yonmei

11:09 am: What I did already this morning...
This morning, besides all the usual things I meant to do (get up, have breakfast, make/pack lunch), I meant to water my garden. I also had to call the vet, because when I took Bob in for her booster shot and check-up yesterday, she'd lost a pound (in weight: I don't let her carry cash) and both the vet and I regarded this as cause for alarm and blood tests.

The reason I meant to water my garden is that I did the last planting of clover I'll do this year, last night. (My garden is looking good, by the way, for an unfinished project: the decorative grass is high and seeding, the army of daisies is out and lovely, I have achieved control over the dandelions, the clover from last year is flourishing and beginning to flower, and in the bare patches of earth where I planted clover in May, I am finally beginning to see tiny green sprouts. Also, I think I am going to have a flourishing crop of sunflowers. Someone said what I was after in my garden was not "lawn" but "meadow", and that's exactly right: I want a pocket meadow.)

So just before nine, I went out, and three of my neighbours were standing in the street: which is odd and unusual. They were all talking to each other. Still more odd.

There was an injured fox sheltering under the bush at the corner of my garden by the house: it had been in the next-door garden, and gone through to my garden when a neighbour approached it. She said that the side of its face was battered and swollen and bloody. (And my idiot kitten Wolf had gone right up to it, practically nose-to-nose: good thing it wasn't feeling good, or Wolf would have learned the hard way that foxes are not cat toys.) The SSPCA had been called and had said they would come.

Well, that cut out watering my garden, since I was not about to wave a hose around near where the fox was sheltering. So I went back into the house and phoned the vet, and after some faffing about, I got to speak to him.

Bob has thyroid trouble. Just like Cally did. Only, unlike Cally, she is still in reasonably good shape - so an operation may be possible. (I am wholeheartedly grateful to my skinflint decision to put off her booster shot till June, since if I'd taken her in December - which I'd decided not to on the basis that I wanted to have Wolf and Bob's booster shots due six months apart - the weight loss probably wouldn't have shown up, and she'd probably have gone undiagnosed till either the weight loss got significant enough not to miss it even through her fluffiness, or till the December checkup.) Anyway. I will be going to see the vet next week to discuss the options - operation, medication, both.

I came out of the house again, to head off to work without watering the garden, and the fox was in the middle of my garden. It was a big one, and - I don't recall ever seeing a live fox in broad daylight before - looked startlingly orange-red against my green meadow. I couldn't see any injury. It stood there for less than a minute, and then was out of the garden and down the road. It encountered Bob on the way, the neighbours in the road tell me, but both cat and fox looked startled and avoided each other.

So, well: I watered the garden. The SSPCA, who'd been called to deal with what the neighbour feared was a mortally injured fox, arrived while I was watering, and I told them what I'd seen: heading down the street, moving briskly. They were quite good-humoured about it, and apologetic for not getting there sooner ("the traffic", they said.)

I went over the road after that to tell the neighbour whose daughter is in love with Bob about the vet's diagnosis; to emphasise that Bob will be fine - will most likely live for several years, I told her, to pass on to her daughter - but that she'll probably have to have regular medication, and she will have to be on a proper diet. I know her daughter feeds Bob treats - bits of meat, cheese for all I know: and I know her daughter adores Bob. For both reasons, I want her mother to explain properly that Bob needs to eat proper cat food only, no more filling up on scraps: and I wanted the wee girl to know that, while Bob isn't well, she's likely to be fine for several more years.

And then I went to work. Both Bob and Wolf are in the house, having their daily dominance fight. Yay.

Tags: bob, cat politics, garden record, worrying about my cats