...cats can`t whistle, can they?

Back to my noisy neighbour, the parrot. I looked over the balcony and noticed that the parrot shares his home with a lovely black&white cat. A lovely, QUIET, black&white cat. I was surprised this morning to hear this very cat miaw, repeatedly, as if in pain. I guessed the cat was probably complaining about his miserable life with such a noisy parrot. I allowed curiosity to get the better of me and decided to lean out of my balcony (risking certain death) to look at the parrot and cat below. Well, to my great surprise the cat was nowhere to be seen!! It was the damn parrot, mimicking the cat´s miaw!!! Unbelievably accurate as well, the parrot sounded more like a cat than the cat itself! I have now started to whisper a few well chosen english words in the parrot`s direction, in the hope he copies me as well as everything else under the sun,from car engines to alarms and video game sounds etc.I just hope there are no english tourists passing by when he does...

"who´s laughing now"

A constant whistling from a dairy plant below our apartment was driving me crazy...It started at around 8am till 5pm. I could no longer enjoy watching telly, playing music, with the annoying whistling in the background. It wasn´t just the odd whistle, it was the whole repertoire of "street whistling" ranging from the "taxi-hail" to the "wolf-whistle" and many others. I first thought it was more than one worker, obviously bored, probably deaf, competing with each other, but the whistles were emanating from the same general area.

One sunny morning, as I prepared my cup of coffee, the dreadful noise started again. I opened the kitchen window, looked down at the dairy yard and shouted at a few workers milling around "STOP THAT F#"$%#G WHISTLING". They all looked up at me and chuckled... you know, like a half-laugh, then carried on with their chores. I slammed shut the window and went back to my coffee with that smug feeling of "I told them off, I did". Within seconds the whistling restarted, more intense than ever, the whole repertoire of irritating sounds. I opened the kitchen window and asked the same workers in the yard  if they thought it funny in some way to annoy the local residents with moronic whistling. They looked up in unison and all but one, burst into laughter.

I was fuming by that stage, promptly got dressed and marched down to the yard. At the security gate office, a young guard was reading the newspaper as I asked him who the site manager was. He gave me the name and asked if I wanted to see him. I said YES, I want to complain about the whistling from one or more of your employees that's driving me, and no doubt the local residents, crazy. He looked at me with a surprised half-smile and said "It´s not us, it´s the parrot below your balcony."

I looked up, stunned, embarrassed, call it what you like, at the huge green cage with its amazonian feathered resident, and walked away, quietly, trying to blend into the background, feeling such a fool....