Apologies for the lack of posts – I do have stuff to write, but have lacked the time and energy to write it! But I will soon, promise.

This is a photograph of Mustrum who, like all the others, is enjoying this time of year when the sun falls into our bedroom (which is large, and has two tall windows facing south.). They move sleepily across the floor – the cats, not the windows! – following the sunshine, and Mussie is under the chair.

Someone commented on Flickr that, in the thumbnail, he looked like “some kind of poultry or game, plucked and ready to cook”, and as I always say, there’s good eating on a Mustrum.

I told her that Lilith was our cat, and she said “Oh, we thought she was a stray. I’ve been feeding her for weeks – she was so thin”.

Now, there’s no way Lily a) looks like a stray, or b) could in any way be described as thin. The woman asked why we let her out, and told me we “weren’t allowed” to let her roam free. After this, the conversation got quite acrimonious, especially when it transpired that Lily’s “angel” fan club had told this woman where she lived, but she “didn’t believe them”* – I suspect she is trying to adopt her by coercion, and after what happened at our old house, I’m damned if I’m letting that occur again.

I’ve asked her not to feed Lily any more, but I have no real hope of this happening – she really is a remarkably pretty cat, and people do like her. They don’t realise she’s a monster, but she is our monster.

*She could have come and asked, of course>

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.

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.

Lilith sitting on my Swiss Ball chair

Originally uploaded by ramtops

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!

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.