Mail deliveries have been stopped to a house after postal workers were attacked by an elderly cat, Royal Mail said.
Nineteen-year-old Tiger has attacked three people delivering at his home recently. Now Royal Mail has told owner Tracey Brayshaw her pet is aggressive and it will not be delivering post to the house in Farsley, near Leeds.
The black-and-white cat, which is aged 93 in human terms, sleeps for 20 hours a day, Mrs Brayshaw said.
The 43-year-old pharmacy dispenser said she cannot believe her cat has now been labelled a health and safety risk.
She told the Yorkshire Post: “If Tiger climbs up a tree he is done in for the rest of the day. We’ve had him since he was a kitten. He has never done anything like what they say he has done before.”
The service has been suspended for two weeks and Tiger’s trick of pouncing on postal workers and chasing them down the garden path is forcing Mrs Brayshaw to collect her mail from the local sorting office.
She said: “It was funny at first but it is going a bit far now.”
In a statement Royal Mail said : “We are sorry for the inconvenience to Mrs Brayshaw and, as we want to resume delivery of mail to her address as quickly as possible, we’re trying to agree a way to do this and avoid our employees suffering further nasty injuries as has happened three times already.”
From today’s Guardian.
A Bad Guide 
It’s summer – give the posties a cricket bat and tell ’em to get on with it.
Box by the road. How hard can it be?
What a picture! :-D
You have a thing with helmets these days…
Poor inocent elderly cat, we must begin a … ¿cómo se dirá en einglés “una campaña de desagravio”? (perdonen que comente tonterías y no sepa siquiera escribirlas…)
We would “take up a collection” or start a “relief fund”. The tonterías are always the most fun but the hardest to do in another language.
I’ve never seen a mailbox by the road in England, come to think of it. They don’t do it.
I ought to say, I just matched a picture I found via google to the story; they aren’t really connected.
I think Muntz could take him.
Eso! that’s it! Thank you, Nijma.
The picture is great, AJP, my daughter love it! (“debe estar enojado” dijo)
What did you google? “Cat in hat”? “Cat space trooper”?
“Cat wearing citrus fruit on head”. No, I just googled “old cat”.
Yes, Julia’s daughter, the picture is nuts. The poor cat looks cross, and so would I if someone put a grapefruit on my head. Our best wishes to you, from Norway.
Since this is a Norwegian blog, shouldn’t there have been horns on that helmet?
They say up here that the Viking helmet with horns is a modern invention – or, at least, no one’s ever found a genuine one.
Well, that’s because they don’t look in cat graves, obviously.
Thank you, AJP. Best wishes for you from down here!
I hope that convince her not to try doing the same thing with my parent’s cats (we only have a dog in out apartment, ¡snif!)
Off topic (parental pride is a powerful force!): at my blog (April 7) you can see and hear my son making music.
Playing a song by Nick Drake (very well).
Viking helmets with horns
An April 1st news article in the Council for British Archaeology revealed Vikings may have worn horned helmets after all.
Millinery specialist Professor Paul Norn of the University of Reinstädt explains all:
source: http://www.britarch.ac.uk/news/090401-horns
I thought those details seemed rather peculiar. The date had something to do with it.
I imagine they could detach the horns, one for drinking from, and the other for sounding the advance on. What the cats did with them I don’t know.
I think I’d rather wear my front spike turned up, not down, at least when charging the enemy. The rhinoceros look? More manly, anyway.
Then there are those old German helmets with one spike on top. I have sometimes wondered what the spike was for. Purely decorative, it seems. And too eye-catchingly shiny for actual war: at some point the decision was made to fit them all with Überzüge of cloth.
They used to sell those old German spiked helmets in the Portobello Road when i was young. I always wanted one (I had a military hat collection). Some of them were very elaborate and some, maybe Austrian, had plumage – the spike may be a plumage leftover.
I noticed that at yesterday’s Grand National, we no longer have the splendid Liverpool mounted coppers in antique uniforms to accompany the winner to his enclosure. When was that omission introduced? Shame!
My daughter & I would love to watch the Grand National on tv, but I can never get hold of it.
Yes, it was for plumage, not for lowering your head and charging the enemy like a monoceros.
Or for being shot at something as a human cannonball. Or for storing olives.
Did I ever tell you the one about the day the human cannonball announced his plans to retire after years of working at the circus?
His boss said “It’s going to be hard to find someone of your caliber.”
*Round of applause*.
I remember that cat! Several years ago the story of the grapefruit helmet made the Internet rounds. As I recall, it started with a bored young man who had too much to drink, and ended with a cat in a fruit helmet.
Maybe that’s why I found it by googling “old cat”.