Cool cats, sunshine, riots...

At last the sunshine has arrived and if the forecasters are to be believed it is going to stick around for a while yet. After a hot night, it was already warm when I woke up this morning at seven o’clock. By half past I was sitting in the backyard having a cup of coffee with Luna. Of course Luna wasn’t actually drinking coffee, but it was pleasant just sitting there watching her trying to find some shade under the table to keep cool in.

It must be hard staying cool with all that cat hair on your body. It made me wonder how sheep managed to keep cool before there were farmers to shear them. You know the wild sheep that must surely have once roamed our green and pleasant land. Imagine wearing two or three sweaters or a fur coat in the blazing heat, it can’t be a pleasant experience and most animals, regardless of the climate they live in, are covered in hair, or fur, or wool, or some other equally heat retaining covering. Oh, I know many animals have summer and winter coats, but it’s still a coat and who’d want to wear even a light coat on a day like today?

It’s so much nicer to take off a layer when it’s too hot, put on a layer when it’s chilly; to be stuck with a single layer regardless of the temperature must be a trial. It makes me pleased that I’m not any other kind of animal.

Of course the heat affects us all differently and I’m waiting for the riots to start. You know the ones, the riots that often kick off during heat waves in this country. I remember one summer in Birmingham cutting through the park in the dark to watch Handsworth burning. I must have been mad; it was a dangerous place to be; gangs running through the street looting, cars blazing in the roads, plods with shields acting in that officious vacant way they seem to be so good at. I didn’t stay long. It was literally too hot for me, so I cut back through the park and found some shade of my own.