Water water everywhere…
So the water-less day came and went without any problems. We filled every available jug, bottle, pan and bowl with water first thing in the morning to keep us going through the day. but as it turned out, the water came back on just after lunch, so we didn’t really need it in the end. Quite remarkable that something like that actually finished ahead of schedule!
Family but no fish
This week has been a bit hectic as both my parents and my sister and her two boys are visiting. We’re having a lovely time catching up – something that there wasn’t much time for at Christmas – and we’re keeping our fingers crossed for some decent weather at the weekend so we can get out and about. We were going to head to La Rochelle aquarium but unfortunately it is closed this month. Still, a visit to La Rochelle may well be on the cards, and a coffee with the Dixies perhaps… 
It’s a snip!
Charlie and Lola (our kittens) have now been “done” They were very well behaved for the vet and coped admirably with the operation. Poor Lola was very wobbly when she came round and was clearly in some pain as the anaesthetic wore off, but after a big sleep that night she was much brighter in the morning. They are both now back to normal and up to their usual tricks!
Plotting our veg
Michel our soon-to-be-permanent neighbour called us over earlier today with some good news. he has a JCB at the moment which he is using to level a lot of his land off as part of his renovation project next=door. He is very kindly going to also level off our little patch of land at the back of the house which we have earmarked as a future vegetable plot. Wahoo! In a couple of weeks we should be able to get planting our own veg, so look out for some posts all about that coming soon. Anyone with any tips in this area, feel free to leave a comment.
And finally…
Next week I have to endure a trip back to England for a big company meeting over 2 days at the Center parcs in Longleat. Sounds nice, but I’d really rather be here with my family, drinking Pineau round the fire. Ah well, one day…
Cats.
We love ours.
We love the way they come and sit on your knee at night for a sleep.
We love the way they are pleased to see us when we come home after a day out.
We even love the way they wait outside our bedroom door in a morning to say hello.
But one thing we certainly don’t love is the constant stream of mostly-dead animals they insist on bringing in to play with!
It started with just one lizard. “That’s okay”, we thought, “we can cope with that”.
Then one day we returned from a day at the beach to find the living room full of feathers. Yes, they had brought in a starling to play with and stashed it under the settee when they heard us come back home.
Lola then started coming home with what looked very much like pieces of another cat’s tail. Quite how she got those we do not know.
Then came the first mouse. I was on the phone when the cats in the other room suddenly went quiet. Worrying. A quick investigation revealed Charlie tossing the poor creature around the room. I managed to wrestle the mouse from his mouth and fling it over the fence, much to his annoyance. It was only later in the day, when the cats were sniffing around the bottom of the settee, that we realised that the mouse had actually left it’s head behind! Argh!
A series of lizards were next in line for the treatment, inlcuding one live one who really didn’t want to be picked up and rescued!
Then, while I was away in England, I had a call from Lisa. Charlie had brought in the biggest prize yet – a rat! She was shaking. Luckily the rat was dead and she managed to scoop it up with the dust-pan and dump it outside, though Charlie put up a good fight for it. I was impressed with Lisa’s bravery, but not impressed with Charlie’s increasing appetite.
And so it continues. Today saw another dead lizard and a dead mouse join the list of casualties. What are we to do? I know it’s great that they catch rats and mice, but does anyone have a suggestion about how to stop them bringing the corpses into the house? All ideas gratefully received!
I tell you, it’s a good job they’re cute…
Charlie and Lola, our 2 kittens, are growing up pretty fast. it only seems like yesterday that we were bringing them home in a little cardboard box for the first time and now they are roaming the garden.
With this new-found freedom came some inconvenience for us humans, as they need to get in and out at regular intervals. As is is now well and truly autumn, leaving a door open for them was certainly not an option and getting up and down to let them in and out was way too much like hard work.
So, we finally relented and bought a cat-flap.
For me, nine times out of ten DIY is not a straight-forward job. What should be a 10-minute task generally turns into a full day of cutting, sawing, sticking, drilling, cursing and swearing, punctuated by several trips to the DIY shop to buy the vital tools, screws, sticking plasters etc that turn out to be essential for the job. So I was hoping for a change in fortunes with this one…
First task of the day was to draw round the template provided.
This revealed the first fatal flaw in the plan…the door has panels, and the cat-flap was just too wide to fit inside one of the panels. So I was going to have to cut out some of the panel surround to fit it in, Now it was starting to feel like one of my normal DIY jobs…
Unperturbed, I carried on with the job in hand, drilling the holes and cutting out the space for the flap to fit into. This bit went ok thanks to the trusty jig-saw, although from now on the pressure was on to complete the job before night-fall!
Next came the cutting and chopping to make the frame fit. Generally I hate working with wood as i always seem to lose control of it and end up cutting too much off, or splitting the wood in the wrong place, or cutting at the reverse angle and wrecking the only materials I have. However, with hammer and chisel, this time i managed to avoid all the usual pitfalls and actually cut out a good snugly-fitting hole for the frame to fit into.
Okay so it may be a little rough round the edges, but aren’t we all?
As you can see, it was well and truly dark outside by the time I finished, but finish I did!
So now we just have the somewhat-more-taxing job of trying to persuade the kittens to use their nice new private entrance, rather than whining at the window.
At the moment, we have to come to the door to hold the flap open as they haven’t yet figured out that they can open it themselves. And the noise it makes as it swings shut tends to scare them off…but they are starting to get the hang of it. Hopefully they will soon be coming and going without any assistance, and then we’ll never know where they are!
