up and telling Jah and Ocu to take care of them.

The origins of Dimot's and K5's names.

By the way, K5 is not an M16 5.56 mm caliber shooting rifle. DM and K5 are the combination of medicine Mama Boss gives her diabetic patients. So people are always coming to the house asking for DM & K5. It's so annoying. Mama Boss should name one of her medicines KOKO. Koko will definitely make people feel better.

But bad news first, K5 died soon after we got him. I want to blame Ocu for mixing the milk wrong but lets leave the past in the past. (*Ocu is guilty*). K5 was buried in the backyard by the Pinang tree. May K5 rest in peace. Although K5 didn't say or move much, he was a good citizen.

K5 with an M16 rifle (2009). Just before he died.

Since this piece of old news still causes me pain, I will stop now and take a nap.

Comu & ME

Armand & Comu 2004. (I was out at the pub.)

Comu (pronounce Cho-Moo) is my best friend and best listener. Comu had been with Shima long before I came into the picture. Comu's original name is COMEL given to him by Shaza. But Armand would call out Comu! Comu! before chasing him around the house, trying to sit on Comu like a cowboy and thats how Shaza's dream of a conventional cat with a conventional malay name shattered to pieces. Whereas Comel means cute, Comu probably means just-kill-me, or something. But no one should mind Armand. I mean, his favourite fruit jams are made by St Dalfours, and he calls them STD for short.

Comu is ancient, he's 17 years old, which, in human years is about 64 back in Europe (i.e., old) and 145 in Malaysia (i.e., why aren't you dead yet). All of Grandma Opah's cats die out at 7 tops, usually from dangerous social diseases, violent social activities, excessive social babies or too much durian seeds. Comu's dad, who serviced in WWII as a war postal worker, misplaced Comu's birth certificate, so I have always believed that Comu is a pure-bred just like myself cause he's got (some) class.

When Shima wanted to ship us home in the trunk of an airplane (where I didn't even get a window seat), she took us for a medical checkup at a fancy vet hospital. The pretty little doctor ran her hands through my luxurious fur, looked into my shiny marble eyes, turned back my sexy ear flaps, forced open my perfect jaw and picked at my glossy white teeth, stuck her pinkie up my hot behind and then, since she apparently didn't find what she was looking for, scanned me with a metal detector (do I look like a terrorist to you? apparently she did). By that time, she wasn't pretty to me anymore. Anyway, the following info came up on her computer screen:

MADELINE: PURE-BRED PERSION: DOB 17 SEPT 2001: ROYALTY see BIRTH CERT for proof.

You know what came up on Comu's?

#$@#!@ 1993 $%^&(

The vet said the German's no longer manufactured this kind of pet chip ID so her software can't read the contents of Comu's chip properly. We were lucky the scanner even detected it, cause it had slipped all the way to Comu's B.U.M equipment. The symbols probably meant ACHTUNG! GERMAN SPY  cause then the vet told shima --and I can remember this quite vividly -- "don't feed them for the next 24 hours....". Thanks a lot Comu.

saying goodbye to shima for a long trip home

When we were caged in the plane on our long trip back to malaysia (along with a stupid monkey, two peacocks and an unmoving human), I cried all the way and nearly forgot about peeing. Comu looked at me like I had gone mad. I don't know what else they cut off when they neutered him, but they should have saved some adrenaline pumping organs for survival mode.

I was so glad to see Jah's face when she picked us up. Jah peeked in on us through the metal bars of our burgundy plastic cage and was so proud to see I hadn't peed on the gray carpet lining. That's the first thing she told Shima on the phone, I heard her. To tell you the truth, I did feel like peeing once and a little bit more. But Comu gave me that look that said he'd kill me then and there, so I kept it in.

Comu doesn't talk much, so if he was human, he'd be the silent serious type, like the godfather character in the godfather, the old one, you know, who kills people by surprise. That's another thing about Comu too.. he's superbly loyal to Shima. If Shima moved in to the house next door, which she did once to my amazement, Comu would always come home to the house next door, whereas I would always end up at the old place and wondered why it was empty. Then head to the pub.

Just lost my train of thought there.. *pub* *pub* *pub*...

Hello I am KOKO

Hello, my name is Koko. I am 9 years old. I have a birth certificate to prove it. Well, the birth cert is somewhere in Jah's pile of boxes, but I'm sure I can dig it out. I come from a long line of persion queens, and my real name is actually Madeline, but my new owners had some sense to rename me Koko and now I'm feeling like a japanese popstar.

I live in Bangi, its hot here. But I ran away once and it was hot there also, so I came back. I don't run away anymore, it pisses shima off when she has to come and collect me in the middle of the night from some pub downtown, but that's another story. Besides, my nametag has fallen off and hasn't been replaced so if I ran away again I'll probably end up as roadkill or burned and thrown in that morib river like some poor woman called Sosi everybody at home is talking about. Urghh..

My official owner is Shima, she's the one who cooks but KFC rocks more. Then there's Jah, she's the one who just got married recently so she's not acting all crazy about me like she used to.

I am black and white, so if you wanna be my baby it ain't matter if you're black or white, I just don't do grays. For the record, it was Michael Jackson who said that, but its too late anyway, he's dead, I'm neutered, and so should all cats be, which is why I'm anti-Pe'ah!

more on Peáh later..