PLENTY IS GOOD

Well, it’s been an eventful week in the Shirley household (my week starts on a Sunday, hence two blog posts this week).

Sunday: Writing mostly, I didn’t even do the ironing, I thought I’d save if for Monday when I would be worrying about my girls. Sunday was not eventful, just productive, peaceful and pleasant.

Monday: Vets first thing. My two girls were not very happy about their visit, Mummy Shirley was even less happy when poor little Rhea’s vein collapsed before they’d finished getting the blood out and had to keep here there for a couple more hours. (They weren’t allowed to eat after 8pm the previous day, so they were both hungry, which never improves my cats’ tempers’.) Truth to be told, I think I was more worried than Rhea was, but hey. So, I left them both and went about my business. I got a call a couple of hours later telling me that Rhea was ready to go home but I could leave until Telesto was ready if I wished. No chance. I went straight to the vets and took my little baby home. She was absolutely fine and there was no sign of any trauma once she got home.

I got a call from the vets about 3pm telling me that Telesto’s surgery had finished, they hadn’t needed to extract any teeth, and she was a bit dopey. They told me to ring back about an hour later to see how she was doing. I duly rang back and they told me I could collect her just after 6pm.

When I went to collect her at 6pm, I had a list of do’s and don’ts – don’t let her out for 24 hours, only feed her soft food, and other things that only applied if something went wrong. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows my little darling that no sooner did I open the door of the pet carrier, than she ran to the biscuit bowl and started munching away. I put some soft food down and she made a good attempt at eating that, keeping Artemis away, until Oceana came downstairs and decided to push Telesto out of the way as she liked the smell of the food.

Oh, and I finished the ironing and the rest of the housework.

Tuesday – Thursday: Work, so will say no more about that. The vet rang me about Rhea’s blood test results. There was a little bit of an understanding issue, and I’m not sure that I completely understand yet, because it wasn’t my usual vet. She asked me whether Rhea urinated… My immediate response was that, yes, of course she does. Apparently, Rhea has some red cells in her urine (which is probably nothing serious) so the vet wanted to know. Fortunately, I wasn’t at work on Friday.

Thursday evening, when I got home, I had to clear out the cupboard under the stairs. Not before time, I admit, but it was quite a shock when I had to throw out a full, unopened pack of 6 Plenty Kitchen Rolls, plus one from an opened pack. You know Plenty; they are one of the more expensive ones. They really do what they are advertised to do – they were absolutely sodden but they were completely intact. I assumed that this was all to do with the leak in the mains pipe, so thought no more about it.

Friday: Boiler service and the water company came to deal with the leak in the mains water pipe. The gas man came first, and I told him there was a problem with the water temperature, but he couldn’t find anything wrong. He thought it might be something to do with the changes in water pressure because of the leak, and to see what happened when they’d done that.

Next to turn up was my indoor plumber, Mike. He started doing what he had to do and then the outside chaps turned up. I am hugely impressed with them all (thank you J D McKay) and they did what they had to do in a very reasonable time. Mike told me that the damp in the cupboard was unrelated to the mains leak; it was coming from my shower, which is other side of the wall. Mike told me what I needed to do to dry out the wall and seal it, which I did this morning. So bad job to the plumber who didn’t seal it off when he did the repair 12 years ago, even if he’d told me what to do, it would have helped.

Amazon

Mike was right, the water pressure is better now and his sealing advice has stopped the water running through to the cupboard. Yay!

Another visit to the vet, to get my loyalty card for the cat food stamped, to find out I owe more money (hey ho) and that I may have got the wrong end of the stick about Rhea. Lindsey, the veterinary nurse, said she thought that the vet might have been worried that she had cystitis. Which she clearly doesn’t.

So that’s a quick update for this week. More soon.

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