z ran late

I’ve phoned the Cats’ Protection League to ask for help and someone should contact me in the next couple of days. And a friend’s grandson is a gamekeeper and can lend me a live trap if necessary.  Roses gets on rather better with the mother cat than I do – that is, she came into the kitchen and polished off Roses’ cat’s food, so she must think Roses is okay.  She used to be quite all right with me, just in the last few days she’s been spitting at me (cat, that is) and I’ve done nothing to provoke it.

I lost track of time this afternoon and didn’t notice until a good half hour late that I should have set off for dinner with some friends.  I looked up the phone number of the hotel to say I was on my way – or I tried to.  I looked it up on BT.com and was just directed to advertising and booking sites.  Frustrating, since I was already late – in the end, I looked up the hotel’s own website … Then in my anxiety, I misdialled.  I explained in the end and arrived hot, bothered and apologetic.

The man who has paid me for clearing out my workshop (who’d have thought it?) came and did a lot of work this afternoon.  He’d got another man with a removal van, who asked if I remembered him?  I knew his face but couldn’t place him – he used to work for the antique dealer who bought our last house, but that was a couple of decades ago.  Nice man who now mostly does furniture restoration. I’ve got a few little jobs that need doing, so I took him in the house and showed him.  We discussed what was and wasn’t possible and feasible and he complimented me on my understanding – that is, when he explained why he couldn’t do a perfect job on an item, I could see why and wasn’t surprised.  Apparently, a lot of people expect the impossible at a knock-down price.  I said, I’d been married to a furniture and antiques expert for over forty years, I should have some knowledge of the subject.

I went into town this morning as it was market day and I wanted to tell Matt the Fish how well the salmon had been received. I bought a crab for lunch.  I also bought an absurd amount of fruit and veg, three carrier bags full.  Far too much for someone who lives alone, grows vegetables and was going out to dinner that night.  Still, I’ll eat it all.  A bunch of lovely little local carrots, for instance, who could resist?

4 comments on “z ran late

  1. Blue Witch

    Cat Protection and their national ilk are a waste of time IMHO. Too many rules and regulations and everything they do costs lots (even lending traps we found last time we needed to trap a menacing feral tom – they wanted more than it cost to buy a new trap online, which is what we now have!).

    I think you’d be better trying local shelters. I just Googled ‘[your town] cat sanctuary’ and there are several.

    Never forget, cats can read human minds 🙂

    I can’t help thinking that Russell must have previously dealt with all the kittens in the old countryman’s manner… or had a way of keeping feral cats away.

    Shelters often find it easier to rehome feral kittens than tame ones in country areas – farmers often want ‘new blood’ in their lines of ferals who keep rats and mice away (and so save a fortune on pest control). Inbred cats get lazy and deformed.

    Er, sorry, I seem to know rather too much about unwanted cats 🙂

    Reply
    1. Z Post author

      Well, as I can borrow a trap, that won’t be a problem. I’ll see what they say when they phone back. Roses is quite fond of the mother cat and I didn’t mind it and was perfectly polite until it became aggressive. Russell wouldn’t have killed a kitten, or an adult cat come to that – we’ve always had them around, but they’ve been other people’s pets and not moved in as far as I know. I agree that it’s not likely that there has never been a feral cat with kittens here before, though – but we’ve always needed to put down rat poison in the barns, so maybe not. Russell has been known to shoot the occasional squirrel, he particularly objected to anything that took wild bird chicks from the nest. But he was very much an animal lover, he’d never have a pet cat but he didn’t dislike them.

      Reply
    1. Z Post author

      Yes, haven’t much sympathy for the tom but it seems he could be a pet, so that’s not on. And things have moved on a bit… *cliffhanger alert*

      Reply

Leave a Reply to Blue Witch Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.