Vet Visit
Posted: Thu 9 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Today, Psycho Cat is at the vets again.
Primarily it’s another de-matt (AKA “getting shaved”) as he’s ended up totally gunked up again down his belly and left-hand-side. We don’t know where he’s been going, or what he’s been doing to get in such a state, but it’s been pretty annoying for him.
Also, for whatever reason, while he’s quite happy to let us brush out his right-hand side, attempting to do the same on the left results in a full-on attack with claws and teeth. I know, as the scratches on my right hand have only just healed. There’s a couple of lumps in the fur that seem to cause him pain – we don’t yet know if these lumps are just really tightly-packed matts of fur, or if they’re something under the skin, so that’s something that’ll be checked out at the vets at the same time.
Because the cat is such a fucking Psycho, he needs to have a general anaesthetic while he’s being done – the last time someone tried doing it without the GA, they ended up needing a visit to the doctors themselves to get stitches and a tetanus shot.
However, having the GA means that the fuzzy little bastard isn’t supposed to eat after 9pm the previous evening. And you just try telling a cat that.
So come 4am this morning, all we had was whining and whinging from Psycho Cat that he was hungry. And boy, does he make a production job of it. There’s no way to sleep through it – it’s the full-on yowls of “Hungry. Feed Me!” coupled with scratching on the wicker chair in the bedroom (conveniently also guaranteed to wake Hound up) and jumping on the bed in order to yell closer to us.
In short, he’s a little shit. It’s not even like he’s actually hungry – he just wants to have a couple of mouthfuls of food when He wants, rather than when we say he can. And if he can’t have the food, he’ll make a complete pain in the arse of himself ’til he can.
Still, he’s at the vets now, so I guess that’s punishment enough for being a little fucker last night…
Bitten
Posted: Tue 30 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weather 2 Comments »Great – it’s that time of year where the horseflies come out again, which means I get a couple of viciously nasty bug bites.
I don’t know what the hell is in a horsefly’s bite (injection, whatever) but my body reacts badly to it – not an allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock, or anything like that – but the site of the bite swells significantly. It also itches like an absolute motherfucker, which doesn’t help.
Generally the swelling stays for about 48-72 hours, and there’s nothing I’ve yet found that’ll do anything at all to it – piriton, witch hazel, cold compress, anti-histamines in general, all has no effect whatsoever. It’s incredibly annoying.
At the moment I’ve got two of these bites, which have lasted from Sunday. They should be easing off by now – or at least by the end of today – just in time to get some more this coming weekend, I’m sure.
All told it’s just another reason to get a bit more annoyed by summer.
Late
Posted: Fri 26 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »Why is it that when you know you’ve got a really long day and/or late night the next day, you end up having a really shitty night, and are thus even more knackered?
Yes, it’s what happened to me last night – tonight I’m seeing AC/DC at Wembley Stadium, which means I’m going to be travelling down to London today, seeing the gig, and then driving back – I reckon we’ll be home for about 2am, give or take.
Which of course meant that last night Hound was a total pain, it was horridly warm, and I think I slept properly for about three hours at best.
Should make today a long day – fun, but a long day…
Meltdown
Posted: Mon 15 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weather Leave a comment »There are some times where I really do feel sorry for Hound. And today is one of those days.
As I’ve said before, Hound’s mental state really doesn’t hold up well when it comes to thunderstorms (or fireworks, the noise of jumbo jets, gales, and many other things – it’s a long list) and today has had one of the biggest/longest thunderstorms I’ve ever seen.
In this case, the thunder started rumbling at around 1pm – fortunately I was working at home – and Hound straight away came into the office to lie under the desk on my feet. She hasn’t really moved since then ’til now (it’s currently nearly 7pm, and there’s still the odd rumble of thunder going on) except for one mad fifteen minutes just before the Main Act of the storm some three and a half hours in, when I was dying for the loo and had to move. Cue utter meltdown.
The bit where the poor nutbag really lost it though was in the Main Act, where we had pretty much constant thunder/lightning, and an incredible dollop of hail that left ice on the ground maybe half an inch deep. During that time, Hound tried (as usual) to burrow out through the wall – she still hasn’t figured out that if she actually succeeded in burrowing out through the wall, she’d be outside, in the environment that so terrifies her. I know, she panics, and isn’t really capable of that kind of logic, but all the same you’d at least hope she’d figure that one out.
So we’ve got some gouges in the walls under the desk where she’s tried her burrow for freedom, and she’s now still sleeping (or at least lying) on my feet, so I can’t go anywhere.
So while she drives me potty, on occasion I do have some sympathy for the poor cow.
Still, at least we haven’t had floods etc., like some of the nearby towns/villages – it looks like our bit of Norfolk has been the worst hit by all this.
Low-Flying
Posted: Thu 11 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Cynicism, Domestic Leave a comment »Over the last couple of weeks (and for the next six or so) we’ve had lots of low-flying aircraft over the house, and it’s down to this – the Stanford Training Area (known locally as STANTA) has converted a portion of its land into an Afghan village for training soldiers and there’s a lopping great training exercise on at the moment.
In general I don’t mind too much about the aircraft etc. – although Hound has a real issue when they do the artillery fire, as it sounds like thunder, which sends her into a total tailspin – although on occasion I do get to the point (normally around 9,9.30 in the evening) when I think they might just be taking the piss a bit.
Still, it’s interesting to see what it’s being used for, and the way things have changed now, from the “Eastern European village” scenario for training to the “Afghan village/set-up”.
And it rather makes you wonder just how long the Armed Forces and/or Government think the War on Drugs Oil Terror might actually go on for, doesn’t it?
In Absentia
Posted: Mon 8 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Travel 2 Comments »Yet again, for whatever reason, the weekend resulted in no updates on D4D. Shocking, I know.
There’s no particular reason for not updating – well, there is, yet again I’m playing catch-up on a bout of depression that’s been hanging around for a few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) which is probably the subject of another post I keep writing and re-writing in my head at the moment.
Anyway, Friday was primarily spent away from electronic devices, which kind of negated the entire “posting on D4D” thing. I was involved in looking after various animals of the family – several of aforementioned family had gone off to attend a funeral, so I was on “letting them out for dumps” duty. Yes, the morning was still my own, but was still not overly connected to t’Internet, so there we go.
Saturday was just downtime, in several senses of the word, and resulted in no written output at all.
Sunday was primarily spent Out, as we decided to take Hound to the beach (in this case Walcott, and then (briefly) Cromer) and also brought in a visit to a craft place along the way.
And that was the weekend. So it goes.