Staying in and feeling positive vibes

Just for the record, since my last post, my cat got very sick.

Last Monday we had to put him down.  It was very sad since he'd been our first family pet and was still too young to go to sleep.

This is Lenny, helping with bicycle maintenance

On Thursday, my dog was put to sleep.  He hadn't lived with me since 2002 but he was still my dog.  When we visited, he didn't leave my side and when my mum got up in the morning he would come and sit by my bedroom door until I got up.  He was very poorly and of a suitable age to go.  Whilst it wasn't such a great surprise (let's face it, I had already got a hunch this was going to be a shit December), it still made me sad and as I cycled to work on my mountain bike, I could feel him running along the canal bank next to me like he used to when we lived in Altrincham and I balled my eyes out.

How I didn't crash into the water I don't know.

Then followed the two most intense work days of the year.  The annual get-together of our teams followed by a Christmas meal, just when I really wasn't in the mood for celebrating anything.

On Saturday we did Christmas shopping followed by the polo dinner where, despite being the only teatotal vegetarian, I got sick and spent Saturday night throwing up.

On Sunday, instead of doing any of the excercise that I wanted, it was more Christmas shopping.  I wrapped half of the presents before going to Norfolk for work on Monday morning where I was yelled at by the client including more crying and a deep-seated temptation to just leave.  Instead I pulled myself together and got my work done despite everyone's best efforts to the contrary (they didn't want to work late as they had Christmas presents to collect from the post office whilst I pointed out that I still had presents to wrap and get in the post but I'd travelled hundreds of miles instead).

The next day was my 40th birthday.  I had a nice breakfast in the hotel then drove home... well, back to the office to the welcome of cards and presents from my colleagues.  How lovely.

At home, we literally rushed back out to the post office to post those kids pressies and were rewarded with my present from Mother Nature - a harvest moon over the Rivelin Valley.



I was whisked back out for a beautiful meal at my new favourite veggie cafe before going to watch "The Hobbit" at the cinema.  An amazing evening with TSK which gave me hope for the decade ahead.

On Wednesday morning I went back down into the Rivelin Valley for a run.  It was so nice to be back on my feet but I just couldn't get my heart rate to stay normal and practically shuffled along the flats and walked up all the hill climbs.  Clearly I had picked up the cold that was hammering around the office in Norfolk.

On Thursday I was in denial and persevered with a trip to the pool.  The swim went OK but as soon as I tried to ride my bike my legs suggested that there was nothing there.  I sneezed my way back up the hill and got back to working on the quotation I had to finish by lunchtime from the comfort of my own sofa.

So that has been the end of my 30s and the begining of my 40s.  For days I have had a dull head but I'm tired of being down now and, with my last day of 2013 work being a sickie, I can finally settle in to sit on the sofa, do nothing and think positive thoughts for 2014 through a snotty nose.

New Family Member

All hail Lenny. Prince of Cats.

Actually, Lenny is from a broken home - a violent partnership where the man involved has done something so bad that Lenny could not stand to be near the husband of the lovely woman who was fostering him on behalf of the cats' protection league. He would, apparently hiss and spit at S. when he walked by Lenny's pen and S. was quite perturbed - he couldn't be near Lenny for fear of being savaged and for a man who loves and cares for cats so much, that's hard.

So it was with some trepidation that TSK entered Lenny's pen, having watched from the kitchen window whilst Lenny and this Trep had a quick and happy introduction. Lenny was by no means enthralled by TSK's presence in the pen but there was no hissing, no spitting, no growling and TSK was quite well behaved too. Lenny even chanced receiving a stroke from TSK and ate a little food from the bowl he offered before slinking away into his fluffy hidey hole.

I loved Lenny straight away. He's shy but reasonably forthcoming with me as a stranger. He's white, oh so white with black ears and face and a black back and tail. His whiskers ping! at you in white on black and his little black nose is shiny and inquisitive. He's a big cat for a yearling and I could tell there was a twinge of adventure in him. I could not wait to rescue him from his fears and his cold, outside pen.

TSK loved him to! Oh joy of joys. Lenny was to come home with us. I kept asking to make sure that TSK was OK with Lenny. I didn't want to saddle him with a cat that only likes me because TSK likes cats just as much as me - if not more. But he was fine with it all - prepared to accept a challenge, prepared to accept the odd nip and scratch, prepared to sacrifice a finger or the occasional arm, prepared to be ignored for a while.

We took Lenny home - a traumatic ride in the vanu, sitting in the new cat box but his fosterers sacrificed their blanket to travel with him to give him some comfort.

Back at the Orchard, Lenny took his first steps out of the cat box. Our intention was to show him where the litter tray and food and water was but before that, he legged it under the kitchen cabinets and there he stayed for the rest of the night. I knew I should've finished the kickboards before I got the cat.

I spent the night worrying about what to do. Would Lenny come to spend the rest of his life under the cabinets if we left him to his own devices? Would he never experience the joy of family life if he didn't push himself to try it just once? Would I have to get down on my belly on the tile floor and pull a screaming hissing cat out from under the cabinets?

You can imagine my relief when, this morning, he was happily lying on his fluffy cushion in the middle of the floor?

He took tentative steps over to his food and ate carefully from the bowl, watching me all the while.

He had a stroke, he had a cuddle. I got TSK to feed him some leftover chicken scraps.

You can imagine our surprise when this was allowed to happen...

and those are TSK's arms, not mine.

All hail Lenny, prince of cats.