Out! Damned spot!

So, I have just bought, at great expense, three Persian carpets with almost white backgrounds and ... my two black cats have started molting.  There is fine black hair everywhere and the only way to cope with it is to vacuum.  Water just pushes it into corners and sweeping sends it floating all over the place.

Any way, here is a picture of my wool-on-silk bedroom rug.  I stood on the bed, wobbling woefully, to take the picture and even then I was not able to focus straight down so it looks a bit wider on one side.  No matter; Click on the picture to enlarge it.

The apartment residents have all received a notice suggesting that we clean our sliding louvres with warm soapy water every four weeks.  I must admit that mine are filthy at the moment and I had intended to clean them in the near future but every four weeks??  I have just spent the morning on my knees cleaning the tracks of the sliding doors.  The louvres should be easier, they are not full of unreachable crannies, and I have yet to tackle the balcony floor.  I need to get rid of my pot plants because they never get any sun and they are pale shadows of themselves  -  except for the parsley and Parsifal is working his way through that; he has all but demolished the thyme.

I have found a shop which sells fake geraniums, fake box trees and fake palm trees and as soon as I have worked out what to do with all my potting mix I shall go colourful in pots on the balcony.  Parsifal has his cat grass ...

I realise that I rarely mention Poppy.  She is a darling little cat, very cuddly and who thinks that her life's work is to be a lap cat.  Unfortunately she has a voice likely to wake the dead and she uses it to good effect when she loses her favourite toy which is a small pink silk flower which she removed from an arrangement which I have in my bedroom.  She hides it, forgets where she put it and then yowls until I get up and search for it or until she forgets about it again.

The BIG rug

Below is a picture of the big rug which I have bought for the sitting area in my apartment. Click on  the image to enlarge it.

I have also purchased a small rug for my bedroom.  It is wool on silk and very fine knotting.  The colours are just right for the room  -  Thank you Amir  -  and I love it but it was very expensive. I'll post a photo of it when I take one.  It only arrived late yesterday as it needed a minor repair.

Oh, what a feeling

Herself and I went carpet buying today and we chose a lovely Tabriz which seems to pick up all the colours in the sitting area of the big room.  I also bought a small black and pale, pale, green rug which is by the front door.  It has a much lower knot count and generally looks more like a tribal copy.  But it looks very pretty in the hallway and the cats love it.

I have taken some photos and will post them but the light is not brilliant at the moment so I will try again tomorrow morning when it is brighter.

This is Parsifal sitting on the big rug.  (Click on the picture to enlarge)


The carpet man condemned the Bukhara in my bedroom and is trying to find something which matches the colour scheme.  He brought a couple to try when he came back with the underlay but neither was the right colour so he is going to bring another, silk-based, more expensive one,  which he thinks will match better.  We will see; there is no hurry.

Herself bought me lunch and as the place she had chosen was full to overflowing we came back here to The Duchess where they have a lunch menu of entree and main course with a glass of wine for a set price.  We both had calamari for starters and I had the best pepper steak I have ever eaten.  I shall certainly go there again.

The cats are getting big and are now Eleven months old.  I have started them on a mix of kitten and standard food and they are not very happy about it but I am sure that they will eat it when they get hungry enough.  They are very excited about the new carpets and Parsifal had to be shut out on the balcony because he was rolling on them before they had even been properly spread on the floor and kept getting in the way, refusing to be held; he was determined to help Amir the carpet man.

Foraging for food

Today I finally worked out how to get into XP on the COTA computers.  I can't think why it had to be so hard but hopefully I will be able to show my new client how to send emails because Win Live mail is quite different and he has XP at home.  I haven't tried Live Mail out on the COTA computer yet ... that is a joy to come but I need to try to work out gMail because himself was unable to work out how to send an email today and I was not able to find a way either.

Himself is off to Europe on Saturday and while he is away herself and I will be shopping for Persian (or at least Oriental) rugs for the floor as the babies don't like walking on the cold tiles and I can't say that I blame them.  I also need to get blinds fitted because the sun is now far enough to the south to come into the apartment in the early morning and put my water colour paintings is some jeopardy, albeit minimally but the blinds might help to keep the warmth in during winter.  I have been meaning to get some installed ever since I moved in.

Parsifal the Bald, with his shaved tummy looks quite disgusting when he sits down as he now has a naked apron which rests on the floor so, in the absence of frozen rats and mice I have instigated another of the strategies for the prevention of pica.  The babies now have to work for their food and I am spreading it around, some in accessible containers and some in rolling thingies which Poppy can't work out.  She might need some extra feeding although she is not particularly skinny either and it might do her good to work for her keep for a while.  At the moment she is being very vocal about the whole thing so I gave her some pellets in the proper dish and she ignored them.  I don't think that she is going to starve any time soon.

No Buttons: no bows ...

The ultrasound shown an empty stomach so all the stuff he ate has passed through .  The radiologist said that they couldn't see the colon properly on account of some gas but she said that any cord there will pass out naturally and will not cause any damage.

I think that, at this stage, I need a cup of coffee.  It has not been a good day ... until now.

Buttons and Bows #2 parental guidance recommended

Parsifal and I are about to head off to Osborne Park for an ultrasound scan to find out exactly what he has inside him.

I realised yesterday that he had eaten the cord from my hoodie which was hanging on the clothes line  -  quite a length of it and the metal knobs on the ends have disappeared, although I think that he has probably hidden them somewhere; I can't imagine him eating those as they are quite big and hard.

So I hauled the wrapped up vomit out of the rubbish bin, went through it and removed the bits of cord which had come up, laundered them and had a good look.  There was about two cm of the first cord he ate and about 5cm (in two pieces) of the hoodie cord which he would have eaten on Tuesday night.

So there is rather a lot of stuff unaccounted for  -  not to mention my shoelaces and spinning wheel drive band.

The odd thing is that he seems to be thriving on this odd diet; last night he was full of beans, eating well, eliminating normally and generally looking good.

Making ends meet

Now that the latest crisis is over I can finally write about it here.

Last Friday morning (today is Wednesday) I woke up to the awful discovery that Parsifal (of course, Parsifal) had eaten the soft nylon handle off one of those cardboard carry bags that the posh shops put their goods into when you buy something.

Thinking that I needed some advice as to how to cope with his pica I took him to the vet.  Dr S. thought that an emetic might be a good first aid measure but decided that it might be too late and the cord could already have passed out of the stomach.  A scan?  their scanner was currently being serviced; an emergency ultrasound at the Specialist Clinic?

By this time I was thoroughly spooked, took the faecal softener she gave me and took him home to await events.  He continued eating well, beating up his sister and his 'internal hygiene" seemed to be working OK.  D2 gave me the name of an animal behaviorist but he will be away until December so that was no help.

And lo and behold, this morning he vomited up three pieces of cord which, put together, appear to be all that he ate ... and this time I did put them together.  Such a relief.  Next time I will opt for the emetic but hopefully it will not happen again; I will try to keep the things he likes to chew and swallow well out of his reach.

Anyway, he is very pleased with himself and Dr S. has kindly sent me some journal articles on pica which are interesting but I don't think that frozen rats and turkey chicks are available here and I don't think that I would feed them to him even if I could get them.

I had lunch with D3 and SIL and we discussed our flight to Sydney at the end of October.  I have booked for the both of us and emailed to D2 to ask her to book ASAP because the planes are filling fast and we are having to catch an earlier flight than we originally selected; I am going to have to order a taxi for about 7.00am or a bit later to get to the airport through the peak-hour traffic.

I only have one client for tomorrow and have a free hour before the lesson so I will use it to try to come to some sort of agreement with the new computer at COTA which is sadly lacking in things we need such as Solitaire and Windows Live Mail.  I had hoped to be able to stop taking my own laptop every week but it looks as though it will be a while yet before I can leave it at home.