Welcome to our new feline overlords.....

So then, we have new cats.

We've known them for several years so they weren't strangers, but I suppose I'd better start at the beginning.

Back in, I think, about 2009, our friends J and S got three new kittens - Maggie and Prince (short-haired, black and white, brother and sister - Prince only had a stumpy tail because the mother had, weirdly, chewed it off when he was born), and Puffle (long-haired, all black except for white splodges, half-sister to Maggie and Prince).  At this time, J and S lived about half a mile away from us.  I popped down to visit and cuddle them  - I've got some photos somewhere, I'll see if I can find them....

Prince (first 3 photos)- with a black nose and no tail; Maggie (next 2), sleeping on her head; Puffle (preposterously cute) - May 2009

Adorable, non?

Anyway, in November 2011, J and S moved house with their 3 kids and 3 cats and came to live directly opposite me in our small close.  All the cats used to pop round for a visit (as, seemingly, all the cats in the close tend to do) primarily because, I think, we leave our upstairs back door open all summer long and the canny ones realise they can get in to eat our cats' food, but also because we feed the birds so there's always the opportunity of catching something feathered, and just over our back wall is woodland with all manner of enticing rodentry to hunt.  Plus we like cats and will always make a bit of a fuss if one comes to visit.

Sadly, though, not long after they moved here, Prince got into a tussle with a car and it didn't end well for him, which was very sad.  I loved his stumpy tail because he flicked it around as if he had a long tail attached and it amused me no end.  Farewell, Prince.

Moving more up to date - about May last year, one of J and S's kids decided that they wanted to get some kittens of their own, so got 2 identical stripy tabby kittens.  The idea was that the 2 remaining original cats - Maggie and Puffle - would just beat the kittens up a few times to show them who was boss, and they would all settle down to being a 4-cat household.

Maggie and Puffle had different ideas about this.

They basically flounced and made themselves voluntarily homeless, refusing to go back to J & S's apart from stopping by in the morning, eating some crunchies, hissing at the kittens, then leaving the house again.  J would occasionally ask me if we'd seen Maggie because they had not clapped eyes on her literally for days.

Eventually, Puffle started hanging round more and more and, it being summer and the back door being open, we didn't mind.  If you remember, we no longer had cats (Sylvester having departed in December 2013) so we didn't have any food.  I think she just wanted the company and somewhere warm and safe to come to during the day.  We'd kick her out at night when we went to bed, but she'd be at the back door crying to be let in as soon as we came down in the morning.

Maggie then realised that Puffle had latched on to a good thing and also started hanging out more with us.  They then realised (this would probably be about August/Sept time) that if they started pestering us while we were eating our dinner, they most likely would be left a small bit, which they would wolf down.  They were hungry.  I decided I couldn't let them go without so we relented and started putting down a small bowl of crunchies for them (not least so they'd get their noses out of our damn plates while we were trying to eat!)  We felt very guilty about this because, at this time, they were still J & S's cats, and I knew they missed them, and by feeding them we were encouraging them to stay with us rather than try and get along with the kittens and move back home.  Trouble is felines are very independent and stubborn, and once they'd made their minds up, there was just no way they were going have anything to do with those interlopers.

All the while this was happening I was keeping J updated about what was going on, not least so that he didn't worry and knew that his cats weren't far away and were being looked after, and, in the end, in October I think it was, we decided that this was all a bit daft and the cats had made their choice, so we might as well become their official minions.  J was sad about this but was grateful that we agreed to take them in rather than having them become vagrants just wandering around the close, scrounging food and getting in the bins where they could.  Also it's not as if they were being adopted a million miles away from J & S - we are only a few steps away, and can, in fact, should we so wish, wave to each other from our sitting room windows.  So very close indeed.  I was also aware that the winter was just around the corner and just couldn't deal with the thought of them being out overnight in the cold and the wet with no food, they needed taking care of properly.

So we now have 2 cats!  And although we said we weren't going to get any more cats once Sylvester had gone, I have to say the house feels SO much better and 'right' again.  They're hugely entertaining and you can tell they're sisters as they have a love/hate relationship with each other - they will groom each other frantically and, inevitably, it'll descend into a wrestle and a scrap.  And they're enormous love-bugs.  We've had 3 cats previously in this house - Suki, Sylvester and Pepper - and none of them were the lap cats that these two are, which is just lovely.

So, that's the story of how we got some new moggies, and I'll leave you a selection of photos of the two of them making themselves very much at home, thank you:

Almost the end of January already....

Here we are, just about to enter the last week of January already - where has the time gone?

My last blog post wasn't the most cheery and, to be honest, I've not been very much cheerier for the rest of the month.  In fact some days have been downright diabolical, and I've spent a great deal of the month just being a hermit and not really wanting to interact with anyone much.

It's been a combination of things but mostly dealing with Sylvester's death which still upsets me and will for a while - I may not be able to write much about it but I'll just say he was very ill, pretty old for a cat and there was nothing more anyone could have done for him.

I also seem to be going through a bout of menopausal emotional instability where I genuinely feel like I'm holding onto my emotions by my fingertips and I could degenerate into a sobbing heap at any second.  Tie that in with the loss of Sylvester and it seems to have triggered a lot of deeply buried sadness and grief from events in my past that then comes spewing out uncontrollably.  It's pretty fecking awful and if it continues I may well have to visit my GP to see if there's anything I can do.

And the weather's been wet and windy, with not very much sunshine - I don't tend to respond well to the overcast, grey skies of January at the best of times.

There have been one or two brighter spots, though.  A very lovely online friend from Atlanta, Georgia sent me a beautiful skein of hand-dyed yarn, a merino wool/cashmere mix, from the hilariously named 'Bugga!' range (it's American and I'm not sure the word means the same there, but it makes me chortle all the same).  I decided to knit my first shawl with it so whenever I wrap myself in it, I'll be reminded that someone was kind enough to think of me, even though we've never met in real life.

And yesterday I got a call from another friend who has been taking pottery classes and has discovered a natural aptitude for it.  Several months ago I suggested to her that I'd be interested in a yarn bowl when she felt capable of making one.  If you don't know what a yarn bowl is, it is, unsurprisingly (the clue is in the name) a bowl you put your yarn in while you're knitting/crocheting with it.  They come in many designs but they all have slots in the side that you feed your working strand through.  Hard to describe but look, here's a picture:

What this means is the ball of wool stays in one place, in the bowl, rather than falling off your lap and unravelling across the floor as you work.  Anyway, this friend rang to say that she's made me a yarn bowl that she's going to gift me, and what colour would I like?  How exciting!  And lovely!  I've told her my favourite colours are from the blue/green end of the spectrum, and she's going to bring it along to the next craft fair we're both at, which is on 1 February!

What else?  Oh, yes - The Lovely Husband's current contract comes to an end next Friday and he's made the very sensible decision to not look for more work immediately but to treat himself to some much-needed time off.  I'm very much looking forward to having someone else in the house that I can talk to, as I do tend to get a bit lonely, and as I dearly love my husband it's going to be really nice to be able to spend a decent amount of time with him - it's fortunate we still like each other's company, even after 20 years as a couple. 

We realised the other day that we've not had a holiday together anywhere at all since 2007, what with one thing and another, and now that we are sadly pet-free we no longer need to tie ourselves to home in order to look after an ailing moggy.  We've decided we're going to take February very easy, maybe do some day trips if we see something we fancy doing and the weather's co-operating, since TLH has (very excitingly) signed up to run in the inaugural Surrey Half Marathon on 9 March and he's actually doing proper training to try and improve his already respectable time for 13.1 miles.  So once the Half's out of the way, we can seriously start to consider where we want to go and, believe me, we're spoilt for choice.

So, slowly, I'll improve as the weather gets better, plus I didn't do very much painting over the last month or so, but classes have started again and I'm re-finding my arty mojo.  (Dammit, the weather's seriously deteriorated here in the last 30 mins, gale force winds have appeared from nowhere, the sky looks apocalyptic and the lights are flickering ominously.  I'll end this post here in case everything goes tits-up powerwise, but next post I show you my latest paintings, promise!)

RIP Sylvester Bean 21.6.96-27.12.13

If you recall, back in September a lump was discovered in Sylvester Bean's abdomen.

Well, it didn't get any better, and on 17 December he suffered a seizure.  Fortunately I was at home at the time and looked after him as best I could.  I took him to the vet that afternoon who confirmed things were not good and it was agreed that we would do palliative care to keep him as comfortable as possible.

We were very fortunate to have him around for another 10 days but, inevitably, the time came for him to take his final journey over the Rainbow Bridge.

Farewell, Sylvester Bean - you were the best of cats, my constant companion for 17 years and are sorely missed.

Quarantined....

I am ill.  Proper ill.  I sound like a consumptive Victorian street urchin.

The Lovely Husband very kindly brought back a gift of germs from fellow London commuters last week which meant I had to do a craft fair in Alresford on my own last Saturday while he got on with the business of being pale and wan at home, filling the wastebins with snotty tissues and moaning quietly to himself.

I started with the scratchy throat on Saturday night, with the tickly cough arriving on Sunday.  I made arrangements to withdraw from polite society and entered seclusion in the west wing of Jones Towers in order to keep my germs to myself.  You're welcome.  The only things I actually needed to leave the house for this week was the weekly foodshop on Monday and art class on Friday morning.  I arranged for Sainsbury's to deliver on Monday and we'd see about Friday.  Surely I'd be fine by then.

Ha.

The coughing has got worse and worse all week and has now defiantly lodged into my chest.  I lie in bed at night and listen to it, and wonder how I managed to inhale a crisp packet as my lungs fizzle and crackle away to themselves.  It's taken nearly a week for it to start streaming, which began last night.  Great.

I obviously had to dob off art class, which was this morning, as my sinuses are currently channelling Niagra Falls and I have a 1,000-a day smoker's cough.  I'm not sleeping very well so am utterly exhausted too but find I cannot nap during the day.  I don't think it's flu.  I did have a temperature back on Monday but it's fine now.  And I'm actually okay to do a few things around the house in the afternoons (I'm much worse in the mornings and evenings).  I think it's just a very nasty cold.

But even though I do a few very minor things in the afternoon, such as empty the wastebins, do a load of laundry, even change the beds a few days ago (but just one thing, I couldn't do all of them in an afternoon), I'm falling behind on things I want/need to get done, and it's frustrating.

For example, I've been doing work in the garden.  My garden is not big but I have rather been neglecting it and it's become overgrown with ivy.  So at the beginning of September I decided to do something about it and started ripping out spindly shrubs, tearing out ivy, cutting down smallish trees that were blocking light, weeding beds, planting winter bedding such as cyclamen and pansies.  And I made a good dent into it but, due to this cold, the most I've done this week is stood out on the bridge in the sunshine for a few minutes to enjoy a bit of fresh air, before coughing up a lung.  Again.

Also, at the beginning of the year I set myself the goal of running 250 miles before 31 December 2013.  So far I've run 184 which means I have 66 miles left to do in 74 days (as of today).  And I can't honestly see myself doing much running next week if this cold hangs around.

Thirdly, I've had my first painting commission (can't go into detail) but that needs to be done by Christmas.  I made a start last week and managed to draw it out and start with the background colour but then lurgy hit and I've had to just walk away from the easel for now.  I'm also supposed to be working on a project for my contemporary painting art class and I pretty much know what I want to do, but need to get a canvas the right size and just generally do more thinking about it, which my brain doesn't want to do just now.  It just wants to concentrate on producing phlegm.

And, to top it all off, my period arrived this morning.  I'm 50 years old, why can't this stop already?

So, to bide my time while this bug liquifies my insides, I've been catching up on telly programmes that we've had sitting around for far too long and working on my latest cross-stitch project, which I think I'll keep to a separate post so I can find it later!

Oh, and thank you for your kind works about Sylvester Bean.  The antibiotic injection seems to have done little to reduce his weird lump but it doesn't seem to be getting any bigger.  He doesn't seem to be distressed in any way about it and is the same as he's always been, so we're not going to worry about it. I don't want to put him through the stress and pain of medical examinations when he seems cheerful enough in himself just now.  He's obviously not suffering - he's getting about as much as his arthritis will allow, eating, drinking & pooping normally, swearing at the neighbour's cats, shouting at us all the time demanding cream and fish.  If we continue investigations, the next step will be a needle biopsy under sedation, possibly an x-ray under sedation, all to be told that it's probably a tumour (which is what the vet first suspected when we took him) which, given his age, it isn't worth operating on.  Something's going to get him.  Something's going to get all of us.  He's happy enough currently and isn't ready to go just yet so I think we'll wait until he tells us.

Onto slightly cheerier things, I do have some paintings that I've done to show you but they'll be in the next post(s).

Bloody pets

Pets.  Who'd have 'em?

Little furry bastards worm their way into your hearts, stick their claws in and don't let go.

I'm currently a quarter of a bottle of red wine down and have more to go, I reckon.

I had to take Sylvester Bean to the vets today.  He hates going but I hate it even more because I'm more aware of it.

About 3 weeks ago, he was getting underfoot, lying on his back, sprawling on the floor of my studio.  I reach down to rub his belly and found a bulge.  Or a lump.  Or a lumpy bulge/bulgy lump.  You get the idea.  In his abdomen towards his back legs.

Oh god.  It's obviously cancer, isn't it?  I can't deal.  I ignore it.  I'm a bad, bad cat mother.

But he is 17 years 3 months old.  That's about 85 human years.  He'd old.  He's arthritic.  He has hyperthyroidism for which he has daily medication.  A major operation is going to be horrendous for him - general anaesthetic for several hours, stomach incision, the 'cone of shame' (perhaps - he can't really reach his stomach easily so that may not be necessary), the weeks of recovery - is it worth it for a cat that old?  Something's going to get him some day.  Oh god - I'm a bad cat mother.

He showed no signs of discomfort from it.  He was eating, drinking and pooping just the same as always.  Getting up and down the stairs as best as he could, as usual.  No vomiting.  Absolutely normal.

I mentioned the lump to TLH and we decided to leave it to see if it went away.

It didn't.

Last night TLH rubbed Sylvester's belly and was alarmed at how much bigger the bulge had got.

I'm now at that menopausal age that seems to have flipped my emotion switch.  I lost it.  I ended up sobbing for far too much of the evening.  He's been such a central part of our little family for the last 17 years that the thought of losing him was just more than I could deal with. But I knew I had to take him to the vet.  It might not be a tumour, it could, for instance, be a hernia, or an abscess, but we wouldn't know until a vet had had a look.

I made an appointment today and got him in for 5.10pm.  I'd rung in the morning, got the appointment and was pretty much useless for the rest of the day as I couldn't concentrate on anything much.  As the time for the appointment approached, I sought out my very small bottle of Rescue Remedy to try and still my anxiety.

I got him to the vet without any stress on his part.  He was a very good boy in the car and didn't complain once.  The very nice lady vet starting feeling his belly and said 'Ooh', which didn't really bode well.  She asked prurient questions, listened to his heart, took his temperature - all were normal.  She said she'd never felt a lump like it.  It was the full thickness of the muscle in his abdomen.  It was hard.  Abscesses are hard.  The 'front' end of it wasn't seemingly bothering him, but the smaller, 'back' end was.

She said that she couldn't tell what it was without a needle biopsy which would ascertain if it was an abscess or a cyst (not entirely sure of the difference) and, if enough cells could be extracted, if it wasn't a cyst, if it was a cancerous tumour.  Then we'd have to contemplate surgery, perhaps, with all that that entails for a cat of his age.  Alternatively, an abscess/cyst could be treated with antibiotics.

I decided to go for that.  If antibiotics worked, then, obviously, surgery would not be necessary.  The nice vet lady said she could give him an injection that would last for 2 weeks thereby obviating the need for giving him yet another pill of an evening (along with his Vidalta for hyperthyroidism).

So he got his £50 injection.  And we're hoping for major mojo from the universe that his lump responds to the antibiotics - she said that, if it was going to respond, she would hope to see results within a week and, hopefully, definitely within 2.

So that's it for the moment.  Bloody cats.  I've already decided that he's going to be our last pet (at least for the moment).  I get too emotionally invested in them - they are my fur children.  And it tears me apart when they come to the end of their too-short lives.

But at least we have Sylvester for another fortnight and I'm accepting of all the mojo anyone is willing to give.

Other Stuff, mostly cat-based

Actually, I have to admit that I have been doing a few other things other than watching the 'lympics - poor old Sylvester Bean had to go to the vets.  He's just turned 16 and I suspected that his thyroid had started to muck about.

Sylvester Bean (on rug) with interloper Bruno Williams (on sofa)

This is a very, very common ailment with elderly cats these days - their thyroid goes hyper, pumping out far too much of a thing called T4 which revs up their metabolism, causing their heart rate to increase which, in turn, puts pressure on their kidneys.  An increased metabolism also means they're hungry all.the.damn.time and will bloody well let you know about it.  Constantly.  At deafening volume.  Like a small kid going 'mum? mum? mummy? muuuum? MUM!  mum?' relentlessly until you're shrieking at them like a fishwife to shut up already, damn.

Plus increased metabolism + increased food = increased quantity of ploppage.  This I can do without, especially as Sylvester has been preferring to use his indoor facilities (i.e., litter tray) rather than his outdoor ones (i.e., the garden).  We have become adept at knowing what many esoteric kinds of incense smell like (we like Champa, by the way). 

Also, increased metabolism, despite increased food, also = weight loss.  The poor things just can't get enough food inside them to keep up with it all, it passes through them so quickly they don't get a chance to absorb the nutrients properly so, in fact, they end up starving and getting very thin as their body utilises muscle tissue as their body fat has gone.

The weird thing is that the veterinary world doesn't know why all old cats these days seem to have hyperthyroid issues.  I had a vet once who had an interesting theory - he said that the increase in dodgy thyroids in pets started at about the same time as the Chernobyl disaster, and he reckoned it was down to radioactive fallout dropping all over Europe, where it would land on the ground and, of course, small household pets are closer to the ground that we are so are more likely to be affected by it.  It's an interesting theory but I've no idea if it holds any water.

Anyway, this time last year Sylvester had a blood test and his T4 levels were a little elevated - the normal range is from 10-60.  His figure then was 44, so getting towards the top end, but just about ok for now.  About a month ago, I decided it was time to check the levels again as I was sure he'd lost weight and was starting to feel bony about the shoulders and hipbones.  Sure enough, his levels were now 88 and he'd lost some weight.  Time for medication.

About 12 years or so ago, I had an old girl cat called Suki and her thyroid had gone doolally.  She was put on medication then, a small pill, twice a day, crushed into her food.  I remember she was more or less ok about taking it, and she lived to be 19.  Times have moved on since then and you now give them a single pill, once a day.  It's time-released which means it has an enteric coating so it doesn't dissolve in the stomach all in one go, but lasts for 24 hours.  This, however, means you can't crush it, it has to be given whole.

Sylvester doesn't like having pills jammed down his throat and I can't say I blame him.  Interestingly, in the last six months, there has also come onto the market hyperthyroid cat food, in both wet and dry varieties.  The pros of this is no forcing a pill down a reluctant cat's throat with subsequent blood letting (on your part), the cons are that the cat cannot eat anything else at all apart from this special food (it's to do with cutting out iodine in food).  The Lovely Husband and I debated for a while - I was pro-special food, he was pro-pill, not least because Sylvester does so love his cream and it would be an awful shame if he had to give that up.  Plus we had no idea if he would even eat the special food.

We decided to go with the pill.  Took us about 3 days before discovering there was no way we could shove it down his throat, so it was hidden in his food bowl overnight, tucked under a bit of tuna.  He ate this quite happily for 2 nights, then started spitting the pill out.

I went online and did some research and found some things called Pill Pockets made by a company called Greenies, which are specifically designed for hiding pills in, so I ordered some.  When they arrived, I took one out and showed it to Sylvester, who tried to bite it but spat it out.  I actually think it might have just been too big for his mouth and, as he has no back teeth, he couldn't chew it properly.

However, the pockets are very malleable, like meat flavoured Play Doh, so I thought I'd have a go at cutting one in half, and wrapping it around the pill (which is very small).  I then took one of his favourite Go Cat crunchies and smashed it to dust in a pestle and mortar.  Then I rolled the pill pocket in the dust so it was coated on all sides, and popped it on top of the pile of Go Cat in his bowl.  He loves his crunchies but because he has no back teeth, he can't chew them, so he just swallows them whole.  The pill pocket has to be no bigger than a crunchie, otherwise he can't swallow it.

And it works!  I've now done this every night for about a month and he swallows it every time.  Yes, it's a bit of a faff for me but this way he gets his medication without any stress on either of our parts so it's most definitely worth it.

After being on the medication for three weeks, he had to go back for another blood test to check the T4 levels to see if they're heading in the right downwards direction.  We had to do this last Saturday and, unfortunately, it was a bit traumatic for him.  He has to be starved for 12 hours before having the sample taken, which does not impress him AT ALL.  Plus he really hates going to the vet and, this time, he put up a struggle when they came to take a blood sample.  It seems that, at my vet at least, they shave the cat's neck and draw blood from there.  Seemed he wasn't having any of it this time and the vet said 'he bounced around on the needle a bit' which, unfortunately, meant some scabby lumps, bruising and blood on his pristine white bib, poor lovey.

Still, he got some compensatory cream when we got home and settled down.  The vet rang a few hours later to say that his T4 levels had gone down from 88 to 14!!! And he'd put back on a bit of weight, and his heart rate was better, and slower, than before.  So he's to stay on the prescribed pill and we have to take him back for yet another blood test in 3 months, just to keep an eye on everything.

The difference, I have to say, was noticeable practically from the first pill, so I guessed it was working.  He stopped shouting at me, was definitely less hungry and eating much less and - wonderously - not pooping nearly as much!  So I'm hopeful we'll get at least a couple more years out of him.

*I've put this post up as a kind of public information thing for those out there with cats that are starting to get a bit old and creaky, and whose thyroids may need checking out.  It's a condition that's easily treated these days with very simple medication, as long as you can get them to take it.  If they object to you sticking a pill down their throat manually, you may want to try the method I use*.

Annual 'Bah, humbug' post....

It's been a little while since I checked in, about 2 1/2 weeks I think.  Some stuff has happened in the intervening period, some hasn't, you know, the usual things.  I think I've had a spot of mild depression, actually.  Or maybe I've just been busy being my usual miserable cow at this time of year.

The nasty, virusy-headcold thing I had lasted a good three weeks and quite how TLH managed not to stab me due to the incessant coughing is a wonder, but he didn't.  The weird thing is I have absolutely no idea where I got it from - I've been my usual fairly antisocial self of late and haven't seen anyone other than a handful of people, and none of them had the remotest snivel or hacking cough, so it's a mystery.  I did get very sad and miserable for about a week following the death of poor Pepper Bean and being quite that down does, I believe, depress your immune system so in some ways I'm not too surprised that I contracted such virulent head-rot with additional gangrenous throat and tubercular lungs, plus additional nosebleeds.  It was definitely as cheery as it sounds.

But it's gone now.  Just in time for Christmas.  Whoopee.  I don't know why I take against Christmas so.  I mean, before the days of the intertubes, it used to be unadulterated hell shopping for presents, elbowing your ways through crowds of people in overheated shops, and fighting over the last turkey on the shelf.  Plus I was working full-time so had to cram all that in as well.  By comparison I have it so much easier now - as I'm a Trophy Wife (aka lazy layabout) I'm at home all day and I can just do all my shopping over the internet and have it delivered to my door!  Bliss!  I don't have children so the only presents I have to get are for a few young nieces and nephew and the rest are grownups who can be placated, usually, with a bottle of spirits and a decent book so I'm not really sure what my problem is.

I still feel the pressure, though.  The endless, endless, bloody advertisements for food and perfume and aftershave, the no-getting-away-from-it-ness.  I hate it all with so much passion that I would willingly consider going on one of those silent spiritual retreats to a monastery in the arse-end of nowhere where you get a little room to yourself in which to contemplate the infinite, only emerging after all the bollocks of New Year has been and gone.  I know I've said it before (probably last year, actually), but as far as I'm concerned, the best Christmas I ever had was in 1989 when The Artist and I buggered off to Thailand for 10 days and sat on a beach from 22 December to just after New Year and managed to avoid the whole damn thing.  I can still remember how stress-free I felt in the run up to going away because the relentless TV advertising didn't mean a thing to me that year.  And by the time we got back it was all over anyway and felt like it had never happened.  I shall do this again one year, I hereby promise myself.  I shall donate some money to a charity in lieu of presents and cards, and go lie in the sunshine for a couple of weeks.

/end rant.

So what else has happened while I've been maintaining radio silence?  Sylvester Bean is healing up nicely from his cyst removal and the fur is beginning to grow back, so he looks less like a lobotomy victim and more like someone's had a bit of an accident with the hair clippers.  He's also turned into the chattiest cat I've ever been pestered by.  It's quite odd.  Obviously now Pepper's gone he's become the focus of all our attention and that seems to have resulted in him suddenly discovering he's got an awful lot to say about things.  He's also having a difficult time coming to terms with the new cats in the neighbourhood.  Our immediate neighbours have an adorable young cat called Bruno who looks exactly like the cartoon Felix cat (the one advertising the cat food) -

He's a lovely little cat, the most curious I've ever met.  He wants to know absolutely everything that you're doing and I think has been inside everyone's house in the close because as soon as a front door's opened, he's in there like a shot!  Except Sylvester hates him with the heat of a thousand suns, and has already beaten him up at least 3 times in the last 10 days, like the grumpy old man cat defending his territory that he is.

Also, as I mentioned previously, some extremely good friends of mine have moved opposite and have brought their 3 cats with them.  Two of them - Prince and Puffle - aren't interested in coming out yet, but Maggie has been around and about for the last week, including visiting our garden a couple of times.  Interestingly, although Sylvester was outraged and hissed at her, she stood her ground and didn't run, and neither of them attacked each other.  They both then moved a safe-ish distance apart and just kept a wary eye on each other. 

 

Why it didn't turn into a scrap - as it does every time with Bruno - I have no idea.  Maybe it's because Maggie's female?  I dunno.  Cat psychology, eh?

On the job front, TLH has been working for a couple of weeks in a town that Betjeman's 'friendly bombs' unfortunately managed to miss.  This particular job is likely to last until March and he doesn't seem to mind the commute so far, even driving through the heavyish snow and icy roads that we had recently.

I realise I haven't expressly described exactly what he does for work.  Mostly because he doesn't like being discussed in a public forum (and I'm happy to concede with his wishes) but also because I don't really know myself.  Let's just say that he does contract work and if that makes him sound like a hit-man, well, you didn't hear it from me, okay?

Who let a goose in the house?

Sorry for being silent for so long, but that's because I have been.  Silent, I mean.  I've still got this godawful plague-thing that started back on Sunday 14 November, and today's the 27th so that's, what, 13 days so far.  Bloody hell.  Colds are only supposed to last about 5 days max, aren't they?  So Allah alone knows what fiendish virus from Hell I'm carrying around.  I can't believe I'm still coughing up chunks of lung and blowing lumps of brain out of my head.

Earlier this week I even lost my voice!  Really, properly lost it.  That's never happened to me before but I was honking around the house like a very quiet goose for a good couple of days - it was bizarre to say the least.  Laryngitis is quite odd - it's an infection/inflammation of the voicebox (the larynx) so it feels sore but it's localised at the front of your throat, around the Adam's Apple, and you keep wanting to cough to clear it but that only makes it worse.

Anyway, that's gone now so I'm back to my usual activity of mindlessly stomping around the house barking out stentorian commands for everyone to ignore.

I've also found that a cold of this magnitude is really quite effective birth control as another side effect of it is that I'm having massive coughing fits at around 3.30am to 4am every single morning which has resulted in me and TLH deciding to sleep in separate rooms for the duration so that at least one of us can get a decent night's sleep.  So me and Sylvester are in the main bed, and TLH is in the (actually, equally comfy) spare bed next door.  We're not so far away that we can't hear each other fart and snore but not so close that my hacking and swearing disturb him.

Talking of Sylvester - his scar is healing up nicely.  I managed to take out his stitch earlier this week which meant we didn't have to put him through the trauma of a visit to the vet's for them to do it.  He'd be happy about this if he knew.  We think he might be vaguely aware that Pepper's gone.  He's been particularly clingy and needy over the past few days - constantly hanging around, shouting, climbing into TLH's lap for strokes and cuddles.  I've asked him a few times 'Where's Pepper?' and I would swear blind that his eyes flicked to the windowsill where she used to sit, and he wandered over to look behind the sofa (where she would go when frightened by loud noises).  But perhaps I'm just being overly sentimental and anthropomorphising too much.  He's probably just pissed off that it's too cold for him to sit out on the bridge and we're making him use a cat tray.  On the other hand, they'd shared a house all their lives and while they didn't get on, they were never really all that far apart.

So, what else has happened?  Ah, yes.  I live in a cul-de-sac of about 23 houses and on Thursday some very good friends of ours, along with their 3 boys and their 3 cats, moved in more or less directly opposite.  I have known the parents, J & S, for over 20 years now and we are close enough friends to know where each others' bodies are buried but I have no idea how living in such close proximity will work.  I hope (and expect, to be honest) that it will be fine....

I've started another crochet blanket.  I decided to go ahead with the Babette design I mentioned in a previous post.  I've made a few squares already but I'm not sure of the colour combinations yet. Will post pictures when there's something decent to show.

We've not had any snow yet although I understand that much of the rest of the country has been blanketed.  It's been damn cold though, daytime temperatures not rising above 2 degrees.  Due to my cold and, er, the cold I've effectively abandoned the allotment for the time being - I had only managed to cover about a quarter of it with black plastic but I'm not too concerned, the frost will kill off quite a few weeds and the ground's too frozen now to dig over anyway.  When I'm feeling more up to it and it's warmed up a bit, I'll go back and carry on.  With gardening, nothing is ever unrescuable (is that a word?)

Oops, feel another coughing fit coming on (which is just as well as I'm scratching the bottom of the barrel to find things I'm allowed to tell you) - stand back from the screen now....

Sylvester loses his lumps

We had to starve Sylvester last night from 10pm and for a boy who likes his tuck, this was not welcome.  Plus there was no breakfast and that was completely beyond the pale and totally unacceptable.  He kept rushing off to the kitchen in front of us every time we set foot in that direction and then sat he sat forlornly staring at his bowls, wondering why they were stubbornly refusing to fill up with food.

At 8.30am this morning we deposited him at the vets, filled in the forms and were told to ring at 2pm to see how he was.  I asked if they would also trim his claws and check out some weird looking black spots under his chin while they were at it.

TLH and I then went home and milled around listlessly all morning, not quite knowing what to do with ourselves apart from watching the clock.  I'd already decided that they were going to find all manner of things wrong with him - his kidneys were going to be packing up, his liver had shrivelled to the size of a raisin, the blackness under his chin was obviously going to be cancerous growths - and they were going to call us in and advise us that he was so raddled with disease that it would be a kindness not to let him come round from the anaesthetic.

At 2pm I girded my loins and rang them.  "Oh, he's fine!" the lovely male nurse trilled, "a bit wobbly still from the anaesthetic so it's probably best to leave it until 4pm to come and collect him".  TLH and I started breathing again but I was still expecting there to be something negative to report when we collected him, so I wasn't going to start to relax just yet.

On the dot of 4pm we walked through the door and saw Jane, the vet, immediately.  She said it had been a fairly standard cyst but it could be sent to the pathology lab if we wanted; we decided that would probably be unnecessary as it wasn't abnormal looking.  She confirmed that all his blood work was absolutely fine, which surprised me no end.  She said she'd sutured the wound using internal stitches and it had come together beautifully, except for one external stitch at the top.

He was then brought through in his basket, all wide-eyed and bewildered, and silent.  We could see that the entire back of his head had been shaved and a big stitched incision of about 4cms in length.  It may not sound much but it's almost the length of the back of his head!  Poor lovey! Jane, the vet, said that he'd also got acne on his chin and what we'd seen were great big blackheads which she'd squeezed out for him (ewwwww).  She'd shaved his chin on both sides to access the acne leaving him with a little Van Dyke pointy beard of hair on the end of his chin.  This is both funny and sad at the same time, but also reassuring that it didn't turn out to be nasty cancerous lumps - acne we can deal with, sarcoma is something else...

The lovely male nurse said that Sylvester had refused food in the vets when offered it but they expected that he'd eat when we got him home - and so it came to pass.  We got him home, let him out of the basket and he made a beeline straight for his food bowl and shoved as much food down his neck as quickly as he could, then took himself upstairs for a lie down in the bath!

He looks as if he's had a reverse lobotomy, and we're telling people that we've had extra brains put in.  It all looks very drastic but the cyst had to come out so there was no way of avoiding it really.  It's going to take months for the fur to grow back, and it looks like he's had half his head taken away - it's so weird.  We have to take him back again on Friday just to check that everything's healing up nicely but hopefully that should be it now for visits to the vet.

I'll leave you with some photos to twang your heartstrings:

Not been the greatest week

I'm still waiting for the sadness to lift, and it doesn't look like it's going any time soon.

In addition to saying farewell to Pepper on Tuesday, we were back at the vets on Thursday with Sylvester, our other cat.  He's had a cyst on the back of his neck that has been coming and going for the last couple of years and it had finally decided to choose this week (of all weeks) to get infected.  It's time for it to be removed.

Jane, the vet, gave him a long-lasting antibiotic injection and said that the infection had to clear up first before it can be excised.  We have to take him back to the vets tomorrow (Monday 8 November) morning when they'll do a pre-anaesthetic blood test to check liver and kidney function first, before operating.  She said he'll be back home in the afternoon.

It's bad enough that we have to go back to the vets but because he's an old boy (he's 14) there's every chance that they'll discover his liver and kidneys are bad and he's only got months to live.  I'm trying not to think about this.  I really couldn't cope if we had to say goodbye to him as well in such a short period of time.

We think he's sussed that something's not quite right at home.  I suppose he can't help noticing that Pepper's not here because they've been together all their lives.  Plus he's now the focus of all our attention, and, to be honest, I'm not sure he appreciates this too much.

I can't relax and stop fretting until he's back home and I know he's healthy, and that's not going to be until tomorrow afternoon.

We left him alone last night and went out to enjoy the fireworks.  The local display is extremely good and goes on for ages but I still felt that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I have in the past, because I'm still sad about Pepper and worrying about Sylvester.

I also realised that this week was the 10th anniversary of my last miscarriage and the end of our dreams of parenthood.

So, yeah, I'm maudlin'.  Keep your fingers crossed for good news tomorrow.....

Mojo needed for Pepper Bean

As I write, my lovely 14-year old longhaired girl cat, Pepper Bean, is hospitalised at the vets, suffering from what we think is Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM).

She went to the vets yesterday as she had been lethargic and had basically stopped eating for a day or so, although she was drinking buckets of water.  The vet found a nasty looking tooth for which she gave us antibiotics and we hoped that was that, and within 48 hours Pepper would start eating again.  Blood was taken for testing, the result of which would show if Pepper's kidneys were failing (which can cause anorexia - failure to eat) and, if they were, would indicate what to do next.  I was obviously upset about that as kidney disease is a major killer of cats.  We were to ring back this morning at 11am for the test results.

This morning we woke up to find her having trouble breathing - shallow and rapid, as if she'd run a long distance, and she was obviously in a lot of discomfort.  She was crying and was weak.  We waited until just after 11am to ring the vets and they said her blood test was fine and showed her kidneys were okay for a lady of her age.  TLH told them about her laboured breathing and they offered to hospitalise her to see what was going on.  We took her down immediately.  She was panting and crying in the car - she really doesn't like going in the car and hates going to the vet.

We handed her over and went to do some food shopping.  I was feeling okay about it all then as kidney disease had been ruled out.  As soon as we got back in, the vet rang to say that Pepper was actually very ill - she had a lot of fluid in her chest (not her lungs but between the lungs and chest wall) which was pressing on her lungs causing her to not get enough oxygen, hence the shallow, rapid breathing.  This is often caused by a heart problem and if she's not stabilised, could be fatal.  Pepper needed to be kept as calm and stress free as possible (to lower her heart rate and blood pressure, hence reducing her risk of sudden heart failure) so after needle aspiration of some of the fluid, she was given a diuretic to reduce the fluid levels and thence the pressure on her lungs, which should help sort out her breathing and lessen the stress.  They also put her in a cage and just basically keep an eye on her from a distance but without interacting too much - doing no tests whatsoever - until she stabilises.  We have a critical 48 hours for her to get through this.  If she survives then the vets can start investigating further.

She (the vet) didn't actually say the words 'hypertrophic cardiomyopathy' to me on the phone at lunchtime, but putting the words 'cat laboured breathing anorexia' into Google makes this the closest fit.  It is an incurable disease but life expectancy (assuming the cat survives the initial crisis - which is what Pepper's going through now) with medication and lifestyle changes seems to range from 3 months to a couple of years, maybe longer depending on the severity of the disease.  She'll need to be kept as stress-free as possible which might be tricky as she's always been of an anxious and suspicious disposition, but if she does get through this then obviously we'll do what we can for her.

I'm to ring back at 5pm for an update if the vet doesn't ring before.  I hope she doesn't because that can only mean things have got worse.  She said that, at that time (lunchtime), Pepper was calm and happy so maybe she'll be okay.

UPDATE: Sadly, she declined further this afternoon & the vet said she was unlikely to last the night. So we went down to say our goodbyes & she was very poorly, struggling to breathe even though they were giving her oxygen & she was obviously disconnected from everything around her. We decided we couldn’t leave her to suffer so gave permission for euthanasia, our last gift to her.  Farewell, Pepper Bean.

We have a guest....

TLH and I have been quite excited over the last 24 hours or so, ever since we had a phone call yesterday afternoon requesting last minute bed space for an unexpected visitor.

Her current hosts were going away for a few days and didn't think it would be suitable for her to join them.  Everyone else who could've taken her in were either busy or away themselves but TLH and I don't go away much and were only too happy to help.

"She'll be no trouble," we were told, "in fact she'll bring her own food and bedding so you won't have to do anything.  Oh, and don't worry about entertaining her at all, she's used to her own company".

We've told the cats that they have to be on their best behaviour but I don't think they were paying attention.

Anyway, she arrived a couple of hours ago and has been busy settling in, so, everyone, say hello to:

FAT DORIS!!!

Yes, our friends have gone to brave the frankly appalling weather we're having at the moment in a tent on the Dorset coast and couldn't find anyone else to feed their guinea pig, Fat Doris, so we said we'd look after her.

At the moment she sitting in her cage on our dining table, minding her own business while the cats are being bemused:

They've not clambered up there to investigate properly yet, but they're old and getting a bit rickety so it depends on whether their sense of curiosity can overcome their arthriticky joints.  At the moment Pepper has expressed some interest (see above) while Sylvester has just run away.

When she was dropped off we asked Carol, her keeper, what she liked to eat.  We were told she liked carrots and especially dandelion leaves 'and she's a fat pig and will eat it all'.  'Ooh, we've plenty of dandelions!' we thought - this is a guinea pig that won't starve on our watch. 

So, she's been with us a couple of hours now and TLH has already been outside and picked a handful of leaves for her, washed them carefully and put them between the bars, just so he could watch them disappear into her fat, little, oh-so-serious face.  It will be sad to see her go home next weekend....

Let the leg shaving commence!!!

I think it must be official by now - we've had lovely sunshine all week, I've seen my first butterfly (one of the pretty red multicoloured ones too) and several large bumbling bees careering into plants and windows as they get used to flying.

SPRING IS HERE!!!!!

And about bleedin' time too.

Talking of bleeding, I decided that last night was going to be The First Leg Shave Of The Year, in recognition of the fact that, once the temperature starts to creep up over 12 degrees centigrade, I ditch the fleecy-lined joggers and fetch my creased cropped trousers out from the back of the cupboard, and wave goodbye to socks for several months.

I tend to leave the old leg hair to do what it wants over the winter period - I look on it as providing additional warmth (very welcome this past winter too).  I wear trousers all the time and TLH doesn't look at my legs anyway so no-one is going to notice that my lower half resembles a goat, until it starts to get warmer and I have to shed some layers. This means some serious depilation.  And usually blood.

This year I didn't do too badly, look:

Just a bit of mild grazing to one side of my shin - a bit sore but nothing I can't deal with. (God, I really should have photoshopped that so it all looks less ham-like....)

Today was also The Ceremonial Opening Of The Bridge Door.

When the weather allows, the bridge door is tied open to the handrail from morning till night. It makes access and egress so much easier for the cats and means we no longer have to act as their unpaid doormen.  Which gets more than a little tiresome.  So with the door open, everybody's happy!

The sharp-eyed among you might have noticed the crocheting on the table in the picture above.  This is the blanket that I'm making for our bed.  Kella - I remember you wanted a picture so this is the work-in-progress:

This is one of the, um, bits of it, sewn together but not blocked yet ('blocking' is where you pin out your work to the size you want - I use an ironing board - then steam it with an iron and let it dry while still pinned out.  When it dries it will be flat and the size you want.  You just use the steam and don't actually press down with the iron at all.  I use a hairdryer then on mine to dry it quicker, works a treat!)

This is the other section that I have blocked, you can see the difference in the size.

Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how it's going so far, although I do tend to like chucking all the colours I have at it.  I'd like to experiment with using a more restrained palette at some point.

So, all in all, I'm quite a cheery bunny at the moment - I'm starting to make headway planting seeds for the allotment, and yesterday I took along 10 examples of my stuff (jewellery and suncatchers) to the Cranleigh Art & Crafts Society Spring Exhibition.  Hopefully I'll sell a few things and I can put it towards my handbag fund!

Anyway, I'll leave you with this picture of a very serious Sylvester enjoying the shed (while we still have one).

Hope the day is being kind to you too.....

Okay, okay....I apologise!

Pepper is a cat with a strong personality.  A very strong personality.  A cat that likes to be top dog.  She knows what she wants and will demand it with menaces.

Example:  We leave the cat flat open at all times - it's just easiest all round.  However this does mean we are open to interlopers.  Currently we are being visited by Julian Officer Cat (he's okay, he's very old and possibly a bit blind and just wants to eat some food, and far be it from me to deny a hungry, elderly cat a bit of extra tuck.  We also know where he lives).

 Julian Officer

and The Singing Cat (no pic as yet) who is an intact Tom (i.e., still has his knackers) who is  very well fed, handsome, stripy and ginger.  He also announces his arrival onto the acres of Jones Towers by yowling.  All the way round the house. Hence the name. He stops yodelling as he enters the cat flap as if he doesn't want to be discovered (duh! Hint - you're loud enough to wake the dead, dude....).  We're trying to discourage this one because he sprays.  Stinky. And we don't know where he lives.  These are our current customers.

Several months back, before these two came knocking, we were visited a couple of times by an unknown cat that would scare the living crap out of our two and chase them round the house, even upstairs into our bedroom, in the middle of the goddam night.  And believe me when I say you really don't want 14lbs of panicking cat galloping across your solar plexus at 2am as he tries to get to safety on the windowsill.  The only thing we could do was to shut the cat flap when we went to bed.  This necessitated retrieving the cat tray from the garage so that ours had somewhere to 'go' during the night.

All went well for a couple of nights - cat flat would be locked at bedtime, then opened in the morning.  No unwelcome visitors, la la la, all was happy.  Until, one morning, TLH was getting dressed in the spare room (I've taken up all the wardrobe space in our room, so he uses the one in that room) when he said, "Can you smell poo?  I can smell poo.  No, I really can smell poo......oh, Jesus Christ!!!!"  He turned round to spot a neat little pile of kitty crap, perfectly placed right in the middle of the spare bed.  We had no idea who had done it.

Fortunately nothing had sunk through the bedspread so that was removed and washed and placed back onto the bed later in the day.

I said that I had seen Sylvester using the cat tray the previous evening after the cat flap had been locked so my suspicions were that it wasn't him.  We figured that she had probably objected to having to use the dirt tray after him and had been caught short. "Aww, poor Pepper" we said, feeling all sympathetic.

Later that evening, the dirt tray was refreshed, the cat flap locked, we went to bed.

Next morning - "Can you smell poo?  I can smell poo......PEPPER!!!!".  Slap bang in the same place as before.  The dirt tray was also unused. She'd deliberately crapped where she knew we'd see it, just to make a point. She wanted to go out at night and she was damn well going to ensure that she could.

From that night on, the cat flap has henceforth been left open due to Ms Pepper's extremely effective dirty protest.  This is not a cat to argue with.

So, following the posting of the humiliating pictures of her wearing a granny square skullcap the other day, I came down the stairs this morning to this:

She'd gone into my wool bag and had flicked out my most expensive ball of wool (it's a mixture of wool, cashmere and - can you believe this? - camel's hair) and had proceeded to dismember it on her mat (yes, okay, she has her own mat made from offcuts of recently laid carpet - do you think we'd dare defy her?  You've seen what she can do......)

Therefore I'm making a very public apology to Ms Pepper Bean in the hope that she doesn't do anything else, like vomit in my slippers (there's a tale behind that too, but that's for another time....)

(UPDATE - 31 March 2010 - Pepper Bean vomited in my slippers.  No kidding.  Bloody cat....)

Granny Squares are endlessly useful

They make ideal yamulkes for any Jewish cats you might have cluttering up the place:

For this I got up on the sofa?

Oy gevalt....

Imminent collapse

Hello from soggy Surrey.  I'm getting very sick of this weather now.  I don't mind winter as long as the weather does something interesting.  Ice is interesting, gale force winds are interesting, snow is very interesting, but rainy grey is not.  Oh so very not.  Depressing.  Hate, hate, stab, stab, stab.  Snow is seemingly back again north of London but down here it's overcast and miserable.  I want sunshine and crocuses and daffodils.  I want Spring, goddammit!

*sigh*

Might as well do this cocooning thing properly then - I'm crocheting snuggly blankets and cushion covers so I decided to have a go at making bread too.  I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

It lasted less than 24 hours because it was BLOODY FAB and once we'd started eating it we couldn't stop!!!  I just followed the instructions on the Hovis Easy Yeast packet which advises only one kneading and one lot of proving, thereby halving the time it takes before putting it in the oven.

I did venture as far as the back garden which, admittedly, isn't really very far, but I think it's safe to say that the Suki Memorial Shed* isn't going to last another winter.  I think this is it's tenth winter and the combined efforts of the weather and the squirrels ripping the gritty felting stuff that goes over the roof (thereby letting in the rain) have resulted in imminent roof collapse.  This is what the inside roof looks like:

Grim, isn't it?  The bulge in the roof, towards the back wall is like some kind of giant pustule, ready to burst downwards if given a strategic poke (which is very tempting).  Water drips from it and I've had to cover the lawnmower with large empty plastic bird food bags in a vain attempt to try and keep it dry.  We're really going to have to do something about it this summer.

Being unable to get out very much means that some time has been spent in the jewellery workshop and I've another new design to show you - this time it's one of my window jewellery suncatcher thingies.  In fact there's 2 new designs but I've only made one so far.  I'm going with a cosmic theme and so have made a Saturn suncatcher.  I think it works quite well.  It's made from fused clear and dichroic glass, and will be strung from purple organza ribbon (the rainbow shoelace was just for the photo, for which the sunshine very briefly emerged):

 

  

This particular design takes quite a lot of glass so I'm not sure that I'll be making that many of them but I think they're quite good fun.  The other design is of a sun but I've yet to see how that turns out.  I'll be keeping this particular Saturn and make another to put up in my Etsy shop.

The cats have been stuck indoors with us as well, but I don't think they mind all that much.  Apart from a quick dash out to the garden after breakfast for an empty, they cutch up with us for the rest of the day, or help a great deal when 'Important Work' is being done on the big computer in the study, viz.:

 

But, I have to say, what has got me through the past week has been watching the fabulous Winter Olympics from Vancouver.  TLH and I don't watch much, or partake in any, sporting activity but we love watching big events where you can see world-class competitors risking life and limb in order to be the very best at something.  I have friends and family who really don't understand this, they see sport as a complete waste of time and money and just don't see the appeal.  But I will happily sit glued to the telly for the entire duration of the summer Olympics (and you can bet your arse we're going to try and get tickets for the 2012 Games - I cannot describe just how excited and thrilled we were when London won the games) and even the football World Cup.  

But I've decided there's something special about the Winter Olympics.  These are stupifyingly dangerous sports, as exemplified by the tragic death of the 21-year old Georgian Luge slider, Nodar Kumaritashvili.  Why anyone would think that lying on the equivalent of a tray and hurtling down an icy slope at 80mph is a good idea is beyond me - but I'll enjoy watching someone else do it.  I mean, there's little danger of you getting seriously hurt, maybe even killed, if you're just running around a track or jumping really high, but look at the view a ski jumper gets once they've launched themselves:

Or how high the snowboarders can get when doing tricks down a halfpipe:

And whoever decided on introducing Ski Cross as an Olympic sport deserves a medal themselves.  The men's was on yesterday and was completely mental:

 

Basically, four skiiers race as fast as they can around a twisty turny course with lots of bumps and jumps, with the fastest winning.  There's loads of jostling and spectacular crashes - real heart-in-mouth stuff, and more than a little dangerous.  I was texting my brother during the race (as we were both watching it) and he likened it to something from a Bond film where our hero is being chased at full tilt by evil henchmen.  Brilliant!  The women's race is on later in the week:

Unbelievably exciting - doesn't make me want to do it though, I'm not that stupid....







* Suki was our first cat who was 19 when she died in 2000, the same year we put up the shed, hence the name.