I have just found myself singing Happy Birthday to our cat Ronnie who is a year old today. This was at Bryn's insistence, you understand, and not something I would have freely engaged in otherwise.
 |
| Ronnie as a cute kitten |
So, what has our little feline friend managed to accomplish in his first year of life? Here are a few of the highlights for you.
- He is pretty good at playing the piano and is often heard tinkling on the ivories late at night. Whilst this can be disconcerting it is not as alarming as his sister Coco who has learnt to turn the TV on and is apparently partial to a bit of late night viewing.
- He has managed to clock up 8 visits to the vet's including two anaesthetics, an operation, an endoscopy, several shots of steroids and two courses of antibiotics. Sounds like a normal night out in North Walsham to me.
- He has eaten approximately 30 kg of dried food and 600 pouches of meat but still prefers to chomp on rotting sparrow entrails and flies or to steal leftovers from the hedgehog.
- He is very helpful when it comes to wrapping presents, as I found out at Christmas. Even though it is August we are also still finding stray baubles which he knocked off the tree and rolled under sofas or behind furniture. They are currently sitting on the mantelpiece and will probably stay there until we decorate again in December.
- His best trick to date was jumping in a bowl of pea and ham soup and then proceeding to re-decorate the lounge with it.
- He is a handsome, affectionate, funny little chap and I hope he will be with us for many years to come just with fewer visits to the vet's.
Continuing the cat theme for a bit, I have been filling in the insurance claim for Ronnie's vet bill this evening. He has had a string of problems recently all stemming from a nasty cat bite and prompting me to add new lyrics to the Tom Jones classic. 'What's new pussycat?' (choose from any of the following in response) 'Think I'm gonna vomit/Got a swollen lymph gland/Got an anal abscess/Need a shot of steroids'.
Last month was so bad, in fact, that we had our own seat in the waiting room and I kept worrying that the vet thought I had the feline version of Munchausens by proxy.
Anyway, he seems to be in good health now, unlike my bank account, and I had to smile when Bryn, asking about what breed Ronnie was said, "Mummy, is he a demented short hair?" Yes son, he is.
At around 2 a.m. I was woken up by the most awful sound of someone calling out in pain. Thinking it had come from Bryn's bedroom I was immediately alert and ready for action; the maternal instinct kicking in through my drowsiness, the lioness protecting her cubs (or in my case cub). "Go and see what that was", I said to Geof.
As it turns out, Bryn was still sleeping peacefully in his bed. However, our delinquent cat Ronnie was caught stumbling through the cat flap, clearly in retreat from yet another potential fight. We are still paying the vets' bills from the last one.
In fact, as I write, Ronnie has just sauntered in and settled himself on my lap - please forgive any typos; they will be his fault! This is the little chap who, as a kitten, was caught googling 'bra size 34 D' and no, I am not making that up.
