After yesterday’s visit to the beach, this is how Hound spent her evening…

Sleeping on the sofa, knackered from her run on the beach

She’s getting old, knackered after only an hours running about.

Today dawned effing cold but clear and bright, so we decided to take Hound off to the beach. Well, we were up in the area anyway for other stuff (delivering bits that Herself will need next weekend, of which more at some other point) so it made sense to go up to Wells-next-the-sea as well.

Hound loves the beach, and thinks it’s a fantastic way to spend an hour or two. And to be honest, I’m hard-pressed to disagree with Hound on that score. Even in early March, a day at the beach is ace. Many many moons ago I lived in Weymouth for two years, and the ability to go and sit by/on the beach whenever I wanted was probably one of the best bits of living there.

So Hound spent an hour running round the beach and then walking back through the pine barrens between the beach and the car-park.

We’ve had other stuff to do this afternoon, but Hound thinks it’s been a good day anyway.

Yet again, the animals have proved this weekend that they are very very weird.

In at least the last six years, Psycho Cat has never come into the living room – he’s always been a solitary little bastard, only really coming in to the bedroom for a fuss or a stroke at night. In Bracknell his domain was always upstairs, and here he’s got one room where the dog never goes, and free run of the rest. But he’s still never come in to the living room.

This weekend though, that’s all changed. With the new living-room furniture, he’s been in to sit on both of us at one time or another. Hound isn’t really happy about this – she’s used to having dominion over Herself’s time in particular, so there’s been some serious jealousy going on.

As I type this, Hound’s lying in her basket in one corner of the room, and Psycho Cat is asleep (and purring) down by the side of my leg. This is, frankly, unheard of.

I’ve no idea what’s changed Psycho Cat’s mind about this state of affairs. It’s  not necessarily the new furniture, because we’ve done that before and he didn’t change his behaviour.  I’m not complaining though – it’s just very very weird.

Recently we had the annual shaving of the cat.

He’s a Turkish Van, and we find that with the season change his winter coat starts coming out, only to clag up with the new fur underneath, leading to lumps of fur like dreadlocks. So every year, off he goes to the vets to get all the lumps cut out. And this is what he looks like today…

Yes, he is as furious as he looks

One of the things that’s been good about the end of January has been seeing the days lengthening again. I know, it’s something that happens every year, and every year I appreciate it.

Over the weekend I was able to go out and give corn to the chickens at 4.30. A couple of weeks previously it was already dark by then, and they were getting locked up for the night at that time. In the mornings when I go up to let them out before I leave for work I now don’t need to take the torch up with me in order to do so.

It’s now dark at about 5.30 or so, and getting better every day. Soon I’ll be able to see the house in daylight when I leave and when I come back. (Currently it’s OK when I leave, pitch-black when I get home)

This is A Very Good Thing.

One of the jobs this weekend involved replacing the cat-flap in the back door.

During the cold-spell, the plastic of the cat-flap itself got brittle, and one part of it snapped off. Wedging it back in was fine until one of the cats went through it, at which point the sodding thing fell to the floor.

In the end we covered the gap with cardboard, just to stop the draught and preventing all the heat in the house escaping. This obviously caused some annoyance in Psycho Cat, which he demonstrated in his normal charming fashion.

We had tried a flap from another manufacturer, but that didn’t work at all. So on Saturday I went down to the local pet store, and found that they have flaps made by CatMate. They didn’t have just the spare doors (and even the online stores appear to be out of stock) so I ended up getting a complete new catflap, although we only needed the door itself.

It’s all sorted now, and the job’s complete – it’d just be nice for these things to not be such a complete faff all the time. Oh, and that flap is supposed to be unbreakable, too – so we’ll try sending it off to the manufacturers, and see what happens.