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Chapter One - Cat Fighting!

Disclaimer: Animals were harmed in the making of this blog. Not by us though, and not by any life form capable of being prosecuted. (He's fine now, and has been checked out by a vet).

So, it's 6pm, I'm laid on my nephew's trampoline with my hands behind my head, listening to the birds singing, basking in the sun almost like the cat on the grass next to the trampoline, and staring into the blue sky.

I'd been asked to move some stone chippings from my sister's old house to her new one. She's had to move out temporarily so they can refurbish her house, and so after a pretty damn painless move (not like the last one where I had to do everything to the garden short of dig it up with heavy machinery and start over) we've got everything sorted and she's all settled in. My nephew's trampoline and his playhouse are set up in the garden, and we're all relaxing outside.

My mum's driven home, leaving me to spend some time with my sister and nephew, and my nephew's roaming around the garden and his playhouse, I'm lounging around on the trampoline, my sister's doing work on her laptop on the garden table. It's turning into a nice day.

Throughout the afternoon, my nephew and I had played on his trampoline (I was playing on it to keep him happy. Okay, I was playing on it because it's fun too).

Tommy, the black and white cat, was on his lead secured to a post in the garden. He wanted to explore, but we didn't want to lose him so he has a little harness and a lead to stop him from wandering off. For an hour he happily roamed about and ate the grass, sniffed the plants and generally practiced looking cute and curious.

After a while we decided to swap and let Tigsy - a brown and black tabby cat who is tommy's litter-mate out into the garden, so Tommy goes back in the house, and Tigsy comes out on the lead. My nephew kept occasionally going inside and leaving the door open, so I had to catch Tommy (who evidently loved being outside) and return him to the house.

Later on, it gets colder. We've brought the cats in and are now relaxing inside. It occurs to me that we've not seen Tommy, and during a search of the house, I realise why as I find both the hallway door and the back door to the garden open. The little dude's wandered out, and despite half an hour of looking, was nowhere to be seen. He's apparently done this before, so we left a cat box outside for him, and ordered some food.
I spent the next two hours wondering what he was up to, and I realised that while I don't get on with cats in general, I took a liking to Tommy and Tigsy because they're both cute and sociable.

Anyway. Time passes, and while we're eating our food we suddenly hear this loud miaowing/screeching outside. Evidently two cats that don't like each other. One of them is Tommy. We both leap up from our food, my sis runs outside and comes back in carrying a struggling Tommy, who is soaking wet. Evidently he's so psyched from his fight that he is scared of/wants to attack everything.

We lock the doors as my sis cuddles him, we're glad he's okay, and we're glad to have him back.
He moves in my sisters arms, and with alarm, we both notice that he's left a bloody fur print down my sister's arm - he is hurt after all!

Of course, what should we do? The vets were closed, the PDSA was closed, what were we sposed to do with this injured cat? Tommy calms down, and gives my sister the opportunity to examine him - a small injury to his back right paw, he can still walk on the leg and the bleeding has stopped. We both kept an eye on him as he walks around quite happily, occasionally licking at his leg, but still frightened, jumping at every sound.
Tigsy comes in to check on him, and starts sniffing him. Tommy sees Tigsy sniffing him and calms right down, glad to be home and back in the company of his litter-mate.

And then Tigsy's lifts his tail straight upright, the fur standing out on end, making it super bushy and 3 times the size, and starts emitting the most alarming howling/whining noise I've ever heard him make, his eyes constantly fixed on Tommy's. Tommy responds in kind, by doing the same, and starts spitting and hissing. Uh oh.

Anyway we get the cats seperated, and while we're checking if Tommy is ok in the kitchen, Tigsy's sat on the stairs making this weird noise.
The two cats have got to live together though, and in the abscence of any advice from the cat charities (out of hour, no one to talk to) we determine that we've got to get the cats back used to each other. Tommy stinks - we notice that he's soaking wet, because not to put too fine a point on it, it looks like the other cat has pissed all over him, making him stink of enemy-cat. We rub a little pet shampoo foam over his back, taking care to keep clear of his leg, and the howling from Tigsy subsides a bit.

We get both of them on a lead, I've got one, my sis has the other, and keeping them close and under control, we let them first see, and approach each other.
Again, both start howling and hissing at each other, but this dies down as they get used to each other again.

Over time, we let them get closer, and they howl less and less and become more accustomed to each other. Eventually, Tommy sits down almost next to Tigsy, who responds by going to sleep.
We let them both off the leads, ready to seperate them if there are any problems.
Tommy goes straight over to the corner and starts relaxing, while Tigsy roams around the living room. He roams round close to the chair, turns round the corner, and there's Tommy.
Both cats freeze, and we both intently watch Tigsy gingerly walk up to Tommy, ready to stop any fighting.
Tigsy starts sniffing Tommy intently, while Tommy sits there and lets it happen.
And then Tigsy starts licking him - literally, he's there licking Tommy's forehead, almost as if he's welcoming him back to the house, and identifying himself as a friend. Tommy growls a little bit eventually, and Tigsy responds by wandering off and sitting down nearby. Seems we have peace at last.

I went home after this, but according to a phone call this afternoon, Tommy has been examined and is recovering nicely. Both he and Tigsy are getting on as well as ever now, and life seems to have returned to normal.

So what else have I been up to? It was my brother's birthday a couple of days ago, and we all decided to go to Pizza Hut to have a nice family celebration. Of course, as always happens, my mum waited until I was totally skint (had no money) before announcing that it's my brother's birthday in xyz number of days - three days before payday. I remember though that my brother asked me to order something for his camera a while ago, and while I never received the full order, I kept one half of it (they kept my money - meh). Operating on the basis that something is better than nothing, I grab his impromptu "present", and off we go.

What followed was a nice family night, less of a birthday party and more of a family occasion. It turns out my bro never did buy a screen protector - my present to him - so hopefully this one will come in useful for him. Of course I felt a little guilty that that was all I was able to offer him, especially since ht and his fiancee had bought me two lovely presents for my birthday, but I did mitigate it by remembering the "Buy the laptop or don't buy it, I don't care, and I'm not lowering my price" attitude he gave me before I bought my laptop. Seemed more than a little mercenary.

Still, I bet it was a disappointing birthday for him, which is sad, but seems to be for the par in our family when you consider how crappy my birthday was. Still, will keep my eye out for something I think he'll like - it would make a nice random surprise for him to get a belated birthday present :).

My ebay auction turned out to be a disaster. I bought the lens for £35, and put it up for auction with a Polariser Filter (value approx £15) included. I was very pleased as the price went up and up, at £30 with several hours to go. I figured that it would at least get to £50 and let me buy my new lens. I drifted off to sleep, having been up all day, and woke up later. The first thing I did was check the clock - 02:30am. The auction would be finished by now, time to check how much I'd made.
With horror, I saw that the final sale price was £31.30! There was no last minute bidding frenzy, in fact no bidding at all for the last three hours. Every time I want to buy something, bidders are snapping at it like bloodthirsty sharks, and something triples in value every 10 minutes! My lens when I bought it went from £6 to £35 in the last five minutes, why didn't this happen with mine?!
The thing is now that the bloke doesn't seem to be interested in paying for the damn thing.
Good. Hopefully I can relist the bloody thing and get a proper price for it.
Meh.

Still, I took the camera out today and got some good snaps of the local ducks again, so hopefully a few of those will have come out okay. I'll see to them later.

And now I'm off to drink Fanta and watch The Bill.

See ya.

And now we come to an entry I wrote a few days ago. I just never got round to uploading it because I'm lazy like that.

Chapter Two - "Kickass Brio" (Friday 18th April, 2008)

So I’m sat here on the makeshift bed we’ve put together for my ickle nephew, in the now almost completely refurbished spare room. Yep, I booked a day off work so I could go to a hospital appointment, and I seem to have spent the majority of the day moving, transporting, redistributing and otherwise relocating household junk - plenty of it mine – from the spare room/bathroom, to the loft.

I went along to my hospital appointment fairly quickly though, in the same seemingly ramshackle (admittedly it is having major renovation work carried out on it at the moment) building.

I was asked to wait, this time in the corridor outside the waiting room. As a good ten or twelve of us sat there in this dimly lit drywall lined corridor, I mused on the paper sign stating “please bear with us while renovation work is taking place” – or words to that effect.

I was seen surprisingly quickly; that is, I’d not got my arse on the seat before I was up again, and had a pleasant chat with the anaesthetist.

I then came home, sunk a can of hyper juice, and got on with building my nephew’s favourite toy.

See, my nephew is a big fan of Brio – a wooden train set type thing. You purchase the track yourself and build the track in any form you want – it’s kinda cool, you can build any track you want.

Now, the saying goes that “Model trains are like boobs. They’re meant for children but sooner or later, grown men end up playing with them”, and I suppose that’s the case here. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t pushing the trains around making brum brum noises or anything, but I did, as I always do, take great pleasure in building the largest and most elaborate tracks that I can. I like beating my own previous creations in terms of size and complexity, and the bigger the track, the happier my nephew.

So as I was saying, I’m sat here right now, my nephew is intently playing with the track, so far we’ve had “train races”, and “train rescue”. I’ll be right back – I’ve got to tag along while he finds something to do elsewhere. Whatever he’s doing, it sounds noisy.

Right, normal operation has been resumed; he’s distracting himself with a playmobil fire engine and a big toy crane that I used to play with when I was a kid. All in all, it’s pretty relaxed. We’re both chilling out in the nice new room, him with his train, crane and fire engine, and me with my laptop and my camera.

The urge to play with toys doesn’t dissipate with age, it seems.

What else have I been up to? Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time duck shooting – that is, photographing the ducks. I’m really happy with four of the photos, so that’s good. I’ve put my little 50mm lens up for sale so that I can buy a more modern Autofocus version of the same lens, and I also intend to get an SB800; A very sparkly speedlight. It kinda surprised me when I had a look at one at my bro’s house. Turn the speedlight on and it powers on with the same high-voltage whine that defibrillators make. I had to resist the urge to shout “clear!” before triggering it.

I’m also looking at selling an engine from one of my old bikes. It’s worth maybe £250/£200, so with some luck, I’ll also be able to buy a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens. You know, the one actually designed for my camera. [Edit, 25th April - no you won't be able to buy that lens, it's over £400! You must have meant the 55-200 VR.]

But hey, my life is so interesting right now that I’ve run out of things to update you on, so I’m gonna carry on chilling out here, and will no doubt end up chasing my little nephew round until he tires out and goes to sleep.

See ya!