The harsh realities of kitten life

For Tilly, up until yesterday, her whole little life had been one long round of things that are good. Unending playtime interspersed with frequent naps, every type of yummy kitten cuisine on tap, toys galore and as many cuddles as a little cats heart might desire.....and then came the slightly harsher side of life.

Yesterday, all at once, not only did the little soul have to face Ditto's displeasure all morning until the cat-nip incident bought about a renewed sense of peace but she also suddenly became home to a flea, well a flea or three in fact and her slightly poorly tummy became slightly more poorly. Having tried all the dietary manipulations known to cat parents to cure her tummy troubles and having failed, and my cat medicine cupboard being sadly lacking in flea preparations safe to use on one so small, the biggest trauma yet in her 7 week life was to come in the evening.....her very first visit to the vet!

Not ever having undergone this trauma she was blithely happy whilst in the waiting room, despite the company of a Boxer dog, a Doberman and assorted other canines, whilst they sniffed and pulled interestedly toward her little box, she just slept and purred away merrily.

Once on the table things were a little more disapproved of. The very nice vet lady fell in love with her, particularly her white tail tip and couldn't resist a little cuddle before the serious medical business began, but none of this flattery was to bluff one small kitten into enjoying the ensuing examination and treatments! It is amazing just how wriggly, squirmy and claw-ridden a tiny kitten can become when the dreaded thermometer comes into contact, or just how much noise said tiny kitten can make in response to an antibiotic injection. Poor little scrap, my heart bled for her but it had to be done.

She is suffering nothing terrible, her tummy troubles, as suspected, are the result of being weaned too young and the fleas are easy. Well in fact there weren't any fleas, I had caught them when I first found them but a quick spray with the prescribed chemical on our return home sorted any remaining 'pre-hatchers'. Ditto was none too impressed that all this required her also to have an extra shot of 'anti flea', and a worm tablet jammed down her throat unceremoniously before she had next expected either!

So all is well, Tilly has a few days medicine that she has taken a definite dislike too and manages to eject from her mouth in all directions and amid much baby spitting and complaining but her tummy is already much improved and she has got through her first scary visit to a vet without major trauma.

As for yesterday's sudden 'battling shenanigans', the picture below, taken late last night, illustrates how well that seems to have been resolved :o)

Arghhh....how frustrating!

I am completely and utterly fed up with this emergency dial-up connection already and yet, whilst when I had nothing else, I looked forward to a broadband connection, the dial-up didn't seem as terribly, horribly, frustratingly slow as it does now!!! It's strange how quickly the human mind seems to dispense with such memories, I don't recall my old dial-up ever being this dire and yet I know it was exactly the speed I have now!

The day to day business of surfing is suddenly transformed to something bordering 'yawn-worthy' but worse than that, the designing of a template, necessitating loading a page tens, if not hundreds of times, has been turned into a thing of unending annoyance.

But still, it looks as if I will have to learn to tolerate it for some time yet, Wanadoo and BT are still arguing among themselves as to who's responsibility our problem is, our latest promised repair date has been and gone without so much as a phone call from anyone, and the call we made confirmed only that yet again, what was promised hadn't happened! Do I look surprised?

Yes, I could continue harassing them 24/7 as I have been but it would appear that those on the receiving end are barely Neanderthal in their emotional or intellectual evolutionary process and it is only me who is getting stressed....they sure as hell aren't. So for a day or two I am trying to ignore the whole sorry situation and pretend to myself that the waiting times involved right now in gemmak's-ville, are really designed to allow for chocolate consumption and kitten watching!

The latest news is that we will be fixed by 9th November....I am assuming that rather than that referring to tomorrows date they in fact mean 9th November 2006!!!

I'm off to eat chocolate.......

Stoned.....

.... on cat-nip and friends again :o)




(Click to enlarge)

A happy coincidence

This is kinda strange, a tale of how two entirely separate incidents joined forces at just the right time to avert a small cat-astrophe! It is a tale in two parts and was originally going to be two entirely separate posts until something happened this morning to bring them together.

Part 1:

A number of weeks ago I was asked to design a blog for a lady in Daytona Beach, I won't identify her to save her blushes, if she wishes to identify herself in comments then that is her perogative for she knows who she is. Anyways, along the route of emails that always accompanies the designing of a template, myself and this anonymous lady discovered we had much in common and became friends. At around the same time the famous annual 'Biketoberfest' was in progress in Daytona, an event that bikers worldwide, myself very much included, would almost kill to be able to attend just once in their life. My aforementioned friend set about making it as real as possible for me and repeatedly made special trips to where the action was so that she could send me photographs and video clips. I was treated to a whole week of 'almost being there' courtesy of this lady, it was really as close as I could ever get without the flight and for me something almost fantastical made possible by this thing we call technology and someone who I had only known a few weeks. Once the week was over she then went one step further and against my protestations that she had already done more than enough, she promised to mail me a genuine real American Biketoberfest t-shirt....for me that was pretty 'wow'.....and until today, that was where one part of this story ends.

Part 2:

Late last night, having had Tilly kitten prevent us achieving even one whole undisturbed nights sleep since we got her, and she seeming to have settled down completely, I decided just for one night I would shut both cats out of the bedroom. The last I saw of them at 2 am, as I staggered off to bed, they were asleep, together, actually touching and seeming like any fears of dislike of one another were well and truly over. They have spent day after day playing, they eat together and Ditto even allows her to attempt to suckle from her still without any retribution. We went to bed, not a cry was uttered from Tilly .....all seemed well in gemmak's-ville.

Hmmmmmm.....famous last words eh?

I woke this morning to what appeared to be peace and quiet, I got up, ventured into the living room and found that things were not all they seemed. Tilly had at some point deposited a few little 'parcels' around the living room, ah well I thought, it is her first accident and she has had a slightly upset tummy and I set about the delightful cleaning process. My troubles were just beginning. En route to gather cleaning paraphernalia I discovered Ditto, looking most unhappy, jammed in a corner of the hallway, as I advanced on her to see why, I was met instantly by a 'wild cat', striking out, growling, spitting and fur and tail all on end. Things got considerably worse when she caught sight of Tilly happily trotting toward her for her morning play....Ditto launched at her all claws and teeth, in a state of wildness I have never seen from her before. I hastily interjected, heart pounding a little and removed Tilly, who by now was also attempting her very own, very small version of the 'claws and teeth' performance, which I was on the receiving end of.

And on it continued, Ditto behaving like she had never met Tilly before and even less that she had got on so well with her....my heart sank and I called the vet who confirmed my suspicions, Ditto had interpreted Tilly's little 'accident' as a form of territory marking and had consequently reverted to type and was battling for her 'ground'.

I have to say, as experienced as I am with cats it was really quite harrowing to watch and fazed me quite considerably. The vet said we shouldn't leave them alone and should monitor the situation carefully, Ditto given the size ratio, would be more than capable of seriously injuring Tilly in her current state of mind.

And so, a little saddened that this situation had occurred at all, we spent the morning monitoring the pair of them as they faced one another out, constantly spitting and growling, at one point I was even forced to don my motorcycle gloves to separate them, I know only too well just how seriously a moody cat can lacerate, a cat in this mood is not 'playing' and the worst case I ever came across involved a lady losing a leg as the result of becoming embroiled in breaking up a serious cat fight, and I, once before, dealt with a cat myself that had been injured by a car that was equally stressed and I was more than a little relieved at the time that I had been clad from heat to to in leathers, that small cat ripped through the sleeve of my jacket in one hit!

But I digress. Things were not looking good, we were feeling sad and nothing seemed to be changing. Four hours we watched, we talked calmly to them, we encouraged them and we kept them from doing serious harm and then the strange coincidence occurred that I spoke of at the beginning of this post.

The conclusion:

Someone knocked on the door, it was the postman with a big box addressed to me. To be honest my frame of mind was not it's usual 'oh yipee a parcel self' but I set about opening it. Inside was my gift from my friend in Daytona, only it wasn't just a t-shirt....it was a great heap of wonderful things all relating to the Biketoberfest. T-shirts (plural), tops, posters, magazines, badges, a flag, a beautiful shell off the beach, just masses and masses of stuff, it was like Christmas! I was so surprised and touched I barely noticed Ditto walk into the room and begin to investigate in the bottom of the box. What she found was a cat toy, very impregnated with the cat drug of choice 'cat-nip'. In an instant she hooked it out of the box and began rolling around the floor in a daze with it between her paws. She shredded the packaging having sniffed it in an almost alarmingly addictive manner and gradually fell victim to that very familiar 'stoned' look that any cat parent with a catnip addicted cat knows only too well!

And that was it, she got up, sniffed at Tilly, laid down next to her and behaved as if the entire morning up until that point had not happened! Job done, no careful cat psychology employed, no long drawn out days of hatred.....all it took was a little bit of cat-nip...... and that is where it is such a happy coincidence that these two things came together at just this time, I would never in a million years have thought of getting Ditto 'high' to sort out the situation and restore the shattered peace!

Tilly in the meanwhile is off for her first visit to the vet this evening to sort out her little upset tummy and hopefully prevent a repeat of last nights performance and I for my part just hope that the situation remains as is now between the two of them and peace reigns again.

And to our anonymous benefactor....a massive thank you for my wonderful parcel and for bringing to a very fast end a small war!

Never in my life....

....have I had the misfortune, until this week, to deal with a company who are so utterly unable to deliver anything like an even half way satisfactory level of customer service.

We have all come across poor service, technical help lines that are neither technical nor helpful, impolite staff and inefficiency beyond imagination but the prize for outstandingly shoddy service must surely, thus far in my life, go to Wanadoo.

Friday morning I woke to discover my broadband connection had mysteriously disappeared, I conducted the normal basic checks and still nothing, I checked it on the laptop.... nothing and so PG had a try....still nothing. At this point he took over, hardware is his forte not mine but what ensued was an utter customer service nightmare.

Without exaggeration one or other of us spent over seven hours on the phone on eight separate calls. Each one took over forty minutes to get a reply, each time we got a different person in a different call center and each time they refused to speak to PG because he is not the account holder, despite my having set him up on three previous occasions with the appropriate authorization. None of these employees seemed to be either able to read information on their screens because each call necessitated we begin the story from the beginning or too input it in the first place. We were repeatedly taken through the same 'hoo ha' of testing one or other modem, of uninstalling and re-installing software and ultimately no-one could shed even the slightest glimmer of light on what was causing our connection to remain staunchly absent!

Finally, having got hold of a particularly helpful guy at BT, Wanadoo agreed to carry out a whoosh test on our line. If you have ever been through this carry on you will know that one cannot request this test on one's own BT line, if the ISP is anyone other than BT, the ISP must make that request.....only they don't appear to be very keen to do it!

So, whilst this test is underway, not even a dialup connection can be made and at midday we were promised a result by 14.00hrs. At 14.00hrs it was promised at 18.00hrs. At 18.00 hrs at 21.00hrs, at 21.00hrs at midnight....all this despite repeated 'promises' that 'this time it would happen'!

Along the way we had asked on a number of occasions to speak to a manager or supervisor but were met with complete refusal, apparently Wanadoo's superiors in the customer service department don't sully their days with real customers or real service!

At midnight PG blew his stack, enough was enough..... but still no joy, still the 'trained monkey' approach, though we were instructed to leave the pc connected and idle overnight and assured that by the morning the results of the line test would be available.......but you know of course what happened don't you. Morning came and no test had been done, in fact, a little investigation via BT revealed that it hadn't even been requested!

I think you can probably begin to see at this point why the prize for 'lifetime crap service' is being awarded to Wanadoo!

Among all of this the majority of Wanadoo's technical help line staff were bordering on the rude, they most certainly cannot be described as having any real technical knowledge or know-how, twice when we had their backs verbally against the wall and they had no answer they hung up on us, necessitating another forty minute wait for our call to be answered and having to start from the beginning of the whole sad tale again. They were mostly, at best disinterested, often rude and had absolutely no concept of the basic customer service principles of taking responsibility for, and ownership of, a customer's problem. They were inflexible, behaved like trained monkeys spouting company policy blindly, no one seemed to have any authority to do anything nor the wit to think for themselves and use initiative........and still, on top of all else, each time we called we had to go through the getting authorization for PG to discuss the issue palaver.....despite by now, that authorization having apparently been noted on the account on four separate occasions!

And so, yesterday afternoon, finally we were give the results of our whoosh test....and guess what ...those results were 'inconclusive'!!! Arghhhhhh. Methinks there is some fibbing going on there, I doubt it was ever done, a result of 'inconclusive' seems very 'convenient'! Wanadoo's solution to our still non existent connection is too give up, they can't fix it and have handed the issue over to BT, convinced it must be their problem. Memories of trying to deal with BT in trying to get this connection enabled at all three months ago, have come flooding back and BT's promise of a fix within forty eight hours is not being taken too seriously in gemmak's-ville!

In the meantime Wanadoo are not prepared to provide us with a dial-up connection gratis, nor pay anything other than a fraction of our phone bill if we connect via a pay as you go connection so finally, exhausted and beaten by this companies ineptitude and inability to provide any kind of customer service, we have had to pay another ISP and set up 24/7 dial-up connection to keep us online, for however long it takes to sort out the broadband debacle! ....oh, and to add insult to injury, Wanadoo it transpires, have fixed my email address so that I cannot send from it, via a different ISP's connection!

One thing is for sure, I will happily 'cut my nose off to spite my face' with this issue now and regardless of cost etc. etc. once this is sorted I will wriggle somehow out of my contract with Wanadoo and go elsewhere, come hell or high water I will not remain a customer of this bunch of buffoons any longer than is absolutely necessary!

Oh....and hell, I had forgotten just how slow dial-up is.....but at least I have a connection of some sort again now!

Saturday silliness

Inelegant slumber ~ Tilly!



Internet connection? Don't ask!

Inter-not!

Oh happy days!

I went to bed at 02.00 hrs this morning, having spent the evening very much online, no problems, everything was hunky dory. Six hours later I surface, boot up this infernal machine ready for a days work (yes, ok, and some play) and what happens? I'll tell you what happens....precisely nothing! Zip, zilch, nada! Well, to be honest that is a little exaggeration, the computer is working just fine....but I have no damn connection, the all singing, all dancing, oh so wonderful Wanadoo 'Live Box' has become very definitely un-live overnight.

So this morning, after four hours of hanging on the phone for techies that know nothing technical to speak of, of being cut off, of raised voices and frayed tempers, what is their solution? They don't have one! Well they do, but it is to send me new hardware, which of course is not going to arrive today now is it? So, here I am, a mere three months after the initial long and arduous fight to attain a broadband connection at all, connected again via a 44kbps dial-up.... which to add serious insult to injury, is also of the 'pay as you go' breed. What fun, a bill for maybe six hours a day, minute by minute, peak rate charges. One thing is for sure, this is not the failure of my equipment and I won't be paying the bill, come hell or high water Wanadoo will be picking up that tab!!!

I am not a happy blogger :o(

Capitulation

Ok......under increasing pressure I have capitulated, tired, with no make up and a silly 'I don't want my picture taken' look on my face, is that enough excuses? ....here is the 'after' shot. Available for only a few days!

This last week......

..... courtesy of one very small and lively kitten, sleep has become a thing of the past, well, copious amounts of it at any rate. I now have some small idea of what it must be like to have a new baby in the house and I have to say, it has gone no way toward making me regret my childless state!

Madam has a 'sleep span' of approximately two to three hours at which point she considers it an appropriate time to play with almost anything that creates noise or to indulge in a little 'body and face pouncing' practice. Dearly as I love her, twenty small and exceedingly sharp claws in the face, whilst it has her desired effect of gaining attention is no pleasure and for PG who has suffered one or two 'stalk and attack' sessions in rather more delicate 'departments' it is no fun snigger at all!

It was thus that this morning, at 4.30, and against my better judgment I finally gathered her up and shut her out of the bedroom. I hate to do that but really, we need some sleep! We tried the exclusion method a few days back but her sad baby crying caused us to relented in under a minute and let her back in, but this time, maybe because she is a little older and more settled there were only two half hearted sounds of protest and then quiet. We slept blissfully! So blissfully in fact that I didn't wake again until 9.30, arghhhh, unheard of for me and the result is that I am way behind with my day. I don't have time to be in bed that late!

Claws in the face or other areas may not be absolute fun but at least they act as an excellent alarm clock!

Mouse mat?

Cat mat!

The deed is done!

This time I couldn't resist, my hair is gone, transformed into a big blondish pile on the floor to be swiftly swept up by some minion!

No more hour long hair drying sessions, no more fiddling with straightners, no more bits in my face, no more hair! :o)

As ever the visit to the salon was not without incident, I sometimes find it hard to belive that this is actually a reasonably expensive, up market establishment with a good reputation! This time the young girl charged with hair washing duties, who a few weeks ago on my last visit, managed to give me a full shower, almost pulled my hair out by it's roots, forgot the conditioner and then proudly presented me with a cup of coffee.....that was stone cold! Young and new she may be but if she doesn't shape up soon surely she will be jobless, in fact I'm amazed she hasn't already been posted off to join the dole queue!

Aside from the assistant from hell the afternoons entertainment was provided by my stylist, who again was somewhat nervous about hacking the whole lot off. I reasoned with her that last time I asked her to do the same it was much longer, we both had survived that so this would be easy. She wasn't entirely convinced and kept telling me that people just don't go from long to very short in one hit! Hmmmm....this 'people' does.

The whole shenanigans was accompanied by the sound of another client, a middle aged lady with a very loud voice, regaling her attendant with tales of woe regarding her husbands recent departure from their marriage. Really, I'm all for 'open and honest' but their was barely a gory detail left unsaid!

And to think I used to detest these visits, it seems that if nothing else they are mildly entertaining of late but just once it would perhaps be nice for the whole process to be relaxed and 'incident' free!

The long and the short

I'm doing it again, the almost quarterly 'do I or don't I' thing with my hair! I seem to tolerate the bits in my face, the hours drying and fiddling malarky every day just to prevent myself from looking like a bag lady, the having to pull a brush through it every time there is so much as a puff of wind and the sore head from tying it up........ and then my perseverance deserts me and to have it hacked off real short suddenly become almost irresistible!

The thought of a five minute shuffle over it with the dryer, no sore head and the ability to be able to move off the mark without a hairbrush glued to my hand is once again becoming an extremely attractive proposition but then there is the big down side to be considered. Short hair necessitates far more frequent forays to dreaded, time consuming and terminally boring hairdressers.

Oh....and having had the 'deed done', there is ever the question of regret. Women! Fickle creatures eh?

Hey ho, we will see what today brings but a hacking I think, is very likely!

*EDIT: Chopping booked ~ 15.00 hrs, today. Eekkkk.

The perfect life

Sometimes something comes along that hits you between the eyes like a sledgehammer and reminds you just how lucky you really are and just how fragile and unpredictable life can be.

We all set off in life with a plan of sorts, even before we have our own plan our parents have one loosely worked out for us but most, if not all of us, know as we get older that life rarely works out according to those plans. In my case very much so. I was going to get a good education, a career, marry only once and in my thirties, children optional but unlikely, a decent pension, own my own home, take holidays abroad, blah, blah, blah.

In the event I screwed up the latter part of my education, married young, successfully avoided the offspring, divorced, lost my career through ill health, married and divorced again, lost my home and eventually ended up here in Scotland with the life I now live.

Hardly any resemblance to the original plan at all and yet I still feel lucky in comparison to many and specifically having heard from a friend of many years yesterday.

My friend and I met in our first job at age sixteen, we went through many of the usual teenage up's and down's together and then we both married, I moved away and our days of 'hanging out' were over. We have however managed to remain in contact over the years and meet up once in a while.

My friend had what I considered to be the perfect life, her husband was stunning, he built a well remunerated career, he was charming, articulate and bright, they lived in a beautiful home in a very select area, they had two equally beautiful children, wore designer gear, furnished their house with designer furnishings, drove cars to die for and took international holidays, but most of all they seemed to remain very much in love and very grounded.....and that was it, one assumed a happy ending. One was very, very wrong in that assumption.

Lately I hadn't been able to make contact with my friend, I was worried she may have move and we would finally lose contact but yesterday she called me. I don't know too many details and if I did here is not the place to broadcast them but she has moved but not to an even more delightful home but because she and her husband have parted ways, reason unclear and I didn't like to pry. She now lives in a dingy little flat and struggles financially but worse than that, much worse, her husband lost his job and then his health, he is still just in his forties but is undergoing his fourth course of chemotherapy for a cancer which remained undiagnosed for way too long. She is wracked with guilt, her children (now adults) are at a loss and her beautiful husband is scared for his life and a shadow of his former self!

Never in a million years could I have imagined that this perfect couple, living their perfect life would have ended up where they are today.

I feel extremely sad for them, maybe even a little sad that what I considered a dream relationship and life for most of my own adult life, didn't in the end, survive any better than many dreams do, but most of all I feel lucky, damn lucky, that when my life didn't go to plan, it didn't go so catastrophically and sadly off the rails as my friends. It is perhaps selfish but today I am counting my lucky stars!

Learning young!

Tilly kitten seems to already have adopted the fascination for computers that her 'parents' have, under the circumstances I'm not entirely sure that is a good thing!!


The majority of the last few days I have spent trying to work on here whilst she has attempted to master the quickstep on the keyboard, she has fast learnt the 'cat thing' about mice, though her choice of 'mouse' is somewhat suspect and she has discovered, that if one's human blocks up all access points to the rear of the contraption, where the oh so attractive balls of wire exist, then there is only one option remaining....... to make your little cat body flat enough to slide under the desk.....yes, that little space between the floor and the base, that is less than one and a half inches in height in this case, appears to be just enough space for a flattened six week old kitten to slither into and is suitably beyond all reach for purposes of extrication!!


And then there is the 'God laptop'....... wires and mouse within incredibly easy reach, a key board just made for dance practice that doesn't involve one having to make a death defying leap from the sofa, risking the embarrassment of missing and falling in an ungainly heap on the floor to access, and a screen, completely unprotected from any attempts at cursor catching!