Rough patch

This post should have been published last month, so now it’s a tiny bit of old news – but I still wanted to update on Tommy

It hasn’t been a very good few weeks for our poor Tommy boy. And the problem is that as a good “parent”, my “child’s problems” become my problems too. He suffers, I suffer. That simple:

1) Vomiting. We don’t know the cause, but he’s been vomiting quite a lot recently. We don’t know if this hurts him or not, but it doesn’t spoil his appetite because he eats again. The vet says that it may be caused by his hunting (he still brings us presents from time to time) and this is what we believe as well. The vet also says that it could be hairballs in his belly, and we are supposed to give him this horrible looking/smelling paste for him to lick, but he doesn’t seem to like it and attempts to get it off his leg before licking it.

2) Cage. We took him to the vet recently for his annual checkup and booster jabs, and the poor thing was in his basket for almost an hour! Our appointment was at 10:10 so we put Tommy in his basket at 09:50 to have plenty of time to drive to the vets. He hates being in the basket. No, actually, he LOATHES it. He cries and pants, and miaws so much that it breaks your heart. We got to the vet at 10:05 and reported to reception. We were told to sit down and that was it. We sat down and waited for 45 minutes! Poor Tommy was so distressed that I couldn’t wait any longer and went to reception and asked how much longer we had to wait. The receptionist promised me that we were next, but how big was my surprised when the vet came out and called for a different cat who had arrived after us! No. I’m not having any of this I thought and spoke up and said that WE were next.

3) Teeth: one of the things that the vet found out during the visit is that some of Tommy’s teeth are starting to decay, or some other illness that I can’t remember. We are supposed to take him back to the vets so they can clean his teeth. But the major problem with this is that it would require him to be under anaesthetics, which means that he can’t eat anything from 8pm the previous night. If you know Tommy you would know that this is an impossible task. He IS an outdoor cat and spends most of his waken hours outside. We would have to, though, keep him in so he doesn’t hunt any voles or rabbits and feed on them. And we wouldn’t be able to feed him ourselves either. And this would be a nightmare because he is a big boy and eats a lot.

On top of that either Jon or me will have to take one unpaid day off work to take Tom to the vets and later pick him up, as we have both run out of holiday to take…

4) Our mini holiday: Poor Tommy was so traumatised with our previous visit to the vets, that he really panicked when he saw us taking the suitcase out for our mini holiday to Motril. He thought that we were going to put him in the cage again, and his little scared face broke my heart… I spent the whole holiday thinking about him and wether he was ok….

———–UPDATE———–

It’s been quite a while since I wrote that and I am happy to say that Tommy has been back to his old self for a while now. He hasn’t been vomiting, he hasn’t been scared and he looks happy as Larry.

We haven’t taking him to the vets yet, though, for his teeth cleaning. But talking to my sister in law I am not too concerned because she says that whilst Tommy is eating ok then it’s not too much of an issue. The moment that Tommy is put off food, then we would have to start worrying. But let me tell you something: he is eating fine. More than fine. His voracious appetite is back! (he seems to eat more in winter, probably because he uses up more energy in the cold nights outside).

He eats both wet food and biscuits, and lots of freshly cooked meat as well (he insists in eating anything that we are eating too, so now I make sure that I leave some meat on the side for him whilst I’m cooking it…)

He’s had a few fights with local cats and he’s come home with a few scratches here and there, but we don’t worry too much… It’s only natural for them to fight for their territory!

However, one night we were woken up by very loud fight noises inside the house!! This big black cat had followed Tommy inside and were having a “face-off” just at the top of the stairs…

We have now bought one of those cat-flaps that reads your cat’s microchip so no other cat can ever get in the house, but we haven’t installed it yet…

Happy days for our feline friend, which makes us happy too!

I had forgotten…

I have no excuse. And it is almost embarrasing having to admit that in the last three or four years I have been unfaithful. Unfaithful to myself. To my beliefs. To my own passion.

I stopped listening to music.

Of course one never stops listening to music. Music is almost everywhere, you can’t but help listening to it, but it’s not your music, the one that fullfills you, inspires you, moves you and excites you.

At the same time, I have to say that having stopped listening to my old faithful bands, I’ve had the opportunity to explore other styles, other bands and singers, and I have found other things that I’m glad to say that now form part of my playlist (Ludovico, Ed Sheeran, Marina and the Diamonds, etc)

Oh, yes. The PLAYLIST.

It turns out that for the last 5 or 6 weeks I have been working from site (site being Heathrow Aiport). Brand new office, brand new people around me, brand new environment. And this triggered me rescuing my old Sony MP3 player and bringing my headphones to work. Let me tell you, it had been a long time since I put a pair of headphones on. Auch. Poor ears.

And it was all going very well, until I got tired of listening to the same 5 albums that I had in that MP3 player (fantastic albums, some of my most favourite ever, but you can get tired of listening to the same stuff day after day for weeks on end). So I asked Jon to put some music on my iPhone. At the end of the day, one of the selling points of iPhones is that they serve as music players and have lots of storage for many and many albums.

After many hours of syncing overnight, this morning I finally had a music-packed iPhone!

I am so excited. I’ve been listening to album after album all day, and I must say that I have been almost distracted here in the office, paying more attention to the music than to my actual work. But I couldn’t help being moved listening again and again to Alternative 4 by Anathema, Disintegration by The Cure or Jar of Flies by Alice in Chains.

And I still haven’t gone through more than 0.5% of all the music on the iPhone!

Happy days