ANOTHER VET VISIT

Bob and Bo the Fluffy siblings were already scheduled for a visit to have their second flu jab prior to their transfer to our re-homing centre at Ferry Farm kennels. But they also needed a shot of Stronghold for fleas and worms. And Bob Fluffy needed a shave at his rear end where the fur was clagged up with something I don't need to name. Bo Fluffy needed a lesser trim.

I also brought along Rikki (see previous post) about whom I was getting more and more worried. Thankfully Holly the vet couldn't find a tumour and believed it was just a regular bug. She gave me antibiotic tablets and Panacur dewormer to give him. A day later, however, his appetite still hasn't picked up.

Maisie, however, following her trip to the emergency vets yesterday, has shown a distinct improvement in terms of her appetite which is a great relief. Here she is with her kittens this morning.

CATS IN A BAY WINDOW

  1. Cats in a bay window.

It's hot and sunny and  Fifi (left), who normally is jealous of her personal space, will even share it with new boy Rikki (right) and then, just under a year old, Emma (centre). Rikki, who has only been here a few weeks after I took him from Ferry Farm, really has settled in well. He often jumps on my knee and mixes freely with the other cats.

2. Bits & pieces.

I got a text from Dawn at Ferry Farm to inform me that Bruce (a large black cat who's been with us for some time) had been losing a lot of weight recently despite having a good appetite. As I was taking Jeff to be spayed this morning, I rang the vet's to see if they could squeeze Bruce in. They could so I picked him up on the way. And when I physically picked him up I was shocked by how light he was. It didn't take Wendy even a minute to diagnose him as having an extremely large tumour. It goes without saying that I wouldn't and couldn't let the poor thing suffer.

Arya, my favourite little torty who is definitely not staying here, honest guv (see recent post) is going back to the vets yet again following first the checkup, second the operation to remove a pin from her and third the removal of the stitches. Now it's fourth the spaying. She went into heat a few days ago and is very vocal about it. For some reason based on no evidence whatsoever other than the fact she'd clearly never had a litter (no enlarged nipples) I'd assumed she'd already been spayed. Wrong again.

The two kittens have now been in the conservatory for a couple of days. They are using the litter tray properly but are barely eating. I mentioned this to Wendy the morning who suggested putting their food under cover so they feel more secure. I've done this but so far to no effect. If things don't change in a day or two I'll have to get them in. A moment ago I noticed them lying on top of each other in full view and took a quick photo. They are used to me and are quite friendly. Maybe things will work out okay.

IT'S OFFICIAL: I'M A COMPLETE IDIOT

Of course you all knew that anyway, yeah, yeah, it's not news to anyone but me or rather not that I'd have admitted it but now I can't deny it any longer.

Let me tell you a story.

For the last day and a half I have been enjoying the sheer blissful of tranquillity of living in a house with only four cats who all get on together. I can wake up in bed and find at least three curled up next to me, all comfortable in each others' company. They have me to themselves (I'm not counting Jeff and her kittens in the conservatory) and aren't being terrorised by cats who don't like other cats. Wonderful.

Then this morning I went swimming as usual (well, as usual if I wake up in time or if I decide not to go back to bed, the latter happening on Tuesday). When I swim my mind wanders as I think about things like writing a blog post, doing a draft in my head, or reflecting on something else. Today my mind went to Rikki the cat who had to have an operation on his eyes because eyelid hairs were growing into the eyeball. Such a sad looking thing. I was due to take him to the vets again today but this time because he was losing patches of fur. His eyes still look messy but are healing well.

And I thought to myself (as opposed to thinking to someone else): maybe I could try fostering him and see how he gets on with my cats. He did come in with two others who have since been re-homed so might be quite sociable and mine want to be friends with newcomers. Then I thought about something else.

"It's stress," said Wendy the vet and asked if their was a socket in the pen so we could try Felway a herbal aromatic which had some success in calming cats. I rang Ferry Farm and Mark told me they could by using a long cable but there wasn't a socket as such.

"Oh socket," I said to Wendy, "I'll take him home and give him a try. He might be better in my house."

So I did and here he is on my bed. The Felway is plugged in next to it.

I'm quietly optimistic that this might just work.

And there you go. I just get the cat population down to what I wanted in my house and all is calm and I take in another bloody cat. Mind, he's on the fostering list. Anyone wants him they can have him.

Hello?

OCULAR OPERATION

Not quiet true, this post is about an operation on a cat's eyelids. At the bottom of the post, and I've left quite a gap so you don't see it accidentally, are post-operative photos and they could be quite upsetting to children or persons of a sensitive disposition. The poor cat looks like he's gone two rounds with Mike Tyson. I'll repeat this more simply.

Gruesome post-operative photos below! You have been warned and I'm serious.

The cat is called Rikki and he came with two others who have since been re-homed. He always looked down in the dumps and the longer he was with us at the re-homing centre the more obvious it became that there was something wrong with his right eye. Finally he was taken to the vets where it was discovered that the hairs on his lower eyelid were growing inwards against the eyeball and he already had some older scarring there. The vet decided to treat it with a medicated ointment to see if that could help which did, at least for a time, but perhaps inevitably it deteriorated again and so today I took her to the vets.

It didn't take Wendy long to decide that an operation to open up and stitch the eyelid (both eyelids as it turned out) so as to remove the cause of the problem. I left Rikki and went back to collect him around teatime and found what you will see below and, believe me, it is distressing. The good news is that in a few days he'll look better and feel better than he's done for some time.

Dept of odd coincidences.

While I was there, Maria Wilkinson of The Willows Rescue arrived with a kitten around 8-9 weeks old. This cute lively black and white sweetheart had a damaged eye which Maria was sure, correctly so, would have to be removed. Then, when I got back to Ferry farm, I was told that Andrea our dog rescuer was soon to arrive with an Akita (?, something like that anyway) which only had one eye.

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Don't worry, in a few days I'll show you the 'after' photos. And it really looks far worse than it is. But there's more to cat rescuing than looking after cute kittens.

Correction: update from Andrea.

The dog is a husky /collie cross which lost an eye after a fight with another dog which was a bit possessive over food, he is coming soon

THE JOY OF CAT RESCUING

Let me explain something I should have explained when I first started this blog. I may be stating the obvious but sometimes the obvious needs to be explained.

Cat rescuing is a catch-all term to describe a variety of activities. It doesn't just mean rescuing stray or abandoned cats but instead covers a multitude of activities which include cat welfare. There are two things I did this morning (and it's not 11.00am yet) which illustrate this.

For the last six days I've been visiting a house twice a day to feed five cats and deal with their soiled cat litter. The owner had to go into hospital for up to two weeks (hopefully no longer) and Social Services contacted me to see if Animal Krackers would do it which we (that is me) would. Now four of the cats are very frightened of strangers -indeed I've yet to even see one of them- but the fifth, a large long haired black and white moggy of indeterminate age, is friendly. He also has extremely densely matted fur on his belly and around his anus so I booked him in at the vets where he was due to be taken this morning. However, placid and friendly as he normally is, he vehemently objected to being put in a cat carrier which he literally ruined and (figuratively -there was some blood- shredded my right hand in the process). I will try again when I've got my hands on a large and secure carrier.

Prior to this I had to go and collect a cat for the day while its owner moved house. The owner, who is differently mentally abled but can live on her own in the community with only a minimum of support, got the cat from us a few years ago and looks after her well. The cat has a placid nature which helps. Anyway, I picked the cat up and set off to collect the cat from the previous paragraph and within less than a minute placid cat had soiled the carrier and herself. When I finally got her to my house I did a preliminary clean but Susan and I ended up putting her in the bath and thoroughly washing her fur. It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun. She's now locked in my bedroom and lying on a couple of towels on top of my bed. All being well I'll be taking her to her new home about mid-afternoon.

Much as I love being involved in cat rescuing and find it very personally rewarding and, to be honest, my life would be rather dull without it, there are times when it can be quite unpleasant and often bloodily painful as several healing scabs and the odd permanent scars on my hands, legs and stomach testify.

Cat rescuing aint a job for wimps.

Post Script

The cat spent a few hours on my bed, not even moving when I lay down next to her for a nap. However, a couple of minutes into the trip to her new home, she crapped once again in the carrier.

Some days you just can't win.

THE BIG BALD BLACK CAT

Not been too well over the last four weeks. Started off with bursitis -agonising pain in the elbow which didn't get properly diagnosed for five days, but when I did get them the antibiotics cleared it up pretty quickly. Then I got a cold which went onto my chest which has left me coughing up -no, I won't go there- for the last two weeks and leaving me feeling generally pretty ropy. Not enough to keep me from cat activities but definitely away from the gym. So this is another bits and pieces type of post.

First-

1. The Big Black Cat.

There's a lot of background to this story but because I don't want to identify the person involved I'm going to have to keep it vague. Suffice to say that there's a person who took elderly cats off our hands and when she went abroad last year, Andrea of Animal Krackers took a week each to look after the four cats in her house. Then recently we heard that she'd been taken into hospital so I went to take care of the cats, going in the morning and teatime to feed them and do what was necessary to the cat litter. This time, however, there were only two and I noticed immediately that one of them, despite being on medication, had a condition which had seriously deteriorated.

I took these photos at Wendy's (our regular vet) with my phone hence the poor quality where he was diagnosed with a flea allergy and he was covered in them. You can't tell but he has one green eye and one brown and he's also very friendly. 

The afternoon after I took him to the vet I called round and found another gentleman arriving to feed the cats. We were both surprised but, as he just lived locally, we agreed he'd keep doing in and I'd provide food and litter as neccessary. Which was fine. A few days later he called me to tell me the owner was back but that she was moving. Next day I called round to check on the cats to find someone else there -but no owner- boxing up stuff for her. There was no sign of the other cat either. Next morning I came back again to find no-one there, everything boxed up, and just big baldy in residence. I don't even know if he'd been fed.

Enough was enough. I rang Carole who agreed to take him so I took him and he's now being looked after.

2. Animal Krackers Cat Re-homing Centre.

I haven't written much about this for a while because I've got sick of promises unfulfilled and constant put-offs. But now, only three months late, we should be starting to take in cats by the end of next week. But only believe that when I publish photos here of cats in residence and don't hold your breath.

Meanwhile, here are some crappy pictures I took last week. They were taken when I brought a van full of cat furniture to be stored on site.

3. Two Kittens.

Got a call this morning. A dad had just got two 8-week old kittens for his children who screamed the place down in fear when they saw them. He was really upset about having to re-home them but it just hadn't worked out. I called Carole who I knew would take them in  and went round to pick them up. By the time I'd got to Carole's she already had a home for them. She'd just received a call from a lady who sounded -and proved to be- very nice. I spoke to Carole a minute ago to confirm they had been re-homed and they had.

If only it was always that easy.

Here they are.

4. Three kittens.

I don't know much about these except that Carole took them in last week and immediately got them to Wendy's for treatment. They're a little wild but are being tamed down by Carole's grand daughter.

LILY

1. Lily.

What does the top photograph have to do with the next three of my 9 year old Lily?

If you're more observant than I am, you've already guessed. The giveaway being the name insulin printed on the side of the syringe. 

When see a person or an animal every day, you often don't notice gradual changes in their appearance until the magic moment when it hits you. With Susan and I it was about the same time. Lily was losing weight. And she's been drinking more water than usual. Susan thought it might be her kidneys and pretty much convinced herself that we were going to lose Lily so it was almost a relief when she was diagnosed as being diabetic -diabetes mellitus, to give it its proper name. 

However, we now have to be careful about her eating habits, keeping her to the same type of food which has to be given at certain times. This isn't easy as our nine cats, while being fed at around the same time, tend not to eat all that's down immediately and prefer to nibble during the day, plus getting odd treats. We also have to keep her isolated in one room overnight so we can test her urine every morning. Which also means a smelly room as she does  more than urinate during the night. 

We've had Lily to the vets every morning this week while Wendy the vet makes sure we both know how to test the urine and safely deliver the injection. We were both nervous about the latter but it turned out easier than we both expected and Lily never reacted to the needle going in. First time solo at home tomorrow morning which will be the real test.

She's a sweet little cat who loves being stroked and likes people. She's not so keen on other cats because some of ours can bully her, though that seems to have eased, but not stopped entirely, in recent months. 

Aside: I like to tease my friends and told Denise, Sylvia (Wednesday coffee morning at Starbucks) and Barry (monthly Tuesday night at Jameson's which was this week) separately that I had to start injecting insulin. Both Barry and Sylvia fell for it, expressing immediate concern. Denise said, in a considered manner, "You, or a cat?" She got me!

2. Two more cats on a bed.

Being cuddled is Bob. Cuddling is Daisy. They're both around two, Daisy being the elder by three months.

3. Scrubbing floors.

Tomorrow we're supposed to being going to our new cat re-homing centre to scrub floors as a result of dirt being tracked in by muddy boots. This suggests that it's not inconceivable it might be finished soon. But after so many disappointments, I'll believe it when I see it.

4. All part of the job.

Got a call from a lady who lives in Washington, Tyne & Wear not DC, who'd been followed home by an injured cat -damaged leg(s), brown discharge from the mouth. She couldn't take it in because of an allergy to cats and didn't know what to do. I suggested she feed it and give it some water to drink to give it an incentive to hang around. I called the RSPCA who will pay for the initial treatment of stray and injured animals, and rang Wendy's to tell the practice I'd be there with the cat the following morning.

So the following morning I drove through to Washington (taking ages because of work and school traffic) only to find no sign of the cat. I had a good look round but in vain. I told the lady that if the cat turned up again and she could get in her shed at the front door I'd come and pick it up.

These things happen and I don't regard it as a waste of time because I'd sooner that happens than a cat suffers when I could do something about it.

MONDAY, MONDAY, SO GOOD TO ME

5.15 Woken up by Big Ted wanting to be out. Should have been the work of less than a minute, but instead the pungent odour of cat poo wafts from the corner litter tray on the little landing, so down to the kitchen to empty, clean and refill the tray and let more cats out. That done, hands washed, and back to bed to try to catch some last minutes of sleep.

5.45  I'm just entering a light doze when Susan shouts for me to clean the cat litter tray in the front bedroom where Lily the grey cat who is bullied by some of the others sleeps. Lily won't crap in the same box she pees in which sometimes results in crap on the floor, or rather on the paper Susan puts down. So, downstairs, empty, clean, wash hands, go back to-  Oh sod it, I'm wide awake now. Go back downstairs, put several dishes of cat food down and microwave some porridge, watching News 24 while I'm eating it.

6.10 I'm back upstairs and on the computer, checking for emails -someone might have ordered something from me overnight, which does happens and I do have an order to post. I periodically weed out my collection of books, graphic novels, CDs and DVDs and put them up for sale on Amazon Marketplace. Nothing, so I check out a couple of newspaper websites.

7.00  I'm supposed to be going swimming in half an hour but as I have to be back home by 8.15 to transport furniture from the charity's van which is parked outside the house to the shop and then get to Carole's and on to the vets by 9.00, I decide to skip the swim and have a bath instead, cleaning out another smelly litter tray first. 

7.30  I'm just about thinking of putting down the book I'm reading when there's a knock at the front door. Obviously I can't answer it and neither can Susan who's still half asleep. Two minutes later, there's an even louder knock, however, while being out of the bath, but wet and naked, I let Susan get it. Not unusually, there's someone with a large wagon who needs to make a delivery down the back lane but can't because our van is sticking out. So I hurridly get dressed, tell Susan I'll go to the post office at the same time. Susan then tells me to unload the furniture back into the garage as the shop is full of stuff. Muttering under my breath I do as I'm told and skip the post office.

8.45  I arrive at Carole's expecting to collect two cats for neutering, but there's a third, Ed, which needs checking out and she's coming with me. So, to the vets where a problem is found with Ed, a friendly one year old who been very sick several times, who has to be left as well. After dropping Carole off home, I head back to Grangetown to post the order and return home. I need to get food for Carole (well, the cats she looks after) as she's run out, which is okay with Susan who doesn't need the van until later. So off to Asda to buy about a hundred tins of Kit-e-Kat and empty the donated pet food bin we have there. I'm pleasantly surprised about how much cat food is in it and surprised again at Sainsbury's a few minutes later for the same reason. Ten minutes late and I'm unloading it all into the garage and tell Susan that the van's all hers except that she now doesn't need it until three o'clock.

10.45 Coffee and a light very early lunch. Potter about on the Internet for a while.

11.50  And I'm reloading the cat food back into the van and set off for my dentist's appointment. I've gone private recently because I was sick of new fillings dropping out after five minutes. Costs a lot more but the dentist is excellent and everyone else in the family uses him. The surgery is only a couple of minutes drive from Carole's, so I go there next and drop of the cat food. And then I take away lots of black sacks, all full of soiled cat bedding and used litter, to the council tip. This is not one of my favourite jobs. It's not all a life of glamour rescuing cats you know. On the way home I call in at Asda again because none of the cats will eat Asda's own brand of dried food, which is the only brand of dried food we get given, and only settle for Go-Cat. (If anyone from Go-Cat is reading this then I would be delighted to publicise your excellent product in this blog in exchange for donations of it.)

1.45  A couple of hours to myself (translation: nap time).

4.15  Off to Carole's who's taking another cat for neutering and leaving it there overnight. The two now-neutered females are fine, not happy, but fine. Sadly there is bad news about Ed. His blood tests have shown some kind of imbalance in his liver and an x-ray has shown it to be severely enlarged and the vet recommends an exploratory operation. After some discussion, I go along with it but stress that we don't have the funds for prolonged treatment. At the back of my mind is what happened to that other poor cat after an exploratory operation recently (see recent posts for details).

5.45  Home.

CATS IN THE CAGE IN MY GARAGE

Sorry about the long delay between posts but I mislaid my camera at some point and only found it a short time ago today. For some reason, apart from being busy and just not in the damn mood, it put me off posting as I like to have new photos with a post. There've been a few things going on and I may mention some of them if they come to mind, but otherwise I'm concentrating on two cats.

The first one-

-was an 18 month old tabby who was dropped off at Roker Park vets for neutering and thence to be put in our tender care, except that the only space for him was in the cage in my garage. He turned out to be a nice little cat, friendly but a little shy. Luckily Tracy at Burnhope agreed to take him a couple of days later. My camera having just gone missing it meant I couldn't take any photos but I probably wouldn't have anyway. It was a grey overcast day and as I drove up the steep long bank to Burnhope, the mist grew thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker until by the time I got to Tracy's you could barely see the trees on the main road 50 yards away. All the animals -the ferals, the cockerels, the donkeys and horse were all indoors. 

And that's it for the tabby. Here are a few more photos of him.

There's a much longer story about the second cat. Here she is.

At lunchtime on Tuesday I received a call from the admin offices of student accommodation at Low Row down by the river. A very thin but friendly cat had been hanging around for a couple of days and they were worried about it. So I did what I usually do: jump.

This is a bit of a source of discord between Susan and myself. Susan believes that when I hear the words help and cat, I shouldn't just jump up and go into action, I should pause and consider what alternative actions are available to me. She's right, of course. Something else happened this week involving a cat where I agreed to a certain course of action and then told Susan about it. She came up with a different idea which, ultimately, had the same ending but meant it didn't cost us money and the situation was resolved in less time and effort than it otherwise would have taken. Can't argue with that.

In this case, however, the only alternative was to leave the cat where it was. So I went and got her and she was extremely thin. I took her home to the cage in the garage which I'd set up with cat litter tray, food, water, and bedding -the sort of tent you can see her sitting in which is thick and cosy and keeps her warm.

During the course of the afternoon, she twice soiled the bedding material I'd laid down on the floor of the cage. Usually I use scrap bits of carpet but I didn't have any. She ate the single sachet of food I'd put down. On Wednesday she didn't eat any of the food I'd put down and soiled the cat-tent. She was also curled up and none-responsive. Now I was really concerned so I managed to get her booked in a Roker Park vets to be checked over. Mr Murphy found a swelling in her stomach which he thought might be cancer and suggested an exploratory operation. Because this would cost over a hundred pounds, I rang Susan to check that it was okay, expecting to be given the go-ahead. Susan was at the shop and she mentioned it to another committee member who was there who suggested waiting a couple of days to see how things developed. I got very annoyed about this, said a couple of rude things and said I'd pay for the expletive deleted operation myself. As it turned, this time I was right.

The operation would go ahead the next morning with the understanding that if they found cancer, the cat would be euthanised while unconscious. I gave them my mobile number as I was going to be out and about for quite a while. Part of this out and about was taking a guy and his cat from Hetton on the far south west of the city boundary to the new PDSA hospital on the north side of the river and taking them (just him as it sadly turned out) back home. This was the alternative that Susan came up with which  I mentioned above.

To everyone's surprise, it wasn't cancer. What they found was a seriously large mass consisting of human hair, cat fur, and fragments of tin foil. This was almost certainly what was causing the problem -though Mr Murphy suggested the possibility that it might be FIV (feline AIDS). So, she's being kept in the cage in my garage for a while as she hopefully recovers. You can't tell from the photographs but almost all her underneath has been shaved. I had her back again today for a checkup and there'll be another visit next Wednesday afternoon.

She's not out of the woods yet, but I'm hopeful. I'll let you know how she gets on.

CATURDAY AGAIN

Of course last Caturday didn't stay quiet.

In the evening I was just about to tuck into a Chinese takeaway, indeed I'd eaten about a quarter of it, when the phone rang. Big Ian from the shop needed to go to the emergency vets because his dog had had some kind of a fit. Lady is an oldish collie type with a docile and amenable character and Ian is very protective of her. So, off in the van through to the PDSA emergency vet service (which charges a hundred quid fee if you aren't on benefit) a Heworth, Gateshead. The vet was a very nice woman of Irish extraction who was very thorough and explained that it probably wasn't a fit but rather a form of diziness brought about by fluid being dislodged in the inner ear, It probably wouldn't happen again but if it did then Lady would need further treatment. All in all, a relief really.

The rest of the following week was relatively normal. Several early morning trips to Williams & Cummings with cats for neutering, a couple of trips to Roker Park vets for checkups on cats. At one point it looked as if I might be picking up a couple of ferals for neutering but that's currently on hold.

Friday morning, after a swim and dropping off a cat for neutering, I went to pick up Steven a youngish guy and his cat to take them to the PDSA. I wouldn't say he was special needs exactly but I would call him vulnerable. Late twenties, maybe, he lives in a one-room flat with his cat which he took in a couple of years ago and he's on Benefit. He'd contacted Susan whom he knew as he was concerned about the cat who'd been bitten on the leg a few weeks ago and his behaviour had changed in that it didn't stay out for long like he'd used to do. My first impression was that the cat, a plump tabby/white thing, seemed in good condition. I asked him what he called the cat and got the answer: "Fatty"!

Anyway, off to the PDSA for a half hour wait, surrounded by a variety of dogs, most of them staffies, and a variety of people like the big tatooed muscle man clutching a shih-tsu, the small woman with a massive dobermann which threatened to drag her around the waiting room,a plump woman with three white mice, an elderly man with his elderly dog both hobbling ungainly along as either might collapse at any time.

Finally we went in and I held the cat by her front shoulders as the vet, who remembered me from other times when I'd brought people here, checked it out. The result was that there was nothing wrong with the cat as the vet patiently explained. Steven, who had never had a cat before, was just being overcautious and concerned about the change in the cat's behaviour. I didn't mind as Steven felt reassured and he knows he has some external support with regards to the cat.

Here are a couple of photos of our two kittens: the recently neutered Daisy and Little Bob, best friends.

The picture quality isn't so good on this second one because the camera focussed on the quilt in the foreground. I'll have to watch this in future.

Friday teatime and I had to rush round in the van to the local B&Q hardware store. I parked in what I didn't realise wasn't a proper bay and on the way out scraped against the adjacent car. Being a noble and honest person I went back into the store to confess my sins. The young guy who owned the car was very good about it and seemed to appreciate my owning up. 

I just haven't told Susan about this yet. You won't, will you?

CATURDAY

Which is ironic because, other than filling in a few neutering vouchers (the last we have from Cats Protection) for two people who got some kittens from us, I should have nothing to do on the Animal Krackers front. So here's a cat update.

Clara, the cat whose kittens all died within four days and needed an emergency hysterectomy, has been discovered to have an enlarged heart with a rate varying from rapid to almost dead stop. She's quite young, less than five probably, but won't have a long lifespan. Rachel, who takes our elderly cats as the ones she's adopted come to the end of their lives, has taken Clara so she'll be properly looked after for however long she has.

On Wednesday Carol took in a young male which had been living in a childrens' home but wasn't wanted. Carol thought it had a damaged leg and we left it overnight at Roker Park Vets for it to be x-rayed and then treated the following morning. Turns out its cruciate ligament had been damaged, among other tissue damage, as if it's leg had been trapped and the cat had tried desperately to pull away. I suspect if we hadn't taken the cat when we did, the rest of the cat's life would be short and painful. The vet, Mr Murphy, repaired the damage at a cost of £260.00 to the charity

When we first arrived to get the cat, Amigo, checked out, I chatted to a very nice lady who'd brought her elderly dog for treatment. She suddenly asked if she could give us a donation and handed me a £20.00 note which I immediately passed over to Carol. First time that's happened in a vets; usually we just get good wishes.

Yesterday morning I was back at Williams & Cummings within half an hour after dropping off a cat to be neutered for our Little Bob to be checked. He seems to have stopped vomiting but his faeces are still liquid. Victor (Molina, we're on first name terms these days) the vet said his temperature was normal and there were no blockages so he gave me a couple of extra things to try. I also discovered that Little Bob will eat a particular kind of sachet called Feline Fayre (there are three varieties) which boasts '60% real fish' and LB ate a whole sachet of it this morning which is a relief as he can't live on fresh fish and chicken for the rest of his life. Well, he could quite easily but it is also easier and less messy to open a sachet than fanny about cooking for him.

So far next week I have: 3 cats to book in for neutering; on Monday take Frankenstein's Cat and another one back for checkups; Wednesday take Amigo back to be checked. Plus the usual expected food runs, tip runs, pickups and dropoffs. Sound relatively quiet? Yes, but it won't stay that way.

It never does.