A Heavy Heart Remembers

Today, two years ago, my heart was heavy as I made the last journey to the vets with Sam my beloved Jack Russell Terrier who was 17 years old but had reached the end of his days.

He was struggling to manage, and working all day meant I couldn't watch over him to ensure that he was comfortable and coping with the day to day living. If he went out into the garden, he couldn't remember how to get back into the house, life became bewildering to him with the little sight that he had and I can remember crying when I came home to find him cold and in the garden not knowing how long he had been out there..

He didn't want his favourite treat of cheese, something he was always guaranteed to do. He just wanted to be held by me, and when I phoned the vets to book him in, he just turned to look at me as if to say I had done the right thing as it was his time to leave.

Sam was a dog who was always a people dog, but took no notice of the vets that day, and they agreed that the time had come.

I am in tears as I write this, just remembering that day, yet the pictures I have of him show his character, and one day I will again have a dog when I have time to give him the lifestyle he will deserve, it won't be Sam being replaced for how do you replace something so unique?

Update on the ratz

Thought I would catch you up on the news of the ratz..

Gus and Barnie have really settled in, rarely now do you get a nip (or even a bite) from them now, though I am still more cautious with Barnie as her eyesight is so poor that with her it is more of a retaliation than vicious.

They both usually wait at the doorway to their cage first thing in the morning for their breakfast treat which might be anything from a cracker, a dog biscuit or even piece of pasta... in the evening we usually spend time playing while Gus chatters to me asking (pleading even) for her yoghurt drop which is usually forthcoming...

Gus is happy to come out and sit on my shoulders while I clean the shelves and the rest of the cage, Barnie on the other hand is more reserved and will sit quite happily in her hammock while I do this.. I don't mind at all as it is hard enough to control one rat without two running around.

Their favourite treat of all time is cheese, they don't get this very often.. as it is full of fat and bad calories... but they have come to know and love their yoghurt drops, with dried coconut as their other favourite..

Most of my visitors, viewing the house, have been very positive about the ratz even going so far as to praise them.... which is opposite to most peoples views when you tell them you have pet rats..

Hopefully I will be able to get some pictures, but I have to be a bit careful.. don't want to scare them..

Freecycling - the joys and the despair

Those of you that know me, know my love of recycling or freecycling... one man's rubbish is another man's treasure..

I put a request on my local freecycle branch for some kitten stuff, as Piran and Saffy are coming back with me after my Interview on the 9th October... they have to be introduced to the ratz before they get too old and set in their ways... so home they are coming...

If I haven't mentioned them before it was all very up in the air, but I decided that I was going to have some new pets and it would be a while before I could entertain a dog, a cat would be more up my street. A family member has had two litters from each of her three cats in quick succession and a quick chat to her had me pick out Piran who gets his name because he is mostly black and white, then I had another thought and decided two was better than one, so Saffy was included as he is all black with blue eyes...

Friday saw me driving to a nearby village, en-route to a big pet's store as I needed more rat food, and collecting a travelling box.. a good size and a good scrub will see that as good as new and certainly at the price of being free.. thanks to Hazel for that one.

So yesterday involved a (what was supposed to be 35 mins drive to North London) traumatic drive to a location which is too close for comfort to the smoke, involving mapquest directions which didn't match the roads near London Colney (due to the bypass); I eventually collected a covered-in litter tray, a learner kitten tray and a stack of goodies from Emma ... thank you so much for that it was really appreciated and apologies for arriving about 40 minutes late and taking my phone calls for assistance in finding you :-)

I am preparing the study as the room of choice to be the nursery for the kittens as during the day I don't want an open war zone in the house.. so over the weekend, I packed and decluttered this room and now just have to paint it and I am going to get a doorway, hopefully through freecycle, so that the little 'uns can be caged I mean kept securely in their domain.

Pictures will follow as and when I can get them off my phone...lol

Hectic Weekend..

Hit the first hitch of selling the house... least said about that the better but the estate agents are working hard on progressing the sale and hopefully longer term all will be well..

I have a stack of paper an inch thick to complete, some of which I have no idea of what the answers are.. oh well I can but try my best.

This weekend I will be hoping to visit three or four properties in cornwall to see... one of which was first of all in, then out because it was sold, then in because it fell through, then out for another reason and now it is back again because the reason is fairly insignificant. That and three other possibles, one of which is overlooking a rugby ground.. sounds good to me.

Saturday I ventured into Beyondsville, a market town housing a mobile phone shop as mine had yet again gone for repair. The incompetents that took my phone returned it minus the battery and the shop was full of similarly disgruntled customers so I decided to visit an old favourite shop across the way.. I headed upstairs and just as I reached the top I was stung on the hand by a wasp.. the odd word crossed my lips and I tried to ignore the stabbing pain while the wasp ambled merrily on his way without a second thought. I didn't get what I went in for but in the end got something else, which on reflection I don't like... not a great visit and now because of the mobile I have to go back in when the battery has been returned, not likely to be for at least two weeks.

Saturday I bade farewell to the fish, which were leaving to go to other outside ponds.. I was particularly sorry to say goodbye to gutsy and his pod of goldies, he/she would always come and be fed, morning and evening and the house seems emptier without them all.

Yesterday was a mix of organising the packed boxes in the garage, tidying it up so I could put more stuff in and then mowing the grass. I admit by 4pm I was tuckered out and couldn't even begin to think of starting anything else in nearly 30 degrees of heat... but it was lovely weather.

Today is special

3rd August 1990 was when Sam and Teg were born

3rd August 1992 was when Mum passed away.... leaving us bereft and hurting. but she wouldn't have known anything much about it which was a comfort to us that she left behind; it's hard to believe that 17 years have gone by since that day.

and who could forget
3rd August 1938 is Sir Terry Wogan's Birthday... and he is working today! hopefully Lady Wogan will have a nice big birthday cake waiting for him at Wogan Towers.

Today is a special day, for memories both good and bad and even the bad ones have good things about them.

Happy Birthday and coincidences

To my Mum who would have been 78 today and who sadly died in 1992 at the very early age of 61. She was born in Gibraltar and always said this allowed her to run a shop there.. does it count for her direct descendants?

She was the one who picked out Sam and Teg as she was always dog mad, and spookily they were born on 3 Aug in 1990 - the spooky bit, this was the day she died in 1992.

Also, Dad and I brought the car a Peugeot 306 on this day in 2001, we had committed ourselves to it just before going on holiday as there were a few minor things that needed addressing (minor scratches/blemishes etc) and when we got the paperwork we found that the car had been officially registered on my birthday which is the end of March - guess it was always meant to be :-)

I know you can always read more into patterns that is actually there but this has always struck me as slightly spooky.

Fished out

Last night after work, I fished the remaining fish out of the gloop that was the water feature in the garden. It was full of green sludge, water if you will, that looked as though it could support nothing useful and I had an aquarium inside ready and waiting for the occupants of the feature.

When I had the bright idea to have a water feature in the garden, about 4 years ago (or thereabouts), I didn't intend to have fish but a neighbour who had a pond full of koi carp and other fish let me have some pond weed for oxygenation purposes. So I filled the tub up with weed, rocks and gravel as well as water and sat and enjoyed the water irises, both blue and yellow, as they bloomed in the middle of the lawn.

It was about 4 months later when I was sitting on the grass, admiring the beetles and water boatmen on the surface of the water when I noticed movement. Somehow when I had brought the weed from my neighbours pond it had contained eggs and I was suddenly the owner of some tiny little fishlets.

I originally counted 22 fishlets in the pond, and various of them succumbed to cats, ill-health, the visit of a heron to the garden and cold winters and last night I took out 10 medium sized fish from the tub and relocated them to the aquarium in the kitchen where they are happily swimming around wondering why they could suddenly see movement after months in green sludge.

Chances are that eventually they will get far too big for the tank and will have to go into a pond but for the moment, my total number of pets has just gone up and I am trying to think of names for them all. Pics will follow when I find my camera in the chaos that is the house in disorder.

Any other cures

If anyone has any pet cures for insomnia I would be grateful. I am getting tired of listening to Radio 7 into the small hours of the morning and finding I am listening to a repeat of the programme I heard earlier on that night.

I wish I could just relax and sleep the night away, instead I am trying not to rely on sleeping tablets as they make me so tired in the morning and still only give me about 4 hours of rest a night that I don't feel any the less tired for taking them vs not taking them.

I don't try to go to bed wound up, have tried sitting quietly reading a book though the ratz are usually bouncing around late into the evening so perhaps not as quiet as it could be.

One advantage is that I am usually awake and at the gym by 7.30am, and have it mostly to myself at that hour of the morning to get my 25 minutes of treadmill hell in and then another 10-15 minutes on the cross trainer so I have no excuse when putting on my bike wear of not being able to get into it later in the year.

Ratz

Understandbly with the changes the ratz have been a little unsettled, and reverted to disappearing as soon as I moved a muscle. I made contact with a fellow rat owner who lives in Luton and she said to feed them yoghurt initially from off a teaspoon but then put it on my knuckles as the 'girls' cannot open their jaws wide enough to bite down hard and the teaspoon was to discourage them from getting any biting satsifaction.

Well last night I decided to try the yoghurt on the knuckles and what do you know, they absolutely loved it; the bonus is that they are taking in my scent as a provider of something nice rather than me being scary and big to them. Enough so that Gus decided to explore the top of the cage, with the help of my arm to climb out of the cage, and she used the same mechanism to get back into it so I have high hopes of eventually getting the girls hand tame before too long.

PS for those that are interested when a rat is licking you it has quite a rough tongue, similar to a cat's tongue as it rasps rather than the softness of a dog.

Tickets are booked for France, spoken to Zeltus who is going to pick me up from the airport and another friend is taking me to Standstead save me having to pay the high costs of parking and the same friend is also going to look after the Ratz for me. Just waiting for the shopping list of things that Zeltus and his wife want me to bring over to them as they usually want a quantity of English provisions that you can't get hold of for love nor money in France.

The promised pictures

This is Barnie, aka Barncoose... much more inquisitive and always the first to check things out... She already has a couple of nicknames, one of which is Barnie Big Ears as her ears are amazingly big; but very cute!

Barnie leaps around the cage sometimes kangarooing on her back legs, so the tank they are in is already looking very messy and in fact last night they were removed to their new second hand cage... both girls were very good at being handled and didn't even try to bite.

Tolgus, or Gussie, is much more skittish than Barnie but very prettily marked with her white belly and feet. We had a problem with the water bottle, not supplying water and put a dish in it which Gussie is taking a long drink from in this pic. In fact later Gussie learnt to punch the water bottle to release the vacuum so we believe that she is probably the more intelligent of the two while Barnie is more the explorer and a bit of a klutz at heart.

The two of them were quiet for about 5 minutes after the move and then they were off, this picture was taken after about 20 mins and they were both climbing the back wall to explore their surroundings... the green hammock is furlined for their comfort and the other toys came with the cage courtesy of a freecycle member who came forward after I asked if anyone had a cage for 2 rats.

Introducing ......

Last night we arrived home, at just before 7.30pm with our new pets a pair of eight week old Dumbo's and while we watched them scamper around their new playpen we mulled over some names... some were dismissed, and others considered but by 8.30pm we had christened them :

Tolgus - Black with a white underbelly (to be known as Gussie)
Barncoose - White with a brown head and a white flash on her nose (to be known as Barnie)

Both are female, and have different characters. Barnie is the more outgoing of the two, exploring first while Gussie tried to stay in the carrier until the last possible minute and I had to assist her in moving to her new home with a gentle push.

When they had tentatively explored their domain, they then started playing together, first one getting the better of the other but it soon turned around to the other one winning again. It was fascinating to watch them interacting together bouncing around and tumbling in a heap when they got tired they would curl up and sleep.

Pictures to follow later, as we didn't want to get them too stressed last night..

If you are still curious..then we are now the proud owners of two female Dumbo rats and the litter tray is because they can be trained to use one to save messing up their cage so not a bad clue but not what you may have thought either

Monday Mornings

It might be mild, but wet and miserable.. which begs the question, would we rather have it continually cold and dry or grey, dank and wet? I know which one I would vote for.

We visited our prospective pets, currently named Salt and Pepper (though this is very likely to change), on Saturday and filled in the adoption forms, we won't hear until Wednesday as to whether our application is successful. These days being a childless, petless couple seems to count for nothing with animal rehoming centres.

This was after spending a fair amount at the Pet City place to ensure we have suitable food, bedding, litter tray lining, toys etc.

Yesterday, we spent tidying up the living room and making space for S&P's new home, it seems rather empty at the moment, but we hope soon for the patter of tiny feet to bless our house. Of course SOH and I can't agree on which one is going to be 'ours' and the only fair thing will be to wait and see who gets picked by whom (they not us).

No clues as to what S&P are, you will have to wait and see when the great reveal will show you but I think you will be a little surprised.