Sunday 19 September 2010

MISSING MEMORIES

No, it's not that bad, that's just what you call an attention-grabbing headline. It's just that I can't quite remember what animal-related activities I was involved with on Thursday.  I did go swimming and later went into to town bit that's all that comes to mind. 

Okay.

Friday morning I picked up a cat for neutering, then to the post office (I've been doing quite well the last few weeks selling stuff on Amazon Marketplace), then to Asda for cat food for Carol .  

I picked the cat up in the afternoon and took about a dozen sacks of used cat bedding to the Council tip for Carol. Then I went to put some food down for the feral family I've been feeding. When I got there I saw a staffy sitting nearby and it started to investigate the food when I moved away. When I remonstrated with it it moved off in an amiable manner and approached a woman and her daughter. The woman, who owned the friendly staffy, told me that she sometimes fed the mother and kittens in her garden while the dog paid them no attention whatsoever and also that 'some woman from the RSPCA' had taken the kittens away earlier in the week.

Around 6.00 in the evening Carol rang to say the piece was in the Echo and I dashed up to Asda to get a couple of copies. When I've got it scanned I'll print it here. The photographer must have been good as I look almost human.
Saturday was busy. It started off taking the cat  who had had the mergency hysterectomy back to the vets for a checkup and after dropping it back at Carol's, took two friendly  elderly black cats to South Shields to live with Rachel who, as I've mentioned in previous posts takes old cats from us as the ones she has die off. She rang Carol later to say how nice they were.

Earlier I'd got a call on my mobile from Susan who told me that a bloke was bringing a kitten he'd found on the balcony of his third floor apartment in the town centre to the shop. So, after I finished with Rachel, that was where I headed. Now as a few of Carol's cats had the sniffles I didn't want to expose the kitten to them and thought it might be an idea if we fostered him for a few days. Of course that was how we ended up with young Daisy. Surprisingly Susan didn't object. He's a Fluffy little black thing somewhere between 8 and 12 weeks old, very friendly but nervous of other cats. Daisy, the ungrateful little sod, took against him straight away. All three male cats politely sniffed him and left him alone. We've now had him for 32 hours and Susan wants to keep him. Daisy, she's no longer so sure about.

I tried to get an afternoon nap but it wasn't long before Carol rang me to ask if I could take a black cat to a bloke who'd seen the article and wanted a black cat (duh). The only catch being he lived in Langley Park on the far side of Durham, a place I can't recall having visited in my entire life. Oh, and he didn't finish work till 6.30. Sox o'clock and I picked up the cat from Carol's and headed off into the wilderness -okay, it was the same road I use to get to Tracy's at Burnhope only I take a different turnoff sooner. I stopped in the centre of Langley Park to ask for directions and discovered that as the crow flies I was only about a hundred yards from my destination but as I wasn't travelling by crow I had to drive to top of the road, turn left and go down a back lane from where I phoned the guy. I'd stopped only two doors away from his ground floor flat which was at the back of a butcher's shop. There were a few kids playing in the lane, one of them holding a four week old kitten. 

The man was very genuine and had a framed collage of photos of his late cat and dog. The cat I'd brought had a sniff around and seemed quite relaxed and I had a good feeling. He then shook my hand, said the cat was the exact double of his dead cat and gave me forty pounds which is quite generous.

This morning when Phil came to borrow the van for dogs he told me the battery light was on and that the van wasn't safe to drive as it could break down at any time. Oh, I said and didn't bother to tell him I'd been driving around with  the light going on and off for a couple of weeks. I thought it was just a loose connections.

Here are some photos.
Two recent arrivals with the Lanchester kitten.
The cat post-hysterectomy.
The kitten that was found on a third floor balcony but is staying with us.

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