yonmei

07:48 pm: FWIW - and not because I think you're at all interested
I find that a 2-kilo bag of Hill's Science Diet catfood lasts my two cats just under 4 weeks. I guess that means they're eating it at about 35g a day. They also get wet food, daily. Bob is looking very well on it: Wolf is blooming.

Tags: bob, wolf

10:31 am: Polar bears and Bob
I had a vivid dream last night that I had released a polar bear on to my bed (a small cat-sized polar bear, but an adult) and was feeling quite pleased with myself for having offered support to an endangered species, when Bob jumped up on to my bed and the polar bear went for her. I stood there unable to move, suddenly realising that however small the bear was, it was an actual polar bear - the most dangerous ursine species - and that it was going to kill Bob before I could get to my bed and stop it happening.

Then I woke up. And had tangled thoughts, climbing out of the dream, that I should also have released penguins on to my bed to give the polar bear something to hunt.

Awake, I would not have considered this solution: penguin guano all over the sheets?

Evidently it was really cold last night. My bed does not otherwise resemble a glacier.

Tags: bears, bob, dreams, penguins

09:36 am: Hurrah for Bob!
Last time I took Bob to the vet (16th September) she'd lost weight even since that operation. Today the vet weighed her and she'd gained half a pound - she's 3.4 kilos, back to where she was at the time of the operation. So I bought some more Hill's Science Diet kitten food, and took her home and gave her some more of it, and she ate it.

She is in wonderful condition. So is Wolf. I think he's still growing. He's enormous. If I could locate my camera I would do another comparison photoshot, because I think he would now overtop the cat toy I bought for him back when he was a wee thing.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

04:50 pm: Coffee and tiny doughnut
I have just had a mug of coffee and a tiny sugary ring doughnut.

The coffee was excellent: the doughnut mediocre: but the combination was lovely.

I am due to go to the gym tonight. I packed a Stoats bar to snack on to avoid hunger.

Now why shouldn't the healthy snack of a Stoats porridge bar just kind of cancel out the unhealthy irresistibleness of, um... doughnut? (I'd had another earlier with my lunch, so I already knew they were slightly mediocre. I have high standards about doughnuts, on the, I feel, perfectly rational grounds that anything that bad for you really ought to be delicious. I feel the same way about mince pies.)

I had to go home again right after lunch to pick up a file I needed I thought I had emailed to myself, and as it looked to be set dry for the afternoon, and both Bob and Wolf wanted to go out, I left them both sitting on the steps, looking a bit surprised... they haven't both been outdoors at once in ages, it seems.

I have updates about Bob, but they can wait till post-gym.

Tags: bob, cat politics, coffee, food politics, gym membership, wolf

09:06 am: I should write something
...there is too much.

I clipped Bob's foreclaws yesterday. I wasn't sure how she'd take it, because Gallus used to fight and growl at me, but she coped quite placidly.

I might clip her hindclaws today.

Tags: bob, just my life really

04:42 pm: What fresh hell is this?
( My woes, let me show you them )

I am trying to think of nice, happy, fluffy things.

1. I made a cake. It is a very good cake, and I shall ice it with lemon icing.

2. I can go home now. It's after five.

3. My garden is nice.

4. My cats are lovely.

5. Bob is well and purring.

6. Cake is nice.

give dragon eggs clicky

Tags: bloody work, bob, cake, computer disasters, dragon eggs need clicky, family stuff, lists, self-obsession

02:55 pm: Bob is 3.4 kilos
The scar on her throat has completely healed over, and the vet snipped out the two stitches. I booked a follow-up appointment for 8 weeks time - bit over; 16th September. Now I just have to feed her up so she regains the half-kilo she lost (she used to be 3.9 kilos).

The fur is beginning to regrow there.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

11:07 pm: *yawn*
Taking Bob to have her stitches snipped tomorrow: also check her weight...

Tags: bob

02:51 pm: What bloody mouse is this?
( Feline mayhem )

Tags: bob, cats, wolf

05:47 pm: Hee!


By the way, I have discovered who the dominant cat in my household is: yup, still Bob, even if Wolf's bigger. Bob growls: Wolf gets out of the way.

Tags: bob, cat politics, wolf

06:28 pm: Bob home...
The vet said the tumour was quite large, but "these tumours are never malignant" - which, given Gallus was killed by a non-malignant tumour, and Cally died because of a (possibly unrelated, but still) tumour in her stomach wall, was not as reassuring as perhaps he'd hoped. Still. She's okay.

But the operation is over (£343! Good thing I'd rounded the vet's estimate up in my head to £350, no?) and Bob seems fine. Is looking at me a bit suspiciously and declining to come over for petting, after I pushed her into her cat basket this morning.

I need to take her back to have her stitches out in 10 days, and intend to have her weighed then - she was 3.3 kilos this morning, so hopefully will have gained some weight even in that small time. And then book another appointment for a senior cat checkup three months after that, by which time she should have put on lots of weight, I hope, and so on - I think I need to start bringing her in for "senior cat appointments" - just to have her weighed and check the tumour isn't recurring. There shouldn't be a charge for these - there wasn't for Gallus.

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

12:28 am: Wolf, the Mighty Hunter
Wolf just brought me a cow.

(It's about as long as my hand, white-and-black and fluffy.)

He's also yelling at me when the cow doesn't move around enough by itself to be interesting. Unfortunately, while it did once have a string attachment, some overenthusiastic Mighty Hunter broke it some time ago.

( wibbling about Bob )

Tags: bob, wolf, worrying about my cats

06:53 pm: Bob and her thyroids
( So I decided )

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

05:34 pm: Bob and her dancing thyroids
Bob has a tumour on one lobe of her thyroid gland.

She weighs 3.4 kilos - half a kilo less than she weighed 18 months ago. She is otherwise quite healthy.

The vet says he can tell she has a tumour on one lobe because (a) the blood tests confirmed this and (b) he could feel a small swelling. (Which he did not mention at the time, but then, well, that's doctors for you.)

( In which I wibble about the options )

Tags: bob, worrying about my cats

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

11:32 am: OMG. Wolf is a sexual harasser!
I was working out that as I got Wolf on 7th August, and he was six weeks old then, that puts his birthday at about 25th June - so I can call him a midsummer cat and remember his birthday that way.

He is very nearly a year old, and he appears to be going through whatever kind of puberty a castrated cat can go through, housed with a human and a female cat who was spayed 10 years ago (Bob was 8 when I got her in December 2005: I keep not quite wanting to do the arithmetic, but that makes her 11 this year).

This morning, Bob was curled up around my hand and I was petting her lovely furry tummy and she was purring happily - and Wolf leaped up on the bed, eyed us both, did some sniffing around Bob's bum (which Bob ignored) and then he settled himself down behind her, which Bob also ignored... and then he bit her on the back of the neck and clung to her, which she growled at. Eventually he got bored and let go, and now he's sitting on the windowsill chirping at the birds, but...

Oh, Wolf.

( more seriously )

Tags: bob, cat politics, feminism, wolf

03:25 pm: Class on TV
I am still thinking about a comment alixtii made on her journal. Just out of interest, what's your impression, imaginary Internet people, of the difference between class representation on British TV and American TV?

Never mind (for the moment) how you yourself define upper, middle, and working class: what shows currently (or historically) on British TV portrayed which classes, and which ones did you watch? And what is the difference between this and American TV?

Tags: blake's 7, bob, class, doctor who, fannishness, m*a*s*h, tv addiction

06:20 am: God damn all Mighty Hunters (and wasps)
Last night, a wasp got into the house. A big one. That's OK, all I wanted to do was coorie down under the duvets and go to sleep, and all the wasp wanted to do was find a bright light and fly into it and stay there until it died.

But Wolf wanted to catch the wasp.

Bob is lying on the bed beside me looking like an aged and sensible cat who isn't going to try catching flying insects.

Wolf knocked over my bedsight light, a couple of other things including my glasses, and is now who knows where.

The wasp, I think, is probably lying unconscious somewher of too much cat or too much artificial light...

...and I fully planned to sleep in this morning.

Tags: bob, wolf

09:47 am: Holy cow! ...or rather, cat!
Both my cats are curled up peaceably on my bed, inches apart, both washing themselves in that comfortable relaxed way cats do when "hey, nothing else to do, not sleepy: might as well groom".

Bob just sniffed at the back of Wolf's neck - Wolf has proper grown-up cat collar now, but the only silver-luminous one I could find was a flea-collar, which ordinarily I wouldn't have considered - and when Wolf turned to sniff back, Bob did a rather lazy "hiss! spit!" but neither of them moved.

Translated into human-type dialogue:

Bob: Hmm, what's that you're wearing?
Wolf: Unh... hi. What did you have for breakfast?
Bob: I still hate you, you know.
Wolf: Yeah, yeah.

I just took twenty minutes I didn't really have to spare to clean out their cat litter trays, but, well. Their cat litter does, in fact, cover up the odour of cat piss, and to a certain extent of catshit. However, when wet, it exudes a certain unpleasant chemical odour of its own, which is nicer by comparison, but only by comparison.

I try not to think about how bad it probably is for the environment.

Tags: bob, cats, wolf

09:23 pm: Photo requests 1: Wolf and Bob and Dalek and Wol
( Wolf then and now )

( Bob and Wolf, more or less together )

( Dalek, lurking, with sidekick )

These photos were requested by muninnhuginn and ide_cyan and ruthi.

Tags: bob, cats, dalek, photos, wolf