Louis update 22 March 2014

Louis Update Saturday Morning:

I visited Mr Lou again this morning. They took the collar off him as he kept more or less knocking it off anyway, so it was a lot easier to give him head rubs and ear scratches. He was again very smoochy, but not quite so desperate to push himself into me! I took in cans of the Aldi chicken that he really likes, and he licked at the gravy, but at first wouldn't eat it more than that. So then I tried him with a sachet of the Aldi beef mince he also adores, but he didn't even really sniff at it. Later, though, he ate some of the chicken, properly ate some—not a lot, but some, so that was good. I'm pretty sure it's all he's eaten since Wednesday morning.

I also observed him several times gently stretching and raising his back legs—both of them, even the left leg, which is the one they're most worried about. I told the nurses and vet, and they said that was good news. They're all so lovely there, and are more than happy for me to stay as long as I want with him (I was there about an hour). Oh, and they found the food I took in on Thursday! IT was in a plastic bin full of dog kibble!

I feel a bit more optimistic, having seen this tiny improvement for myself. And he was grooming himself as well, which is excellent. Let's hope it continues! And yes, it is very early days, and a long, long road ahead.

When Louis first went in on Wednesday night, there was a smallish black and white cat in one of the cages, on a drip and looking pretty miserable. His family came in to visit him today. He's off the drip, and they were able to take him out for a cuddle. And, oh, how he cried! Wah-woooong! Wah-wong! and flung himself into his people. Mostly, into the dad of the family—6 foot plus, sleeve tattoos, ear keepers and eyebrow piercing, bald and a goatee, and he kissed and cuddled his little boy, and crooned to him and it was the sweetest thing. Just like Jackson Galaxy! The kids and the wife barely got a look in.

I'm exhausted. Am going to try and get some work done this afternoon. If you're waiting on something from me, apologies. And please keep thinking good thoughts for my baby boy.

Bad news from Louis-ville

My beautiful Louis was clipped by a car on the night of Wednesday 19 March—just under 48 hours ago as I write this. He's very badly injured: his pelvis is broken in 3 places, and the vets are worried about nerve damage, as his left leg in particular is not very responsive. They've also had to catheterise him, as he hasn't been able to wee by himself. But it's early days yet and I am trying to stay hopeful, remembering what a strong, healthy boy he is.

I am going to use this post to record all my posts and updates from Facebook. And if you are reading this, please send all your fiercest good wishes to my baby boy. Thanks.

Thursday 20 March 2014

My beautiful sweet Louis got clipped or rolled or something by a car last night and is at the vet's with a broken pelvis. It's been a very upsetting 12 hours and I don't yet know how bad the damage is. The good news is he doesn't seem to have any internal injuries or damage to the spine, but he does seem to have some nerve damage to his hind left leg, on the side where the break is. Regardless, a broken pelvis is a Very Bad Thing with a long recovery period.

The vet will take more xrays this afternoon, under anaesthetic, and we will know more then. I am very very lucky and very grateful that some kind people saw him trying to get off the road and stopped their car and took him into the nearest house, and that those people looked after him and rang me immediately and then the woman even came with me to the emergency vet so she could keep hold of the box they'd put him in and make sure he didn't try to escape (which he did when we put the box in the car).

I know you all know how much I love my Louis L'Amour and how upset I am, and I know many of you feel like you know him from all my Facebook postings. He's the sweetest of all possible sweet cats, and it's going to be a long recovery. So whatever personal rituals you do around well wishings for the sick and injured, they would be very welcome.

(And please do not make any observations about cats being allowed outside. I know all the arguments and I also know my Louis and how miserable he would be shut indoors. This is the risk, I know, and I have always known something like this might happen. It doesn't make it any less devastating and if you feel in the mood to provide a lecture, please go and make it to a tree in your garden. Thanks.)

Later that night:

Louis update. 

First of all, thank you all so much for the kind wishes, encouraging stories and unqualified love sent Louis' and my way. It has made a huge difference to know so many people care about me and my little boy cat.

I visited Louis this afternoon after he'd been put under anaesthetic so they could take more x-rays without hurting him. The news about his pelvis is bad: he has 3, possibly 4 fractures, by which I mean three sections broken clean through. The 4th is a possible chip of the fractured bone. It is, as the vet said, a mess, and to my untrained eye, it also looks as if his pelvis is out of alignment.

Miraculously, though, there are no other fractures or internal injuries.

He was very pleased to see me and Jennie, who came with me to visit him, and was demanding of many head and chin rubs.

The options for treatment are:

1. Surgery. Expensive, invasive, with yet more anaesthetic, added tissue trauma and a higher risk of infection—and no greater guarantee of recovery.

2. Conservative management, which means 6-8 weeks confined in a crate, and allowing the bones to repair/knit themselves. There is no way of knowing what nerve damage there will be and if he will be able to walk at the end of the 6 weeks.

The vet said that they could make a lot of money out of me by recommending surgery, and I'd get a perfect x-ray out of it, but the whole team there agreed that the second option is the best option.

So it looks like I will be bringing him home, and keeping him confined in a crate (which I will have to buy) and give him high level hand nursing, possibly including toileting, for the next two months. And hoping and hoping that he recovers mobility and will be with me for a lot longer yet.

Oh, and I think I figured out what happened. I stopped off to take flowers to the woman, Sheree, who helped him last night, called me and came with me to the vet. I could see bird feathers along the nature strip where it happened, and Sheree said they get a lot of birds killed on the road, and people kick them to the kerb near her bins. Apparently there was a dead rainbow lorikeet on the road yesterday—and their house is right at the point where Macquarie Street goes from 1 lane to 2. I suspect he was sniffing at a dead bird on the verge, and a car veered around a parked car into the start of the left lane, not seeing him there, and clipped him.

It's absolutely no-one's fault, except maybe Louis's for roaming so far from home. I remain deeply upset and worried about how well he will recover, but have my jaw set to look after him as well as possible when he comes home.

Friday 21 March 2014

Louis update:

Not good news, alas. Just spoke to the vet. They did neurological testing this morning and his left leg is not very responsive. They are worried there is spinal damage not shown by the x-ray. He says his right leg has good pain response, but he's worried his left leg may be paralysed. They've also had to put a catheter in as he isn't weeing, and they don't know if that's because of pain/discomfort or if it's because of neurological damage. He hasn't attempted to stand up at all, and the vet said he's more worried about him today than he was yesterday. If he's paralysed, and he can't wee, we're in real trouble.

On the bright side, he's 'bright'. I'm not.

Later that day:

Visiting Louis: update

Just back home from visiting Louis. When I got there, he was asleep, tucked inside the same kind of green dome collar Cooper wore back home after his burn. The collar is because of the catheter; they have to keep him from worrying at it.

It took him a few groggy seconds to realise it was me stroking his head, and he was very, very pleased to see me. He turned himself around—his front legs are as strong as ever—and pushed his face into my chest, while I stroked his back and rubbed around his head. He even managed to get his front paws inside the collar—he was seriously up for a cuddle. And he purred, and while I know cats can purr when distressed and in pain, I am pretty sure in this instance he was purring with pleasure to have me there.

I stayed with him for about an hour. The staff at Vineyard Vet are lovely about letting you visit, and they don't mind a bit of you have a big old cry, which of course, I did.

Keiran, the nice young Irish vet who has cared for Louis since I took him in on Wednesday night, said to me tonight that it's basically a waiting game—he needs time to recover and we'll see when the inflammation goes down how he improves. And I know there's an 'if' in there as well. But he's strong and healthy and I have to hang on to that and to the knowledge that he is getting the best care he possibly can.

He hasn't eaten much; I took in some cans of fancy chicken last night, but it was total chaos and I am not sure the woman I gave them to really registered who they were for (although I did write on them!). Anyway, they couldn't find them tonight, so I stopped off at Aldi on the way home and got him a bag full of their chicken, which he adores. He wouldn't eat anything we gave him tonight, although I could tell he was hungry. Kieran even heated up some BBQ chicken and he turned his nose up. I'll take the food in first thing tomorrow.

My poor, poor darling. He was so happy to see me, and I felt awful leaving him. He was trying to get out of the cage to get to me, so in the end I had to leave so that Keiran could put him back in properly and safely—I'm really frightened of hurting him.

It hasn't even been 48 hours yet, and there's a long road ahead. I have to remember that, and hope and trust that all will be well. He is so very precious to me, and who will cuddle me in bed at night if Louis is gone?

Thanks again for all your love and support. It means the world to me.

Poor Cooper!

Poor old Cooper has done himself an injury: somehow or other, he's got a nasty burn on his upper back. It looks terrible, but the vet assures me it's superficial and will heal well. But he has to wear this bucket, and socks on his back feet, for 2 weeks until it heals up.

He probably got it under a car with a hot engine/exhaust, but I'll probably never know.

Here he is, with the indignity of the bucket. The worst thing is, he can't navigate with it on. He's been walking into walls, and if it gets caught on the edge of a doorway or something, he has trouble freeing himself. Poor lovey.

Louis is OK with it, although a bit puzzled—he's come to check out his brother a couple of times tonight. Milly, on the other hand, is totally freaked out. She's still quite scared of Cooper, even though Cooper more or less leaves her alone these days—we've had a pretty calm household for quite a long time now. But she can't cope at all with this lumbering creature, and the noise the bucket makes when it scrapes on the ground. It's such a shame—I hope it isn't a permanent setback in kitteh relations. 

The main thing right now, though, is to give poor old Cooper lots of TLC, cuddles and help him eat and toilet (he went on the towels in the bathroom tonight, alas). It'll take about 2 weeks for him to heal, so it's going to be a long 14 days, I fear, and the poor lad won't be allowed outside. 

Wish us luck!

Socks? Huh? 

The reverse Devo/Marvin the Martian

aka

Cooper contemplates 3 more years of an Abbott government.

That slithering under the house space...

I've had Milly for about 2 months now. It's been a fascinating journey so far—mostly documented on Facebook updates—and I've learned a lot about cat behaviour along the way! Briefly, the boys are more or less used to her now, although we till have the odd skirmish. Louis has been insanely jealous, but is a lot better now, but still quite easily made cranky, and I miss his sunny, happy nature. Cooper was better, but as time has gone on, has seemed compelled to assert himself. She's very cautious of the boys, and will still hiss at them even if they are behaving themselves. Understandable, really.

I'll try and do a proper catch-up post soon, just to fill in how it's all gone in more detail, but for now, here's a post about today's adventure. Briefly, Milly started going outside a couple of weeks ago. First of all, we had some excursions with her in the harness, which generally ended with her being distressed by her lack of autonomy (she'd try and run farther than the leash would allow and it freaked her out). She got stuck up a tree once, and then I started letting her out off the harness, bur supervised, while I was on leave.

As she got more confident, I was able to leave her outside for long stretches while I was in the house and, eventually, would pop out for a short time while she was outside. I have a cat door at the back of the house, which Cooper and Louis use to come and go as they please. I can shut Milly in the main part of the house, but today, back at work for the first time after the Christmas break, she had her first day as an independent Miss, unsupervised and without me there if anything went wrong.     

Here's today's adventure, originally posted on Facebook: 

First day back at work today, and I debated whether or not to leave Milly shut in the house, or allow her to make the choice herself. She wasn’t showing any particular interest in going out this morning, and apart from her disappearing trick the other night, she’s been very good about sticking close to home and coming when I called her, so I decided to leave it up to her.

I couldn’t see her when I got home. Lou came running from across the lane when I pulled up, and flopped in the grass for a wash—his usual routine, or one of them. Cooper was also lying in the grass in the shade down the side of the house. No sign of Milly, and she didn’t appear when I called as I locked up the gate etc.

She wasn’t in the house, so I went looking for her again outside. By this stage, Louis and Cooper had both vanished. I  called for ten minutes or so, and had a look under the house, which is where Cooper turned out to be. But still no sign of Milly.

Then I found a tuft of her fur, and oh, reader, I feared the worst—even though logically I knew it was probably just from a skirmish with one of the boys. (I have silly fears about birds of prey, which we do see from time to time in this neck of the woods, and she is such a LITTLE cat.) So, with that nasty feeling you get when you have a bit of fear adrenaline run through you, I grabbed the torch for another look under the house.

There’s a gap of about a foot along either side of my house, going about three quarters of the way back, and the space continues under the front verandah, but not at the sides of the verandah.

Way over on the other side, I could see a tabby but from that distance couldn’t tell which tabby it was. Turned out it was Louis. Cooper was also underneath, sitting staring intently into the very corner of the under-the-verandah, where it’s darkest and most inaccessible. And that’s when I realised he was guarding something, and whatever, or whoever it was, Louis had come to check it out too.

Now, as you may know, I do not have the slightest of girlish frames, and while I could, it turns out, fit under the gap by lying flat and wriggling (of which, more later), there are also regular brick piers spaced along the gaps on both sides, and pipes of some sort coming from within the house to the ground (probably carrying useless things like electricity cables), which limits access ESPECIALLY, as it turns out, if you need to be able to see around a corner in this very tight space.

But motherly duty called, and so I managed to squeeze in and angle around the enclosed side of the verandah all while handling a torch, and there she was, backed into the corner and blinking at me as I waved the pathetic excuse for a Dolphin torch about. (Note to self: stock up on torch batteries. And buy a better torch.) 

My first thought was, is she hurt? She didn’t respond when I called her, just kept blinking at me, so I began to plan how I would get her out, given it was quite clear there was no way that at that very point of the architecture that I could get in. I began to have fantasies of size 8 SES rescue workers, or maybe borrowing a neighbour’s child and praying there were no funnel webs under there. It only occurred to me later that the easiest thing to do would be to lift a couple of boards on the verandah—no biggie, as I’m planning to have the whole thing re-timbered soon. 

But then I thought, well, maybe she’s not hurt. Maybe she’s just bailed up.

So I got the hose and turned the nozzle to ‘spray’.

She wasn’t hurt.

Louis came belting out, so I grabbed him and threw him in the house. Cooper and Milly had both taken off at the rate of, well, a cat being sprayed by a hose, and disappeared into the depths of the house on the OTHER side. But at least I knew she was OK.

Rather than continuing to try and coax them out, I decided to give us all a break and go and water the garden. By the time I’d done that, Cooper was sitting conveniently close to the side of the house, so I grabbed him in a fairly undignified fashion (by the, ahem, hindquarters) and threw him in the house after Lou. Got the little tin of nommy liver treats that Milly adores, and wriggled back under the house—this time on the side with a bit more space, rattling them and calling Madam. No sign of movement, no reply.

Well, I thought, given I’m already filthy, and I know I can wriggle along the ground under here, maybe I’ll just wriggle a bit further in and get that collar. Both Milly and Louis have lost collars recently and I thought I could see one of them glinting in the torch light. (Seems it’s hard to buy a cat collar without a bit of bling these days.) To do that I actually went back out and got the garden rake—in for a penny and all that!—and I managed to get a fair way in before I realised it wasn’t a collar at all, but the remains of the tinsel fishing toy that Louis ran off with a few weeks ago. Bugger that, I thought, and bugger you, Mill—you’re obviously OK and you can come in when you’re good and ready.

And she did. I’d not long been inside, sans tinsel toy, stripped off my filthy clothes and put something clean on, than she was at the back door, covered in cobwebs, but otherwise right as rain and demanding to come in as if the whole thing had been her idea all along.

Actually, I think she just wanted a liver treat. I gave her four.

Tuckered out. You and me both, Mill.

Thanks to my friend Jenni for the title of this post.

And then there were three...

Meet Milly.

I didn't intend to get a third cat. I certainly wasn't out there looking. My two rub along nicely these days, and we've been a happy two cat household for nearly 3 years.

But then a Facebook post landed on my timeline, from Monika's Doggy Rescue, with this amazing photo:

and, well, I swooned. Can you blame me?

Her name was Molly, she's about 6 months old, and she was rescued from a kill pound. Monika's Doggy Rescue has funded a vet clinic and rescue shelter in Parramatta—The Cottage Animal Hospital—which is where Molly was living (under the very tender loving care of Anneli and Dee). 

So I posted about her on Facebook and Twitter, and nearly all my friends kindly acted as enablers, encouraging me to adopt her. I was very cautious, though, not wanting to upset the apple cart with the boys, and I kept hoping that someone else would take her in.

And no-one did!

I visited her after she'd been at the Cottage for a week or so, and was surprised at how feisty she was. Is. I visited her for about an hour, playing with her and generally checking her out. She's got a wild streak, and I came home with two hands full of scratches, a deep admiration for this strong-natured and very intelligent cat, and concern about how the boys—especially Cooper—would cope. Dee (The Cottage's resident vet, who has been taking her home on weekends) assured me she had a sweet side, but I was still really concerned for the boys.

So I kept hoping that someone else would take her home.

And no-one did.

So then, at the day job, I finally got to the point where I could take some much-needed leave (I have 9—count 'em!—9 weeks owing!), and so on Tuesday I went in again to meet her.

This time I saw the sooky side to Ms Molly (as she was—details of name change to come). She had been sleeping before I arrived, and so was relaxed and smooshy, allowed me to rub her cheeks, purring all the while. Of course, she woke up properly pretty quickly, and then it was on again—but I had seen enough to know that she has that other, more relaxed and affectionate side.

So I went back today, filled in the paperwork, and brought her home.

She was a very good girl in the car on the way home— a bit unsettled to begin with, but also very sweet and reaching her paw through the bars of the cage to touch my hand (look Ma, no claws!). I'd already set up my study, with an igloo bed and litter tray and toys, and I taped fly screen around the door into the hallway so that the boys and she could see one another, but not have contact until they got used to one another.  

At least, that was the plan.

She escaped in the first two minutes.

In addition to the door into the hallway, there's a door between the study and the spare room (old house has connecting doors between three rooms), and it didn't close behind me after I first let Madam out. She slipped out after me almost immediately. And it took some catching her—she's quick, and determined—but I did get her back into the study, where she happily played with the toys I had bought her, her favourite being the litter tray. Sigh. 

The boys were out and about, as is their wont, so we had a couple of hours together in the study where I mostly left her alone to explore while I did some clearing out of the old email in-tray (ermahgerd). For some reason, at one point, I had my back to the window, and turned around just in time to see Louis's little face looking in and then jump down on to the front verandah. I thought there was no way he could have missed seeing her, but apparently he did. So I went out and let him in the front door, picked him up and held him while he peered through the fly screen and spotted her.

And she spotted him.

Lou was pretty calm to begin with—the fur along his spine rose up, and his tail fur fluffed out, but apart from that it was OK. Until I heard growling. And it wasn't Louis—it was Milly.

And that set Louis off, the two of them growling at one another from a distance, but he wasn't overly cranky, and he wasn't at all cranky with me; he let me hold him and pat him and he was rubbing himself around me, but he was on high alert as far as the new arrival was concerned. 

I foolishly left them to eyeball each other off with very bad language as the soundtrack, while I popped outside to check on where Cooper was. 

And in that brief moment, Louis broke through the fly wire and I came back into the house to hear what I was sure were the sounds of murder.

Aaaaaaahhhhh!

I don't know what happened. I was sure she was going to be badly hurt—she's only 2.3 kilos, and Louis is so much bigger—but he hightailed it out of the room as soon as I got there. It took me a while to catch the little one—she was crazy wild and terrified, and had weed on herself, but she wasn't hurt at all (nor was Louis, and I do believe she could hurt him, she's strong and her teeth and claws are SHARP), but it was a BAD start that I was very unhappy about.

The irony is, before this happened, there was a moment where the two of them were sitting like mirror images of one another—Louis in the doorway to my bedroom, and Little Miss in her room, in line of vision:

   

Look at them! Twinnies! In fact, when I first met Molly/Milly, it seemed to me that she was something of a cross between Louis and Bridie, mostly in looks, but partly in temperament, although she's wilder than either of them.

I had predicted that Louis would cope quite well with the new addition, easy-going, social chap that he is, and that Cooper, Mr Highly-Strung, would be the one who would freak out.

Turns out, Coop was chill. I left him outside for ages, and when eventually it was time to bring him in, I did what I'd done with Louis, and held him on the other side of the fly screen so he could see her from a  distance.

And he couldn't have cared less, the first couple of times he saw her. And because he didn't care, she didn't react either. Must be a pheromone thing (and yes, I have now gone out and spent a small fortune on Feliway).

I took delivery, the same day I collected Milly, of a fabulous cat comb, the beautifully named Furminator, which Cooper LOVES, and so I sat with him and groomed him in the doorway, and he purred and purred and completely ignored the new kitteh. So what do I know. Mr Neurotic was cool as a cucumber, Mr Sociable was freaked. Cats. Who knows.

(Cooper's not so entirely cool about it now, on Day 3, but he's made no attempt to break in and have a go at her, as Louis did. And where Louis keeps popping in during the day to eyeball her, Cooper clearly doesn't want to know—it's only when he's inside at night and is forced to acknowledge her presence that he pays any attention.)

I've let her out to have a run of the house when the boys have been outside, and I think it's a good thing—she's getting used to the place, and hopefully leaving her smell around so they get used to it. But I think it will likely be a good couple of weeks before they can be in the same space. And she's so little, she won't be going outside any time soon. When I got back to work I'll shut the back half of the house off, so the boys can come in the cat door in the back room to eat, and she'll have the rest of the house to herself.

A nice thing I discovered—which was a confirmation of something Dee said about her—is that she's really good with kids. Although she's getting more and more relaxed with me, she can still hiss and spit if she's displeased—this is a cat who clearly carries some fear in her, and I hate to think why. But Dee said that she was really gentle with her kids when she took her home on the weekends, and I've found the same thing with my friend Donna's son, Quinn, who has been to the house yesterday and today.

Quinn has cats at home, and knows how to approach a cat who doesn't know him, and to be quiet and gentle around them. And it was just lovely today to se how relaxed Milly was with him. She clearly felt completely comfortable with him, and would approach him in a way she doesn't with me (yet!). It really seemed like she liked hanging out with him. Here's a photo:

They're playing Angry Birds. Donna took a whole sequence of photos of them together—most of them blurry with Milly chasing the pigs—so lovely. It's kind of curious to me that she's so calm and happy with a child—cats with a wild streak like Milly has often aren't all that keen on kids, so this is a lovely trait in Milly, and one that I hope bodes well for how she'll eventually settle in.

So there's still a lot of work, and patience, ahead, as the boys get used to her being here, and she develops in confidence and calm. I'm giving my lovely boys lots of love and attention, and as I write this, they are both happily curled up in their respective (current) sleeping spots, as if she were never here, and she's happily asleep in her igloo bed. All's well with the world.

Until the next encounter!

As for the name change...

This lovely girl was named Molly by the good people who looked after her at The Cottage, but she never seemed to 'know' it was her name, and Dee let me know it would be OK to rename her. My sister Alison once had a cat called Molly, who was lovely but naughty, and who came to a sad end, and not that I'm superstitious, but I thought a different name might be good. I've always been one for pet names for my pets (Bridie was also known as Brigid McGillicuddy; Louis has a thousand nicknames, including Louis Lamb, Long-Legged Louis and Louis L'Amour, and Cooper is frequently Super Cooper,  The Chequerboard Cat and Mr Handsome—OK, that was embarrassing...) and I was already calling Molly Milly Molly Mandy and rather liking the sound of Milly (which is somehow tougher than Molly), and then friends on Facebook suggested all these great book character names including Milly from the Chrestomanci books (favourite books of mine), and then  apropos of nothing as far as I know (although there was an Aunt Millie in the family), my dad suggested Milly.

Now, we have a sort of tradition in our family of ignoring our dad's suggestions for naming our pets. They always ended up as the animal's second name—so the cat Dad wanted to call Nick ended up as Sooty Nick, and the next cat, who Dad suggested we call Smudge, ended up as Susie Smudge (even though he was a boy).

So it seemed high time that my lovely dad got naming rights.

And so Milly she is.

Silly Milly. Milly Molly Mandy. Milly Vanilli. Little Mill.

She really is.

The boys are alive and well and fighting fit!

Our house is a very very very fine house...

Hello! Me and the boys have been happily ensconced in our beautiful new home for a bit over two months now. And how very happy we are! Such adventures we are having!

The main thing, of course, is the garden. The boys went out the first morning we were here—the night before we moved they spent with my friend Jenny, who lives not far from us in South Windsor, and her two boys, Fatty and—eep! I forget. Friendly boys, though, and very happy to have overnight guests, which is both kind and handy.

Our first night at the house, the boys did what cats do—sniffed around, jumped up on things (boxes and anything with a vantage point to a window), checked out the fireplace (not lit!), and then cuddled up very cosily to me on the sofa bed in the living room (didn't set the bedroom up for a day or two).


People are always full of advice when you move house with cats, most of it unnecessary in my experience. There's this idea that cats are prone to wander off, to try and find their old home, but I've never actually known a cat to do that. Maybe a cat who has been more attached to their territory than their people, but that's a cat who isn't really loved, or made welcome inside, or fed regularly, I would hazard a guess. I had not concerns at all about moving Cooper and Louis. I moved Bridie several times in her life and as a family we moved our cats easily (church families and their cats must needs be adaptable!) and I knew my lovely boys would be just fine. Better than fine, once they saw their enormous 890 square metres of garden. And so it came to pass...

I kept the boys inside for a few hours in the morning so they got used to the house in daylight (they didn't arrive here until after dark our first night, due to the Great Removalist Too-Small-Truck incident of moving day), and then let them out when my sister Alison arrived to help me unpack. By then they were breaking their necks to get out, and so out they went and, as expected, they were right as rain and happy as pigs in mud—or happy as two cabin-crazy, flat-bound cats in their own House and Garden.

The house came ready with a catflap, although to be fair, it was a doggy door until the previous owners moved out and we moved in. Back when Bridie was a kitten, my ex made a little timber cat door for her, custom-made for the glass-paned sliding door on the bedsit I lived in (I'm sure I must have a photo somewhere). I remember he and I sat on either side of the door with treats (kitteh biscuits I think), tempting her through until she got the hang of it, which she did pretty quickly. She was always from the happy to push through the flap (and remember, it was timber) to get in and out, even if it caught her tail a little.

Well, Bridie, sitting up on your little fur-line cloud on kitteh heaven, have a word in the boys' ears, would you? Because they will not go through the cat door unless the flap is propped open. Well, Louis will, at a pinch, but Cooper—absolutely not. I don't know if it offends his dignity, or merely hurts his tail (which is, it must be said, magnificent), but he will not (unless pushed forcibly by, well, moi) go through the catflap in down position. He jumps whenever it swings down on his tail. And given now there's only me and not me and someone else with opposable thumbs, I can't really train the boys to use the flap by kitteh biscuit temptage. So every morning I slide out the plastic locking bit and prop open the flappy bit and off they go, in-and-out-the-garden to their hearts' content—unless the wind comes and blows it shut. And then, be they in or be they out, they're stuck where they are.

They're usually out.



My, how they love the garden. They love the lizards to chase and the birds to stalk (only one corpse to date, and while it's true that Louis did defile it most shamefully, there is No Actual Evidence that either boy was responsible for its demise. And it was only a miner. I think). They have trees and fences (brick and timber) to climb, dandelions and something that looks like cattail grass (but isn't, I don't think) to ever-so-bwavely pounce upon, lavender bushes to sneak around in (see above: bird-stalking) and therefore smell delicious from... I'd better stop there before I lose total control of my syntax. (But seriously, I don't think anything smells more delicious than a cat who has been hanging around in the lavender.)

Also—interesting point. Neither of them have shown any evidence of fleas since we moved here, despite the outrageous lengths my grass got to after the recent (and ongoing) rains. Curiouser and curiouser.

And they have neighbours. And vast tracts of empty land across the road which is, apparently, full of rats and rabbits (and frogs—you can hear them at night when walking home from one of your pleasant new social engagements in town). Cooper was, as far as I can tell, the first to make the Great Mileham Street Crossing into the RSL land across from us. It were very brave of him, but I think he was very pleased to have an excuse to dash home when I took off after him, trying to convince him to come back (while keeping an anxious eye out for cars).

Louis, of course, was watching every move, and soon enough headed over himself to check things out. It was also Louis who decided that those large black tubey things (sewer pipes which were, I kid you not, dozens and dozens of metres long) needed to be checked out from the inside. (And therefore made me embarrass myself by asking the nice Irish foreman to please make sure that they didn't lay the pipes with my little Louis inside.)

I don't know quite how far and wide they have roamed in terms of THIS side of the road, where Actual People live, but I know that the woman two doors up (whose name escapes me but has 2 cats and 2 dogs) wrongly assumed that they weren't desexed because they "wandered". (Wandered? Two houses away? Please! Call that wandering...?) I also know they like hanging about next door in Herbie and Marion's house, not only because I have seen them heading through and over the fence, but because Herbie told me that yes, yes, the boys had been in his yard, lying in the pansies, poohing in the garden... Oh dear, so much for neighbourly relations.

I've also discovered Louis in the back laneway—not sure how far he's gone, or if he's just popped out when he's heard the car, but it's another "boundary" he's broken, my Nine Lives Louis.

I am still sorting out the best way to deal with the times I am away from home until after dark, because we (my family) has always kept our cats in at night, even when it wasn't environmentally the done thing to do. I have found a local-ish woman, Maureen, who does in-home pet care, very useful when I had a residential conference to go to in eastern Sydney recently, but a bit expensive for everyday I'm-going-to-be-home-late events. (I found out about Maureen, incidentally, when I had Louis at the vet because he got stung by a bee under his chinny-chin-chin.) I'm intending to find a local kid/teen who will put them in for pocket money, but in the meantime, there are nights when they boys get to play after dark...

Like tonight.

Tonight I took my mum and dad out to their local club for Thursday Night Steak Night, and by the time I was driving home (after dark) it was raining AGAIN. (We've had a lot of rain lately—kind of nice when you're snug inside at home, not so much fun on the roads at night.) When I got out of the car to open the gates, I thought I could hear a cat crying, but it was wet and a bit windy and hard to be sure. I couldn't see the boys when I drove in, although Louis dashed across the yard soon after, and then I heard the unmistakable bleating of a cat in trouble. And I knew immediately it was Cooper, and I quickly realised that he was—apparently—stuck on the roof of the duplexes on the other side of Medlow, our house.

Oh! That plaintive cry! How distressed he sounded—and Louis dashing around on the ground (still unsure of he was excited by distress or just thrilled by the drama). Cooper, as you will recall, is largely black, and so I couldn't always actually see him as he moved up and down and across the roof. But hear him, most certainly, as he apparently called to me, his loving mother, for rescue.

So I did the only thing and dashed out the front and into next door, calling to him all the time, nearly tripping over lavender and Louis, half-worried about the neighbours but mostly (after all, the duplexes are still empty, so there aren't that many immediate neighbours) worried about Cooper. There he was, pacing the roof, crying "Save me! Save me!", and at one point looking like he was going to attempt the leap from roof to fence. I got to the highest point I could, somehow thinking he could make the leap into my arms (too many movies—have you MET this cat?), realised none of this would work, so belted back to my carport where those afore-mentioned previous owners had fortuitously left behind a ladder... so I wielded the ladder back through my side gate, around the front and into next door—only to see a newly grounded Cooper take one look at me and my ladder and disappear into the access hole under the house.

Silly me and my grand rescue fantasy.

So, bugger you, Cooper, she said, with the greatest of affection, as she lugged the ladder back and then let herself (and Louis) into the house—only to discover...

that the wind had blown closed the catflap.

And Cooper waiting at the back door.

Home, sweet home.

We are the happiest cats in Sydney.