04.57 pm
Back again – and as I’m quite sure that you’re all feeling a wee bit anxious about how our sweet little Mephistopheles fared today, I shall make it first off the list of “things wot happened to us today” to tell you about! Actually, it was first off the list of things wot we had to do today anyway, as the blissfully unaware little guy had to be at the surgery by 08.00 am! He actually arrived at about 08.06 am, but in he went. You know,this is his third trip to the Vet since we brought him home about a month ago – the first time, his behaviour was absolutely appalling! Anyone would have thought that he was a feral kitten! We think that for the first nine weeks of his life he’d had pretty much no interaction or socialisation with humans at all, and therefore all humans were giant monsters to be treated with yells and screams of fear, hatred and loathing, yadda, yadda, yadda – I was quite ashamed and embarrassed by him! 😳 Strangely, when we brought him back home from that first visit to the Vet, he seemed to have decided that – maybe we weren’t quite so bad, after all, and that maybe, if we were very quiet and good, and didn’t make any sudden grabs for him, he’d even let us pat him – just a little bit! 😉 By the time we took him up for his booster shots, a couple of weeks alter, we were “his” peoples, and he walked around the surgery with a lot more confidence and a bit of a swagger, trusting that we wouldn’t let anything horrible happen to him. But we did! We asked them to cut his claws! He wasn’t very impressed with us for that, but he’d forgiven and forgotten by the time we got home and we gave him some dinner! 🙂 The Vet was quite impressed with him too, and said that he’d improved a lot! (although that wouldn’t have been too hard!) This time, they were most impressed with his progress! Well, he’s almost seventeen weeks old now, so one would hope that his demeanour would have improved a great deal! Anyway, back to today’s tail – er, tale… We got up a bit later than we’d meant to, so Julian flung on some clothes, stuffed a sleepy-eyed and somewhat confused Satai into the cat carry cage, while a somewhat anxious looking Sal sat watching, and wondering what was going on! Off they went, and Sal decided to stick to me like glue! I collected their supper dishes, and took the opportunity to give their table mats a thorough cleaning. Next, I gave Sal his breakfast, and followed my normal routine. We’d be told that we’d probably be able to pick Satai up “sometime this afternoon”, so we had all sorts of things planned for the day – including my Warfarin blood test, which I should have had yesterday! Julian duly arrived back, we had breakfast, and were just starting to block out our plans for the day when the phone rang – it was the Vet! He was all done, and we could pick him up in about an hour! I still had to clean the cat boxes and brush my teeth! Aaarrgghhh! We wouldn’t really even have time for coffee after I’d dealt with my chores – but ya gotta get yer priorities right, yanno? So while I raced around cleaning out all the cat boxes, Julian made some coffee and cooled it down, so that I’d be able to drink it as soon as I’d finished my work! We raced off to have my blood test done, crossing all our fingers and toes that there wasn’t going to be a whole crowd of people ahead of us waiting for blood tests, and then we shot straight off to the Vet to pick up his royal highness! He didn’t seem to be too put out by the whole experience – he was wide awake, and bright-eyed, if not bushy-tailed – but starting to get a bit grizzly and annoyed about still being in his little carry cage – he wanted to get out and play! (just out of surgery, and the kid wants to play! *eye roll*) All the nurses at the surgery said how much better behaved he’d been this time round, we nodded politely, smiled, and took the little brat home – where we found Sal, sitting with his nose pressed to the garage door, anxiously waiting for his precious little baby brother to come home! This was the kitten that he’d hated, and hissed and growled at, at first – now he hates being separated from him! 🙂
So Satai is fine – he’s been playing, wrestling with Sal, getting into mischief, climbing to the roof of the Penthouse and attacking the poor, long-suffering, “sacrificial” plastic palm from the top, instead of the bottom, and generally acting as though nothing at all had happened to him. At the moment he’s having a bit of dinner – only half of what he usually has, said the Vet – but I have a feeling that we’ll probably be giving him the other half in a couple of hours! The poor little lamb hasn’t had anything to eat since ten o’clock last night!
Did I tell you all that those two little wretches have worked out how to open my bathroom door? They’re not allowed in there, because I have a real live non-plastic bamboo plant in there (you know those small, “lucky bamboo” “twigs” that they sell in little pots in some supermarkets?) There are also things like a very delicate stained-glass clock, perfume bottles, and other things that would make my very annoyed indeed if they were to go “shatter-tinkle”, should they get “accidentally” knocked onto the floor. I’m sure you understand… So I keep the bathroom door shut, and so far (so far!) they haven’t shown much interest in trying to get in… unless I’m in there! The minute I go into the bathroom and shut the door, they’re both breaking their necks to get in there! I sit here at the computer for most of the day, or I go into the lounge (or onto the very comfortable couch in here) to read, or whatever – and they totally ignore me – I’m “part of the furniture”… the minute I get up and head towards the bathroom, I’ll look down, and find I have two little shadows trotting along at my heels! Why?! Sad has taken to sitting outside the bathroom door waiting for me to come out, but last night… I’m doing what people usually do in the bathroom, when all of a sudden, I hear two lots of plaintive little “meows”, begging me to let the owners of said “cat’s chorus” in, and then I see two tiny pairs of paws poking and scrabbling under the sliding door… which they managed to slide back just enough for them to get their heads through…. and then they were in! I was highly amused – and impressed! I thought it would still be a while before they were big enough and strong enough to slide the door back that much! (it’s much wider than an average sliding door, and therefore quite a bit heavier than your average, or garden variety, sliding door!) So now, when I go to the bathroom, I have to remember to lock the ruddy door behind me! Talking about locks, we noticed Satai, newly home from having his little “snip” today, leaping up for the “latch” type handle of the laundry door! Luckily, he’s still not quite “tall” enough to reach it properly – but he will be soon – and it’s obvious that he’s been giving this “door opening” exercise a fair bit of thought! The laundry door is nearly always kept locked, so even if he had been able to swing on the handle, he wouldn’t have been able to open it – but he could have with the front door, which is a little lower! This is why we’ve recently had the front door fitted with a second deadlock – we thought this might happen – I used to have a Burmese/Abyssinian cross called Boo (short for Boojums) who was mind-bogglingly intelligent, and who learnt how to open doors like that – we ended up replacing all the door latch-type handles with round knobs! Even as smart as he was, he didn’t have the opposable thumbs needed to turn those knobs!
So there you go – apart from playing a bit of WoW this afternoon, that’s about all that’s been happening today! Oh, I got the results of my Warfarin blood test back… My INR has come down to 2.6 from 2.7, which is about where it’s supposed to be, my dosage remains the same – 2.5 mg from Monday to Saturday, and 3.5 mg on Sundays. My next test isn’t until March 30th, so it seems I’m keeping fairly steady on this dosage…
Food stuffs for today. I don’t usually mention breakfast, because it’s nearly always the same – two Uncle Toby’s Vita Brits, about 200 gm extra bran (usually Sultana Bran, because I like the sultanas!) 200 ml of skinny milk, and half a sliced up banana. Since we’ve been going to Bushy Park though, I’ve been buying a lot more fruit – especially plums, which I stew. They’re so nice, so instead of the banana, I have two stewed plum halves, with a bit of their liquid. This time I bought Amber Jewel Plums, and they’re the nicest plums I’ve ever had! Well, stewed, anyway. For lunch I had a sourdough sandwich, with commercially sliced cold roast beef, some really yummy Cheddar/Tasty cheese, and some Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney – which now, you might be surprised to find out, has actually started to exist! I’ve never been able to source it online, and really felt that it had to be a fragment of my tormented imagination – but here it is, in all its glory (and it really is very, very nice!) ladies and gentlepersons, I give you…. (drum roll please!) Baxters Fig, Date & Balsamic Chutney! For dinner tonight we’re having steak – but it’s almost ready, so I’ll have to continue this a wee bit later! back soon! 🙂
10.08 pm
Ecco mi ancora! Here I am again – it was a beautiful little piece of fillet steak, which we had with steamed sugar-snap peas, chips, and half an organic, home-grown, very delicious, tomato each! For dessert I had a small-ish Williams pear, followed by an Apple Le Rice. Hmm… I think I might have said that I was going to have the Apple Le Rice last night, but if I did, I’m sorry, I lied was mistaken… because I had a Moo Banana Caramel Sundae yoghurt last night… The Moo brand yoghurts are extremely yummy, and my current favourites – I like the Sticky Apple and Organic Honey one best, with the Boysenberry and Super Acai a close second, followed by the Lemon Delicious one – do try them though – they’re even nicer than the Vaalia and CHOBANI yoghurts! I was also wrong about having chips last night, because unbeknownst to me, Julian had steamed some of our very own, organic, home-grown baby potatoes, which we had with a teaspoon or two of plain Greek yoghurt instead of butter…
Weigh-in this morning: told you! Back to the old see-saw slash yo-yo merry-go-round! This morning I weighed in at 73.3 kg – down 7 points. Go figure! Tomorrow I’ll prolly be back up to 73.9 kg or something 
And there it is – all of the day’s doin’s chez nous (more or less!) Tomorrow my very favourite eldest daughter is coming over for a fun day of lazing around watching pre-recorded TV shows. Oh, my goodness! You’ll never guess what just happened! When we picked up Beelzebub, sorry Mephistopheles, this afternoon, we forgot to pick up his “certicate¹ of sterilisation” – needed so that the City of Whitehorse Council doesn’t treble his registration fee². So never mind, they very kindly emailed it to us, and Julian printed it out… I just heard a heartrending wail of “Nooo-oo-oooo!” coming from the kitchen! Messy Toffee had *giggle* chewed up the bottom corner of the newly and beautifully printed out Certificate! It’s quite mangled – shredded, even! 😀 I guess that tells us what he thought of his little “snip trip” this morning! 😉 And that’s really about it from me for tonight – finally! 🙂
Do call in again tomorrow night to find out what Lee and I watched on TV, how many holes were ripped in Daddy’s trousers (if any!) and what other shenanigans the Dreadful Duo got up to while we were distracted by the TV shows… (and I’ve just been told that they “found” the bowl of cherries that was in the middle of the dining room table – I have yet to be appraised of the damage! ) I tell you truly! There’s never a dull – or peaceful – moment, when you have two kittens… but wouldn’t life be dull, dry, and boring without them! 🙂 Until tomorrow though, do try to bee good, don’t forget that words are but pictures of our thoughts, and remember to always drive carefully, to keep warm – or cool – depending on your preference, and to look after yourselves… but above all, please remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
¹ An old family joke – don’t worry about it! 😉
² City of Whitehorse Council Registration fees for cats:
Sterilised: $32.00
Un-Sterilised: $96.00
My Word! 