Monday, March 29, 2010

Egg on my face

After crawling around the kitchen and laundry floors with a spirit level, lifting the vinyl and generally proving to myself that the puddles on the kitchen floor could only have come from Boy-cat, I shut the kitchen door the other night, put his food and water in the family room and denied him access for the night. Lo and behold, next morning there was another puddle.

It had to be the fridge, so I put a towel along side it on the floor and sure enough, it became damp. The fridge is not dripping into the drip tray and I am going to have to pull it away from the wall again and remove the back so that I can see what is going on with it.

Meanwhile, Boy-cat is enjoying the extra attention which I have been giving him, is eating better since he came home from hospital, is growing his winter coat and really looking very sleek and healthy. Bless him! Now that the mornings are getting cooler he comes into bed with me at some stage in the night and I wake up with a warm bundle curled up against me. I am going to find it hard to give him up but his refusal to use a litter tray and his enjoyment of the garden and lying in the sun (my apartment will face south and there will be very little sun) make me feel that it would not be wise to try to take him. D1 has suggested a sandpit and that is an option but it would have to be filled with clumping litter and I am not sure that he would use it. However, it is a thought ...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Stormy weather

Yesterday afternoon Perth had a really severe storm. At about 3.00pm it was almost dark and at about 4.00pm all hell broke loose. For over an hour we had almost continuous thunder and lighning which flickered all around with forks coming down at odd intervals. With that came very heavy rain and hail. I was sheltered from the wind which reached over 100kph so I was lucky, but suburbs are blacked out and several schools were closed today. Streets were running rivers and cars were broken down throughout the city. D2 said that it took her over an hour to drive the couple of km from her work to her home. The drought has broken with a vengeance but the forecast if for more dry weather.

Boy-cat sat on my lap for the duration and except for a couple of very loud, very close, claps of thunder when he jumped, he bore it very well. Not so D2's cat. She had left all her sliding doors open and when her neighbour went in to rescue the cat he was cowering under the bed, which was wet, as was the floor, with potplants tossed around and pictures flapping. The kind neighbour rescued the cat and closed all the sliding doors. A nice neighbour to have.

I have hot water in the house again but now I have to have the pool heater controls replaced since the sensor no longer works and the unit is so old that there is no replacement part available. I suppose that this is going to be the story of my life for the next 18 months until I sell the house.

Boy-cat did a huge pee in the kitchen so I have rubbed some citronella onto the doors and moved one of his food bowls into the area. Now the whole house smalls of citronella which is a horrible smell. He is fast running out of brownie points: We are not amused.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Boy-cat is home again

Boy-cat came home after 36 hours in hospital waiting for him to pee. He did a large one overnight but missed the litter tray so eventually Doctor Yoko had to untrasound his bladder and put a needle in.

The results show that his kidney function is marginally better than the last time it was checked so the special stuff he is eating now is obviously working, and there is no sign of diabetes of any sort, thank goodness. Basically, he is as healthy as could be expected considering that he is almost 16 years old.

So the fence is sorted and the cat is sorted ... now it is the hotwater. Yesterday morning I realised that the valve which opens to allow the overheated, overflow water to run out has gone yet again, allowing the tank to flow through and since it was a weekend I have had to turn off the water to the solar system and my two options are cold showers or a bucket wash which I have done before on numerous occasions and which work well. So it is cold showers in the morning and a bucket wash at night. I could turn the hot water back on again while I shower but that is a terrible waste of water and we are in drought at the moment.

I used to have a cold shower every morning when I was at boarding school because the boilers were not stoked until 6.00am which is when us seniors had to get up. The water was never more than lukewarm and in winter I used to come out shivering. I figured that with cold water at least I would be glowing by the end so I used to go in tummy first to get over the shock faster - and it was a shock; Adelaide in midwinter is very cold and so was the water. However, I did come out glowing and as an extra bonus I found that I no longer caught colds. Science has finally caught up with me on this one and discovered that cold showers strengthen the immune system.

Your cyberhint for today:

Do not reveal your age but do not lie about it.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Boy-cat and vintage cars

Boy-cat is in hospital at the moment while everyone holds their breath and waits for him to pee. I took him along this morning together with the contents of the puddles on the floor - two separate samples. Dr Dave tested the newest one and said that it had the chemical consistency of distilled water and that if it really was pee then Boy-cat probably had diabetes insipidus which is easy to treat in dogs and people but never been heard of in cats.

The second sample yielded up a few white blood cells which Dr Dave said could have come off the floor. True - but that particular bit of floor has been washed a number of times. So now we just have to wait and he is capable of hanging on for 24 hours if the alternative is having to use a litter tray. I'll bring him home tomorrow regardless, and if he hasn't peed by then I will just have to follow him around with a dish and try to catch him in the act. Dr Dave and Dr Yoko have even gone so far as to postulate him carrying mouthfuls of water from his bowl to the puddle point ...

D2's 1965 Porsche has arrived from Melbourne and we have all been invited around to pat it tomorrow. She can't drive it yet because it hasn't been registered and it will be about four weeks before that can happen. However, she obtained a special license to drive it home because the Porsche people are finding it a distraction and there really isn't room for it. Would you believe that she "took a wrong turning" and managed to lose herself on the way home. She said that she didn't lose herself so much that it would look suspicious if she was picked up but she has been so excited about it and was desperate to drive it. It is going to be a very conspicuous car so she will be noticed when she has it on the road.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Sorry about this ...

The insurance assessor has been and written a report. If accepted I will get back half the cost of the new fence minus 25% depreciation, the cost of replacing the pool-pump shed and, with luck, replacing the brick paving. The builder came and had a look this afternoon. I realised that I didn't care so much about getting the money as having someone else organise to get the paving put back. Like a load of bricks lifted off my shoulders.

The cat and the unicorn are doing well albeit on a most unsuitable diet; the cat eats cabbages and the unicorn eats hamburgers. I have so much money that I have a cherry grove, a jacaranda grove, a cold room, a hot room and a brothel, as well as a garden for each of them and veggie gardens. ... and I have gone back to playing Freecell.

The weather is finally getting cooler so I will start to get the garden straightened out and as soon as I am sure that the birds have finished nesting I will get someone in to trim back the trees so that they all look good next year when the house goes on the market.

Boy cat is deteriorating. He has started peeing on the kitchen floor when I am not looking; always in the same place and he gets quite upset if I put something in the way so that he can't do it. I know why he is doing it and why he is doing it there and that is not what is worrying me. The real problem is that it is so diluted that it seems to be indistinguishable from water. I have scooped some up and put it in a specimen jar for the vet and am currently just proving to myself that it couldn't have come from the dishwasher, the washing machine or the fridge (we have had five power outages this summer so I thought that perhaps something had melted and leaked out). He has to be groomed morning and evening because he is too stiff to groom himself properly but he is such a loving and lovely cat that my heart is breaking and I know that I am going to have to make the decision to euthanase before too much longer ... I am just putting off the inevitable.

And on that sad note - your cyberflirt hint for the day:

"Get a Home Page and register it with a search engine"

It would be a good idea to get yourself a new name at the same time; it is good to be anonymous.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hopefully the last of the fence

The fence finally went up last week and I now also have a new pool pump-house which matches the fence and looks very smart; not difficult since it was pretty ramshackle and I was only waiting to get it fixed when I knew what the fence would be like.

It all happened in rather a rush. I got some quotes and was waiting for the only fencer who had actually been recommended (he didn't turn up so probably a good thing that I didn't wait for him). Anyway, Him Nextdoor arrived home and came in to see what I had been doing. I recommended the one which I thought was the best quote (a man named Mints - English, very large, very black and absolutely charming) and Him Nextdoor grabbed the quote and said "Lets do it" went off and organised Mints and an extra two metres so that the fence went right to the back boundary.

They arrived on time and worked in 42ÂșC heat and had it done in two days. The pool shed took another day and now my auto pool heater isn't being auto any more and someone is coming to fix that, hopefully this coming week. In the meantime it works on manual so I don't have to swim in cold water.

Now I have to tackle the Insurance Company. I phoned two days ago and found myself talking to Tasmania who transferred me to Melbourne who said that someone would phone me back yesterday - but they didn't. This is a service which boasts that it processes claims 24/7. Now it is weekend so I'll have to start again on Monday. It will not be the end of the world if the Insurance Company refuses to pay but when I move house I'll change to the people who insure my car.

I feel that I must report that the unicorn and the Siamese kitten are well and spend most of their time happily sleeping; Not a green nose in sight.

Instead of a cyberflirt hint today I would like to share a slogan on a T-shirt being sold online:

"I was an atheist until I realised that I was God."

... and I'd like to recommend http://www.librarything.com/ and one of their groups - The Happy Heathens. They are very funny ...