bunn

First, the most important news!  Our little grey cat Fankil went missing back in April.  Now we have him back! 
( Read more... )
Two weeks ago, I saw on a lost pet group on Facebook a post about a grey cat that had been haunting the workshop of a holiday complex about ten miles away. He had been caught and brought to the local animal rescue, which had pronounced him un-microchipped and feral. Fankil was microchipped, and not at all feral but microchips do fail, and he had been missing for many months, so we arranged to go and see the found cat anyway. 
When we got there, the cat was in a pen with an enclosed kennel bit, jammed behind the bed. He peed himself in terror when the door opened and growled savagely at us. We thought surely this isn't our cat.  His ears looked wrong, his eyes were a bit too yellow and we couldn't see the white hairs on his chest, and his feet were not plain purple but dotted with pink.  He was the right size, colour and sex, but ten miles is a long walk for a cat. 
But we went and sat with him for a bit, and he really warmed up to Pp — way more than he had to the rescue volunteer who had trapped him, or the guy who found him in the workshop and had been feeding him for weeks.  It was hard to tell, but it really seemed like this cat knew Pp.  And the rescue was very clear that with his behaviour, nobody else was likely to take this terrified stinky skinny cat home. 
So we agreed to take him home for a few days.  Worst case scenario: free cat! 
 
But I really wasn't sure he was our cat, until Theo wandered up, sniffed and totally ignored him.  Theo is pretty excitable around strange cats, and it was clear that he didn't consider this cat to fall into that group. 
Since then, the cat has eaten a number of huge meals, has purred hugely, has come over for strokes and cuddles, and in fact has absolutely not behaved in any way like a scared feral cat, or even a cat in a new home.  He behaves like a cat that IS home, and even his ears have changed shape now he's not trying to pretend he's invisible.  And he DOES have a few white hairs on his chest.  We just couldn't see them properly in the poor light.  I haven't yet tried properly checking his feet, but I suspect the pink speckles might be scar tissue from the long walk.  
We have him back! 

What else happened?  Oh yes, Christmas.  We went down to stay with my mother for a few days.  She had a cold (had tested negative for Covid a couple times before we went down and the cold was improving)  so decided to mask up to contain the sniffles. 
I got Pp a roman-style gladius as a present (I suspect the beautiful damascus steel leaf-shaped blade is not very authentic but it is very pretty).  He was pleased, and importantly, nobody has yet been slain. 
Those socks are on the radiator because we took the hounds out over Dartmoor on Christmas morning and it absolutely POURED on us and we became very very wet . It then continued to pour all day. Possibly wettest Christmas in years?
This is a postcard that my Mum received recently, via an ex-neighbour in Swansea.  We moved away from Swansea when I was 13 — and the postcard wasn't even sent to Swansea.  It was sent from London to my father at an address in Birkenhead, where they lived, I think, before they moved to Leicester, which is where they lived before Swansea. 
It's post-marked 1966!  I am torn between being amazed that it finally reached my Mum at all, and being amazed that it took so long to get there.  Who 'Jackie' was has been lost in the mists of time. 
Back to Pembrokeshire, and the hounds and the Christmas tree.  I am thinking I may not make a Christmas decoration this year.  I can't remember what I did with last year's tree, or whether I kept a bit to carve.  I might have to start over with a chunk of this tree next year. 
Random photo of a lurcher posing on the beach after we got back. 
Oh!I forgot to say that on the way driving home from Devon on Boxing day, the exhaust fell off the Volvo.  Or, at least, it sort of fell off and was bouncing on the road as we drove, and we looked at a large Volvo stuffed with Stuff and Dogs, and concluded that our chances of getting all that rescued on Boxing Day were slim, so we turned off the motorway and found a very pot-holey lane and drove on that, feeling rather like we were in an episode of Top Gear in till the exhaust actually fell off and could be wrapped in dog towels and shoved inside the car.)
After that the drive home was Very Loud, but at least it wasn't likely to slay a following driver on the motorway, which would have been an unfestive thing to do on a Boxing Day.
On that Volvo the sunroof doesn't work, the driver's side window doesn't work, the drivers door is a different colour to the car, the passenger side has a big bash in it, the back bumper is semi-detached from the exhaust pothole operation, and the aircon needs regassing. And we bought it as an emergency replacement for 1500 quid about five years ago, hoping it would last a year. So I feel the moment has probably come to replace it. I just can't decide yet with what. 

Excuse me, I am trying to add a cut but struggling.

I haven't posted here for a month or read here much either and the reason is that I have lost a cat, and I was desperately hoping that he would come back, and then I could post to say he had returned.

But he hasn't.

He had been in and out of the house with the dogs a few times, just into the fenced area by the garage, and had come back in when I called him. This time he didn't come back, and I was tired, and it was late, and so I went to bed and assumed he would be waiting for his breakfast in the morning. I wish now I'd wrapped up and sat outside to wait for him: we hadn't been here long enough for him to know the place. Easy to be wise in hindsight. We have signs and posters up now, but nobody has seen him: had one dubious report from a street some distance away, but could see nothing when we went over there.

Pp thinks Fankil has chosen to be a feral cat, and has gone away hunting. I hope he's right. I'm not giving up hope, but it's been over three weeks now.