I was in the pet shop today ... →[More:]... it's my local one, and I usually pop in to see if they have any kyootness I can oooh and ahhh over to make my shopping trip less boring.

There's usually hamsters, mice, bunnies, guinea pigs (including, one amazing day, just-born guineas that looked like little kiwi fruit on legs - they're born fully-formed, not pink and helpless like mice) and, sometimes, puppies and kittens. The poor rodents have to live below all the birds. Those little tiny finches can make SO much noise. Why would anybody want to keep those as pets? Or are they being sold as cat food? They do not shut up.

The shop also sells reptiles, snakes and spiders, along with assorted live things for them to eat such as crickets and locusts, but I always walk past them. And they only sell boring fish.

As I walked down towards the street today I could see the sign outside

"Kittens! Now in stock!"

so of course I had to go in.

I walked through to the back and there were three big cages, one with three kittens and the others with two each. I was not alone, there were a couple of other mad catwomen cooing over them too. And they were sweet and totally adorable in that way only kittens can be.

Now, the ruler of this pet shop is Barney the parrot. He's a huge blue and gold Macaw and he's most definitely not for sale. Usually I say hello to him, and he says "hello missus" back. If a man speaks to him, he says "hello mate". He's very clever and he hates not being the centre of attention.

It became obvious he was annoyed today when we were all making a fuss of the kittens, which meant we had our backs to Barney. He kept whistling to get our attention, then shouting "Oi! Oi!" That didn't work (of course it didn't, there were kittens for God's sake).

So in the end, Barney started miaowing like a kitten, and when we turned round to laugh he shouted "you can fuck off, the lot of you!"

*nearly peed pants*