Nov 12th, 2023

Author: donich_admin

Fun day today

R is away in New York this week (I bet he doesn’t go to either the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty).

My day began with Lucky howling for food. She is allowed in the house during the day – but at night we are restricting her to the utility room because we don’t want her confined to the house in case she panics about being shut in. We don’t let the ladies out at night (even though Tora and Schrodi always were). R thinks that knowing where they are at night reduces his stress levels – I sort of agree, but I would take the extra stress personally in exchange for not having the litter tray.

Then, mid-morning, Saphy came in with a large vole. She put it down in the hall, and I was considering whether to try rescuing it or not (it was clearly injured, and sometimes it is better to let the cat kill them rather than inflicting a lingering death on them). Anyway, while I was thinking, Lucky came round the corner at speed, snatched the vole in her jaws and ran outside. By the time I got to the door, the unfortunate rodent was half-way down the hatch.

This afternoon I passed another milestone with Lucky. I bought a long handled brush to clean my smoothie maker with a few days ago – and when it turned up there were two of them. It struck me that this was the perfect tool to brush Lucky without getting too close. At first she wouldn’t do more than let me lightly touch her with the brush before she ran off, but today for the first time I managed to give her a fairly decent brushing, including getting most of the mysterious grey bits off her ears. I’ll keep up the regime and gradually increase the areas I am brushing – she is not too keen on her tail being touched at the moment. We will revisit taking her to the vet when R is home next week, but I think J is right in his opinion that it would have been too early to do it a couple of weeks ago.

In the absence of R, the original two ladies have migrated to my bed. Saphy also will not let me have my office door closed so it is difficult to keep the heat in. I have had to revert to the electric heating in my office because the butane tank we got for my stove only lasted three weeks. At about £50 for a refill, plus having to drive to Inverary for the new cylinders now they have stopped delivering, it is just not worth it, though I do prefer the gas to the electric space heater. Really the whole problem comes down to the fact that our offices, nice as they are, were not insulated properly, and the issue of how to heat them off the existing LPG system was not addressed at the time. In theory I could get a living gas fire in my office off the existing “mains” LPG, but this would be a big expensive job and I don’t think it would really be worth it.

Amber obviously doesn’t feel the drying effect from the fan heater, as she enjoyed sleeping on my new pashmina.