Jane the cat

After only a year of living with us, Jane died. She was sick for a long time. Months, really. It turned out that she was FIV+ and possibly had been for ever? Who knows. Estimates about the prevalance of FIV in outdoor and feral cats vary wildly, and there's every chance that she picked it up during the years she basically lived as an outside cat.

In any case, I now have to decide whether or not to get my other cats tested for FIV. On the one hand, it's expensive to get them tested, and at least two of my cats really, really hate going to the vet or being put in their boxes or anything like that. On the other hand, if we have it in the house we need to know. We can't, in good conscience, take any more cats in to live here if we have FIV in the house. FIV in itself is not that contagious if there's no fighting or sexing or open wounds around the place, so the cat most at risk of catching it is Linus, because he goes outside, and that's the only place where fighting might happen.

I don't want to have to stop Linus from going outside. The whinging alone would be too much to bear.

Although I miss Jane, I don't miss how ill she was in recent months, and the constant visits to the vet, the upset of her being ill all the time, and the cleaning up after her. And Blakey does fill that sitting-on-me-even-when-it's-not-really-convenient-to-have-a-cat-sit-on-me niche that Jane used to occupy so well. Blakey has even taken it a stage further and will crawl up the sleeve of the Slanket and attack my armpits while I'm trying to type.

So cute. So inconvenient.

Poor Jane. I'm sorry there wasn't anything we could do, and I'm sorry we didn't know that sooner, or there might have been more chicken and less grumping at you in your end times.

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.

Chuck? It's your cousin Marvin. Marvin Berry!

The Smidge was starting to look a bit tubby in the tum area, and since that unfortunate incident with the door, and that other unfortunate incident with the futon (when I actually thought she had broken her leg), she is afraid of her toys. So what I reckoned she really needed was a new litle pal to run around with.

We wanted a kitten/cat who was dog friendly, cat friendly, and, most importantly, robust and healthy. Luckily, a lady on the Pets Ireland board was able to help us out, and she drove over from Finglas with a 16-week-old kitten called Berry. He is now named Marvin Berry, although I call him little Roo (he also goes by Mini Smidge). He's an amazing little cat. No sitting around in one room for a week waiting to acclimatise for him. Oh no. He was out and about with his face in everything inside the first couple of hours, and he marched boldly around the dogs for hours on end, annoying them just by being small and forbidden. Woody in particular is fascinated by him, and just follows him everywhere, trying to lick him and wash him and love him. I only worry that he might accidentally swallow him.

The Smidge and Linus have taken to him tremendously as well, and the running around plan is working very well. Not to mention the fact that he hasn't had so much as an ear mite since he arrived.

Marvin Berry is also an affectionate little thing. He likes to be picked up and cuddled, and he loves to nap beside me in the afternoons. He has a loud purr and he loves a bit of a chat, too. Now I have three cats who lie around me on the bed when I'm having a lie-in.

Of course, now that the ex-hubbo and his missus are heading back to the U.S., cat number four will be on the way in the next few weeks. Now that really will be fun in a house this size.

Post-op smidger update

It seems to be safe to leave her alone for hours at a time now, without me worrying what that crashing noise was, or her trying to pull the collar off over her head and getting wedged with it half in her mouth (as she did yesterday; Tuesday she managed to pull it off entirely and give her stitches a good tug).

But really, this post is just an excuse to include a cute picture I took, in which she looks like a future space cat from the 1960s.

Post-op smidger

Rory went to the vet yesterday for her op. I haven't put a female pet through a spay since we had Layla, so I wasn't quite prepared for just what a major operation it is. Unlike bloke animals, where everything's on the outside and just gets whipped off fairly summarily (I was sent home with a buster collar for Milo, but he never needed it and never wore it), the smidge has to wear a collar for the next ten days, and her side is all shaved and has a small but deep scar on it, because everything has been taken out. This will be difficult, because her favourite way of getting downstairs is to climb between the bannisters, which she currently can't do.

The good news is that she bears us no ill will, and was up and about and eating and bumping into everything and sleeping on my lap again yesterday evening like a good 'un. Now I just need to look up the best way to wash her, or she will get manky and be upset. She's a fanatically clean cat, and even loves her comb. It will be hard for her not to be able to get at herself. Having said that, the inside of her collar is spotless.

Now Mister M and I and the fish are the only gendered animals left in the house.

Kitten sadness

We recently experienced a kitten tragedy here in the Monkey House. The lovely ginger kitten who was going to go and be Dweezil's special friend died. I was putting eye drops in his eye and he squirmed away from me and fell on the floor. On the way down, he hit his head off the edge of a box, and by the time he got to the floor he was spasming frantically and was clearly not well; he died within a few minutes.

Looking back on it from the relatively safe distance of a few days, I realise that for all that I make fun of Mister M and his freakish inability to cry, it is a useful skill to have in a situation like this. I, on the other hand, go completely to pieces.

I mean, I know he was just a kitten and not a person or anything, but it was pretty awful.

In good kitten news, though, Rory is a little trouper. She's sweet and affectionate and fun. A good kitten catch.

IM PLOTTIN MY EXCAPES

UR PUNY PRIZZIN CANNOT HOLD ME!

There's always some poxy bloody thing

So, it turns out that my dogs are not the well-behaved little angels all day long that my neighbours on either side of me have always claimed them to be. I have asked them, on several occasions, to let me know if the dogs were making excessive noise, and they have always shaken their heads and said words to the effect of "you wouldn't even know they were there". Well, my neighbour over the back fence tells a different story. And he came round and told it to me on Friday evening. Now, in fairness to him, he was very polite, and he could have been rude and upset me by simply sticking a note through my door, which would have been unfair and unneighbourly and unkind, and would have made me cry, and equally he could have tried to bully me in some way, which he did not. He simply explained that he works shifts, and he tries to sleep during the day, and he has a new baby coming into the house on Tuesday (that's today) and that the dogs have been driving him mad now ever since I got them and could I please do something about it.

So now I have to keep the dogs indoors, and because I can't afford to hire someone to come and let the dogs out during the day when I'm not here, it means I have to get up at 5.50am, bring them out for half an hour's walk, come home, have a shower, throw on clothes, dash to 7.10 train, come home on 4.15 train (which is not Mister Monkey's train home, might I add, even though he very kindly comes in with me in the morning), so as to be the first one home, in case there is any disaster. And I came home today and there was no disaster, but when I went upstairs to get stuff from my room, Dweezil ran in under the bed, and he got stuck on something and couldn't get out, and when I lifted the bed a little to move it and see if I could get him out, my back went SPROING and I dropped the bed and I think I've broken the frame. And now I hate my neighbour and his stupid breeder of a wife because of this. Sorry, breeders. And I do not love my dogs either, because of this. Sorry dogs. I'm sure that will go away eventually, but right now I resent them enormously.

And now my ranting is over. Thank you for your time.

By the way, that is not a photo of my own bed frame. I did not take one.

Phear teh kiten

Here's Dweezil now. He looks much better, and he and Linus are getting along famously, which means that Linus (who is at least four times Dweezil's size) completely ignores Dweezil at all times, until the leaping around his tailular area gets too much for him and he eventually smashes Dweezil in the face like James Cagney at breakfast time.

Good cat times.

Fear it!

More teh cuetness in the Monkey house. Housemate Niall brought home a kitten that he found on a building site in Cavan. It was being kept in a mayonnaise tub, and the people who had found it were going to just turn it loose again, so he took it home. It is called Dweezil, and after three days of hiding behind things in the small room, it has been to the vet (it's a boy!) who pronounced him fit and well and just a little bit earmitey. A few more days will tell us for sure if he's got anything he's going to pass around, but otherwise we should be introducing him to Linus some day next week.
Hmm. The photos do perhaps make him look eviller than he really is. I will try to get better photos.

Phear Teh Cuteness 2!

We're going to need a bigger boat.

Preserved Killick

Our cat, Killick, died last night at the vet's. He was a little under the weather on Tuesday night, and was very sick all day Wednesday. I took him to the vet yesterday morning and they kept him in and gave him antibiotics and fluids, but he didn't bounce back.

Poor guy was only a year and a half old. He never got the hang of retracting his claws and so you would often come upon him in a room, patiently waiting with one paw above his head for you to free him. He would chase after hair elastics and bring them back for you to throw again. He would crouch at the top of the stairs when you threw his ball up there, his ears flattened against his skull and his eyes crazy wide as if he was going to spring into action any second. Then he would just watch the ball go right over his head and go back to looking at you again.

My birthday

An Fear Moncai's birthday present to me finally arrived. On a gloomy day when I am feeling ill, he arrives home from work with a new Canon Digital SLR for me. Because he got a bonus in work.

He is nice.

We decided we like this photo because it shows our living room in a good light. Groovy accessories, clever telly, highly groomed cat. The filth with which we are generally surrounded does not show up much. Just what I've always wanted - a camera that makes my whole life look better.

Who needs expensive cat toys...

...when you've got the box the lawnmower came in and the handy strap on the camera?

At the end of another weary week

I would have to be really desperate for money to go back to working full time. Today, for instance, I got to watch Linus and Killick (who we suspect of being gay for Linus) run into the glass back door and bonk their little heads.

Then I could see my neighbour getting undressed in his bedroom. Okay, so I could only see the top half, and it wasn't like I was evaluating him or anything, it was more just the amazement of sitting at my desk on a Friday morning, able to see people in their bedrooms.

If I could only figure out something profitable to do with little danone yoghurt pots, I'd be quids in.