Cats
Keep Off The Grass
0“Look, it’s for your own good!”
“maow”
“I’m really not trying to poison you”
“MAOW!”
Negotiations with elegant black cat were not going well.
After a rush Saturday night trip to an emergency vet followed by a tense Sunday waiting for her to be looked at by a second vet, turns out all the dozy mouser had wrong with her was grass stuck in her throat.
Cats are deceptively fragile machines. As previously discussed, Rumpole fell foul of a piece of string. Holly tried to better her with a piece of grass. Doubtless, Rumpole will attempt to regain her title of most-pathetic-moggy by injuring herself on a fluffy towel.
Anyway, Holly had no trouble taking the antibiotics cunningly crushed into her food and even liked the anti-furball stuff I was to paste onto her paws for her to lick off.
At First.
By day two, applying the paste required the use of oven gloves and a vice, and resulted in a “dirty protest” style smearing of brown gunk all over the kitchen.
I’m sure there’s a reason why i haven’t turned them into slippers. I’m SURE there is.
Bucket – Check! Spade – Check! Lifeboat – erm
2I’m unreasonably excited about spending 4 days in Brighton. As I like Gene Vincent AND The Who, I was a bit worried where I’d be if it all kicked off on the beach, but I’m reliably informed they don’t do that any more. Even if they did, one swish of my hirsute bonce and mods and rockers would doubtless unite in cries of “get the hippy” which would at least give me the satisfaction of having brought them together.
Looking at the weather reports, my next blog post may well be about a weekend staring out of a hotel window and a comparison of anoraks and wellies. Ho hum.
Any cat fans concerned about my pampered felines need not worry. One swift trip to Argos and I’ve set up an electronically timed gadget to release food at regular intervals. The cats were suspicious of the new toy at first but they’ve now realised that unlike the regular feeding device, it serves food at the same time every day regardless of what time they jump all over it during the night. They’ve also got Red Leader on speed dial in case of emergency.
Fiona started packing about a week ago, ticking off items on her going-away-list and sub-lists thereof. A level of organisation well beyond me. I thought everyone does what I do – grab a rucksack the night before and go through the essentials :-
-
– Socks/Pants/T-shirts – one per day (of each, I’m not Foreign or anything)
– Spare trousers
– Toothbrush (if you’re going with a bird)
– Comics/sweeties/music for train
Don’t they??
On The Plus Side…
3…starting the day with Waffles and Maple syrup was rather nice.
But the “toast at a medium setting” instruction actually meant “put on lowest possible setting and don’t walk away or you’ll have a kitchen full of black, black smoke.”
The cats were sniffing the new electronic cat feeder a bit warily too. And that was while they could still see it without the use of infra-red equipment. New toy is intended to feed cats on a timer while I’m away for a weekend (Brighton in a fortnight, Scotland the week after … Michael Palin’s got nowt on me) but I fully expect the feline hackers to have it upended, rewired and emptied by the time I get home.
Elvis Has Left The Kitchen
2Elvis, the boisterous, bandy-legged stray we took in about five years ago finally succumbed to his FIV and Leukaemia. He’d been a bit lethargic for the last few weeks but last night started having trouble breathing, standing and, more significantly for the greedy little bugger, was off his food.
Took him to the vet this morning and his opinion was that Elvis had a week at best, and not an enjoyable week at that, so the kindest thing would be to let him go now.
Hard for me that it was so fast, but the best way for him. Don’t suppose I’d have liked watching him fade away slowly, either. I’ll miss the noisy sod, but know that at least he got a longer, happier life than he’d have had living outdoors.
Given his great love of eating, I think the most fitting tribute is to have a big slap up meal followed by a lengthy nap.
It’s what he would have wanted.
UPDATE: Sophie’s blog entry is here and she added a really touching comment to this post too.
Purr-esent
2The cats appear to have noticed that Night-Time Feeding Human is no longer around and Morning-Time Feeding Human is quite miserable about it and not concentrating on the important matters of domestic life i.e their endless cycle of eating and sleeping, so they decided to cheer me up by leaving me a present.
Specifically, a dead mouse carefully placed by my Morrissey book.
At least, I hope that’s the reasoning and it’s not a Mafia-style warning sign. As I am now the only vegetarian in the house, they may be plotting against me. The symbolic juxtaposition of Moz and Dead Mouse are hard to miss.
Maybe I should start locking my bedroom door.