Psst, want a pedigree cat?

Despite my five cats, I think of myself as primarily a dog person. This is because I think of myself as being largely sloppy, sprawly, mucky, and willing to eat just about anything if it's served in a bowl and someone makes yum yum noises while they pass it over.

However, the nice lady in Laois from whom we adopted Lorelai aka Rory aka Smidger Fee aka The Smidge contacted me yesterday to say that she has a posh breed cat who is looking for a nice indoor home, and she thought of me. I was simultaneously aghast at the idea of me as some kind of crazy cat collector person who fawns over her beautiful long-haired tortoiseshell kitty and would love to have a house full of long-haired tortoiseshell kitties, and highly flattered that when a valuable cat comes into someone's possession, they think of me as an ideal home for it.

(She probably would not think this if she heard me telling Jane last night that she better make her mind up to get well or die soon, because I'm not spending any more money bringing her to the vet or any more time and energy cleaning up her puke off the floor every time she eats.)

Anyway, six cats is a bridge too far, so I reluctantly turned down her Norwegian forest cat, but said I would keep an eye out for a good home. So if you have a good indoor home to offer a really beautiful cat, let me know and I'll pass your details along. If I think you're good enough.

By the way, the cat in the picture is just some random Norwegian forest cat, just so you can get an idea of what they look like. It's not the one on offer.

(Obviously I will continue to look after Jane. Come on, like.)

And we're off

Day one and I've got over 2,000 words written. Maybe I'll make it this year. First couple of pages are a bit boring though, so I might not bother posting them. If I write something exciting I'll post it.

What? What? You did what?

I mean, what the FUCK? WHAT?

What the fuck is wrong with people?

Um, that is all.

More Blakey cuteness

Oh, and did I mention that Blakey thinks that Lulu is her mother? Well, she does. Lulu has to bat her away when she tries to suckle, but she is happy enough to let her curl up beside her and sleep.

We went on holidays

To Markree Castle in Sligo.

The plan was originally to go to Cuba, but that turned out to be very expensive and a massive hassle, so we decided to have a cheapish reading week in Ireland, which wouldn't involve flights or luggage allowance or any of that crap. Markree, as a bonus, let us bring the dogs, so we didn't even need to worry about that. Just chuck everyone in the car and off we go.

From that point of view, the place was a dream. The dogs were very welcome, and the room was big enough for all six of us to bunk up together, spread over two beds. There was plenty of space to run them across the (as advertised) rolling parklands and formal gardens. Nobody disturbed us, and we didn't disturb anyone else. We took them out for a long run in the mornings, then spent the afternoons sitting around reading while the dogs slept. Then another run in the evening before dinner, and another short walk in the moonlight before bedtime. Top notch. And we saw a stag one of the days. It was all very Regency.

There were a couple of problems with the room. The shower was awful. Truly awful. With the shower head on, you were standing under a dribble of hot water. Taking it off produced a slightly more satisfying trickle, so we did that instead. Also the bed was broken on one side. Separately, the food was kind of strange, as if the proper chef was away and had been replaced by someone who had never cooked a vegetable before in their lives.

We still really enjoyed it, and looking at other people's photographs of the place on Flickr indicates that the food isn't always like that, so I would recommend it to someone else. Plus I read two novels while I was there, which was something of a result, because I can't remember when I last finished a book.

It has been an awfully long time

Things have been busy here on Waltons' Mountain. Life news in brief:

*Ozzie is doing better, thanks. She has stopped losing weight and actually might be putting it on a little. This is great news, because it means we've found the problem and it is treatable, which means that when she has her weight up to normal, we can start looking for a home for her.

*We have a new kitten. She is called Blakey. She is called this because she has kind of a Hitler moustache effect going on, but you can't really call a kitten Hitler, can you? (No, is the answer. The answer is no.) Blakey came to us from Roscrea, where we were attending the funeral of our friend's mother. At the reception afterwards, some people rescued her from a tree, but then she was just left there in the carpark, only a five-barred gate between her and the main Dublin road. So we took her away, leaving our details with the hotel staff in case anyone came looking for her (although given the worm load she was carrying, and the state of her ears, and how hungry she was, it seems unlikely that she strayed from a loving home). We are officially looking for a home for her, but there are kittens everywhere, it seems, and nobody appears to be interested. So that's five cats we have now.

*Jane has been ill, but she appears to be doing better now.

All in all, there have been a lot of trips to the vet, which has been expensive and time-consuming, and reached a nadir when I had to give Jane a suppository. Hopefully we're on a bit of an upswing now, because I can't manage much more animal hassle.

A poorly girl

We have a new canine house guest at the moment. Her name is Ozzie. She was originally picked up by our rescue at about ten weeks old, abandoned in a box in Drogheda, covered in fleas and totally underfed. She has been fostered by a single family since then, and did actually go to a new home after she was spayed a couple of months ago, but it didn't work out (the property just wasn't secure enough for her questing nature) and she came back into foster.

We took her when her foster family went on holidays a few weeks ago, and she's been fine in our house so we agreed to keep her a bit longer while they all got organized with getting back from holidays and getting back to school and so on.

She's a sweet girl and she fits in here extremely well. Apart from chasing Linus a bit (which all the dogs do, because he's so chasable), and the odd bit of power-supply chewing, she fits in here pretty well. She has many of the appealing traits of a labrador (likes to rest her heavy head on your lap and sigh, likes to go for a big long walk, loves a cuddle) without the insane food fixation we have seen in labradors gone by, and in a smaller, easier-to-handle package.

Unfortunately she's not well now. She's losing weight, not digesting her food properly, and having accidents in the kitchen at night. Today we went out for a walk and she didn't even chase the seagulls, which is a sure sign something is amiss. So we went to the vet, who gave her an injection, special food, several types of tablet, and some stuff that looks like Maalox that needs to be syringed into her three times a day, an hour before she eats.

She's down from 17.5kg when she came to us three weeks ago (and that was about 1kg underweight) to 15.65kg this morning. When she lies on her side you can see her heart beating under her ribs, and you can see all the knobs on her spine.

I hope she gets better soon. Looks like we might have her for a while yet. As I write this I am sitting on the sofa with her head jammed under my arm. I will be working like this for the rest of the day because I am soppy.

A family man

This is a bad day

Everything's dark. Gloomy. It's the lousy tail end of a piss-poor summer in the weather arena.

We had to cancel a weekend away in England in July, and we've had to cancel our trip to Cuba in November. We've had minor dog complications. I've been eating crap and getting far less exercise than I should.

To top it all off, I've moved to a new position in our company, which takes me away from the world of periodicals and back into the world of writing marketing copy. On the face of it, that's fine, except when I can't think of anything to write and I sit here and stare at the screen just getting tireder and tireder.

And I have barely scraped fifty pages of reading the whole summer long. I seem to just sort of sit here. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow for more blood tests, just to see what's happening with the good old thyroid function.

On the other hand, we have found a new number 2 for the laminated list, so that's something at least.

We take our wins where we can.