WE'RE BACK

Or, more accurately, I'm back. No, too egocentric; the blog is back. That's better.

I've been moving house, having split up more amicably than anyone would believe from Susan Hardy who kept seven of our nine cats. Apart from being incredibly busy settling in to my smaller (but lovely) new home with large garden, I swapped over from Virgin to Sky which resulted in three weeks without Internet access. I think the withdrawal was more agonising than when I quit smoking sixteen years ago. It was also incredibly frustrating as I couldn't email or blog, never mind accessing my favourite websites.

The cat above is about 6 months old, currently being fostered by me, and is being neutered tomorrow. On Monday he'll get his first jab and three weeks after that will go to our re-homing centre. I would not recommend him to anyone who doesn't like a cat which: demands a lot of affection, cuddles up to you on your bed, likes to be made a fuss over, sits on your knee, is fine with other cats, and purrs loudly. I do but I'm still not keeping him.

I am, however, keeping one year old Fifi (seen on my front kitchen window) who I'm currently supposed to be fostering.

Fifi is a finicky cat. She doesn't eat much and only (so far after two weeks) tuna-based cat food. She is incredibly good at hiding -twice in her first week I became convinced that she'd got out despite being careful only to find her behind the bath panel and then behind books on a bookshelf. She's scared of other cats, even unaggressive ones like my Lotus and Lily. She is, however, very affectionate. She now spends all her time upstairs in either my book room or my bedroom. Fifi needs an experienced cat owner so she's stuck with me.

On the re-homing front, they are going from our new re-homing centre (see previous posts) at an average of one a week which is okay but could be bettered. There are always more waiting to come in once they've had their second jab -another two next Monday.

Here are some of them.

This is a shy but friendly boy who's found a nice home.

This pretty and affectionate ginger female (yes, ginger female, not all gingers are boys) had a difficult time settling in to her new home but is fine now. Unlike-

-this lovely friendly girl who was so unsettled she messed all over the place so as there was a small child in the house she had to come back.

This is one of a pair and we have a policy of not splitting up pairs as long as they get on.

So there we go. Hopefully this post means things are getting back to normal and there'll be more posts soon.