Ron and Henry check out the transportation
We – or more particularly, the Tribe – have been suffering an infestation of fleas. Despite two doses of Frontline, and copious spraying with cans of expensive Stuff from the vitinery, Henry has been overwhelmed by the little bitey creatures, and so we decided he’d have to see the vet for something stronger.
The surgery is about ten minutes walk away, and Pete and I had a discussion about how best to convey Henry – initially, Pete wanted to walk him, but he’s a heavy beast (Henry, that is – those who have met Pete will know he is but a slip of a thing :), and I didn’t think he’d like being carried that far innabox. Then Pete decided that his bike trailer would be just the thing, but in the end we took the car. Which took about ten minutes, due to the Machiavellian nature of the one-way system round here, which is designed to stop boy racers steaming through the grid of terraced streets. It works very well, but it makes a short journey much longer in a car.
Henry was admired and weighed (5 kgs!), and pronounced en-flea’d. Sarah the vet said we would need to do the rest, and she would need to see them to have them weighed. Our hearts sank – catching the other four was likely to be a non-trivial task. I assured her that we had weights for the spotty boys from last November, and given that they are alpha male Bengals, we could be quite sure they weighed over 4kgs, thank you very much. But Lilith and Ron were a different matter – I could be positive Lily was under 4kgs, and thought Ron was, but wasn’t sure, so they had to go in.
And so Pete came home, fetched out a stack of bungees, and set to to see how to secure the bike basket in the trailer. We bribed Ron and Lily in with cold roast chickie!, a trick that never fails, and off they went on a nice trip out – he left the cover off the trailer so they could see where they were going, and they seem completely untraumatised by their experience.
All five have now been dosed with Advocate, and the house vacuumed and sprayed once more – let us hope we shall shortly be free of bloody fleas.
** note for self: Iggy and Mustrum 5.5kgs, Lilith 3.8kgs, Ron 4.6kgs (which surprised me), Henry 5kgs.
We live in an urban jungle here – (biggish) Victorian terraced houses, with alleys and runs between the back yards. The spotty boys have found it hard to settle into this new environment, and Iggy in particular is not very happy with his lot; he’s never liked change, and this was hard for a 13 year old chap to bear.
He’s making it his home, though – I’ve just spent five minutes watching him through the window, while he decided where he wanted to go. He was sitting on a wall, preparatory to jumping onto a flat roofed extension, and it was fascinating how he looked, judged, then moved backward a smidge, rinse and repeat, until the distance was perfectly judged and he leapt, landing light pawed on the roof.
He didn’t stay there long, probably because the window was closed (none of the Tribe have ever been particular about whose house they visit, or indeed eat in), so he moved along to the next roof, and did the same thing before landing on someone’s shed.
We can observe a fair bit of the secret life of the neighbourhood cats from up here – it’s endlessly fascinating.
The Tribe are very pleased to welcome Vikki, who is going to catsit for us, in exchange for us rabbitsitting. 80% of the Tribe were inspected and admired; Iggy declined to present himself, but you can’t have everything.
On a more serious note, this is a great weight off my mind, so we’re very pleased to have Vikki on board.
In other news, we have Fleas. We Frontlined all five of them last Friday, and now have discovered that the carpets are alive. Everything has been sprayed with Acclaim, and other Blob has got the Dyson going full pelt. Hateful things, flease.
A bunch of the local children have really taken to the Tribe; they assemble outside the house to visit the cats, who spend a fair amount of time in the street because that’s where the sun falls during the day.
I went out to talk to a couple of the kids this morning, who were making a huge fuss of Lilith (who was enjoying every minute of it), and told the boys her name.
“Oh”, they said. “We call her “Angel”".
Dear lord …
Suzanne was kind enough to enquire after Lily, and I realised I had been remiss in not updating her fans. She is pretty much restored to full health now, thank you, but first she shared her cold with Henry and Ron.
Being rude mechanicals rather than pedigrees, they shook it off within the week, whereas she suffered for the best part of a fortnight, but all three of them are back to what passes for normal now.
Henry developed a nasty scabby rash along his spine, which I assumed was a flea allergy, so I washed and sprayed all their blankets and so forth, and thought I’d take him to the vet yesterday when his cold had cleared up. And lo and behold! – he appears to be a self-healing cat because, somehow, the rash was pretty much all gone overnight. What a fine chap he is.
Hopefully we’ve now seen the back of this infection, whatever it is, because the household budget can’t take the strain of feeding the whole lot on fresh roast chickie!
Lilith is snuffling and sneezing, and has slightly runny eyes. We’re not sure whether it’s a cold, or an allergy maybe – she’s eating, but she wants company and comfort, which is unusual for her (to put it mildly).
So I went to bed early last night with a book, and carried her upstairs with me – astonishing in itself, as she’s not keen on behing held – so that she could curl up with me. She immediately settled on my pillow, where she has been all night, and remains there still, which has meant I’ve had a dreadful night.
I hate it when one of the cats is ill, and we haven’t yet sorted out a vet here, so I will be looking into that today, just in case. I’m not one for rushing them off to see a doc, any more than I would do it for myself, but we’re mindful of the fact that cat flu took Bada from us …
As we often say, Lilith is a monster, but she’s our monster, and we’re very fond.
We were out for the day yesterday, and this is the sight that greeted us when we got home.
I wondered if perhaps Iggy was behaving a little like Greyfriars Bobby, and was loyally awaiting our return, but I suspect the truth is more prosaic, and it was just a relatively cool place to be on a very hot day.
He sang us a lovely rowling welcoming song, though.
Warm weather has arrived in Kingston-upon-Hull at last, and we have spent some time in clearing up the back yard, which was a tad overgrown and weedy.
It’s hard for the Tribe – they’ve come from a rural environment, with a stream and trees, and have had to settle into an urban one, where we have no proper garden, and many other cats have established territory. It’s taken them a while, but they’re OK now, I think – Iggy has had a few confrontations, and come home with a fat tail, but he seems settled now, and goes about his area, beating up any cat who gets in his way, as is only right and proper. Lilith and Mustrum now seem fine too, and EnRon – well, they’re bombproof, nothing phases them as long as they have full bowls!
So for the last couple of days it’s been sunny, and the house and the yard have warmed up; and of course, now we’ve cleared the weeds, put down some slabs, etc., it’s nicer for all of us to be in. We have a little bit of flat roof – not much, about 5-6 feet, I guess, which is the kitchen extension, and we always thought the spotty boys would like it up there, as they were very fond of snoozing on the garage roof in Long Ashton. Today, at last, they were up there, enjoying the sunshine – one at each end, studiously ignoring each other, and both rowling and squeaking for attention; sadly, we can’t reach them up there so they had to go without. A bit later, I saw Henry up there, duffing up Mustrum.
Normal service appears to have been resumed.
I think they were protesting our culpability at letting it rain outside at this point. That and the utterly inadequate and, what’s more, inedible supplies of food downstairs.
We have a large bedroom here, with two tall, south facing windows, so the sun streams in there during the day (when it shines at all, of course). We set a chair that is very like, but is not, an Ikea Poang by one of the windows – it’s a nice quiet place if one of us wants to read or listen to music. And we assumed that the Tribe would love the chair, and bask in it during the sunlit afternoons.
But no – they never went near it, not even when I put one of their cat rugs on it.
I try very hard not to dump stuff on the chair, but a few days ago I left my swimming bag on there. And the next morning, when I got up, I most definitely didn’t see Iggy and Lily on the chair. No sirree Bob. Nor, at various times, have we seen Ron on the chair, or Mustrum (curiously, Henry has really not been seen on it). Iggy and Lily are on it now, in fact – they have spent every night on there since the bag arrived.
We can only assume that they’re now using it because it’s no longer clearly *meant* for them – ornery creatures, cats.
