Liv & Paul’s Web Page

Well George has been driven mad by the catnip, had to wrap it up and hide it upstairs, something for him to have at Christmas.

Whilst doing my Christmas shopping, noticed a few things George might like, the only one I have so far ordered is some Organic Catnip. Can be a bit hit and miss, have bought Catnip toys in the past that are obviously well past their sell buy date, we’ll just have to see…

Organic Catnip £4.95 From: www.firebox.com

Came home yesterday to find the kitchen floor covered in feathers, and in the middle under the table a very dead Collared Dove, George got short shrift last night.

Just noticed the RSPB Web Site, sure it didn’t used to be so useful, or at least perhaps Google hadn’t indexed it. Anyway some useful bits include a guide to feeding birds in the garden. As well as a guide to more common birds fond in the British Isles, which is where I found the page on the Collared Dove

Woken to the sound of tooth on bone, that slow horrible realisation that the sound your hearing…
This isn’t a dream…
That sound? What is it?
Its the cat. He’s eating something…
That something is on my bed!

Jump out of bed to find the cat chewing on a headless mouse at the bottom of the bed, quickly despatched, wrapped in toilet paper and dropped in the bin.

After my breakfast, just driving off the work, notice George has caught another one in the wood and is still ‘playing’ with it. Groan.
He is currently wearing 3 bells on his collar, what more can I do, tie his back legs together?

Not sure I should be encouraging birds to visit our garden, but thought by feeding them, it might redress the balance somehow.

Found some goose fat left over from last Christmas at the back of the fridge, so thought I’d have a go at making some bird cake, basically made up of a load of fat, sun flower seeds, pumkin seeds, oats, raisons, flour and anything other seeds/nuts I could find in the larder. Followed the recipe on the BBC Website

Had some fat left over so made some ‘fat maggots’ as well, also on the website above.

The fat maggots were gobbled up, but not sure the birds can handle my inverted fizzy squash bottle bottom.

Been a reasonably quite month, he’s caught a wood pidgeon and a handful of mice, most of which I managed to get off him and they escaped – the wood pidgeon took a while to recover but eventually flew off.

We also had a small storm, which caught a few birds off guard, George took advantage of this and brought in a Magpie that was obviously soaked through, and could barely fly. After locking George in the Conservatory spent a good 5 minutes following the Jackdaw round the kitchen – somewhat smarter than the Wood Pidgeons I usually have to deal with.

Anyway this spate of killings prompted me to put his collar back on (he had managed to lose it in the garden, but I rescued it), even with the bell he still managed to catch one more mouse…

George has been pretty inactive over the last month, or at least he has stopped bringing animals into the house, however over the last few days that has changed.

Over the last couple of weekends we’ve had a lot of friends & family visit (finished the DIY), some with children. So we’ve discovered that George can’t handle kids, power tools, knocking walls down, hammering, the hoover, all no problem, but a 3 year old going “Meow” scares him stupid.

Anyway, this must have triggered something as he has been bringing in lots of mice of late, some alive, some not so. Perhaps they are more active this time of year, getting more nest material now the weather has turned colder.

George must be okay now, he caught a Wood Pidgeon in the early hours, feathers everywhere. I think the collective now for lots of feathers is a ‘carcass of feathers’. Took me a good 15 minutes to clean up, significantly less than the time George probably tortured the poor animal.

One more indoor kill, and I think I’ll put the collar back on.

	Found this site (www.wildyorkshire.co.uk on my quest to find the correct spelling of Pidgen, Pigeon, Pidgeon.
	Which lead on to this one, www.rozworks.com/dot.html

How dense is our cat? I don’t know if cat pill technology has moved on but this was far too easy…

Concealed in one hand I have 3 of your favourite fish flavoured kibbles, concealed in the other hand I have a bright red pill that probably tastes like all pills taste.

Which hand George?

George sniffs the hand holding the pill, clever cat, hold it out to him and he eats it!

Round one to us, this game is too easy, he’s got 9 more of these to eat over the next 5 days, lets see how he progresses…

After 3 nights at the vet George is back with us, temperature has been okay for the last 18 hours so seems like he has recovered, no clue to what caused his fever but is on a course of Anti-Biotics (Synulox) so they must suspec some sort of inection.

Still seems a bit shaken after his ordeal, not his usual self yet…

What will be the next thing he catches?

Place your bets…

Now!

Took him back to the Vets yesterday, for his third visit, his temperature is still at 105oF, as it was on Wednesday, so the vet has decided to keep him over night and put him on a drip and do some blood tests

Liv phoned the vet this morning, the blood tests did not pick anything up, so they will probably keep him in again tonight, as his temperature is still high.

Spoke too soon, he crashed again on Monday, spent all day inside hibernating, looks like he over did it the day before. Anyway one trip to the vet, for an anti-inflammatory injection (he was running a slight temperature of 104oF), and he has made a remarkable recovery. Think he preferred the injection to the thermometer, he’s going back tonight for a further checkup, and another temperature taking ordeal no doubt…

Some useful information on Cat Fevers/Temperature, sounds like George had a NSAID injection…

Never got to the bottom of why he was under the weather, but he seems right as rain again today! Well he ate his breakfast and was out in the pouring rain trying to catch things so must be okay.

The Quick Small Wren Flew Over the Sleepy Ginger Cat…

…and promptly got caught and eaten. How stupid can a bird be? It flew right over the George’s head and landed on the shed window, less than 2 feet from him. A split second later George pounced and had the bird in his mouth, fortunately I managed to grab him and make him let it go.

He spent the rest of the day sleeping on the bench by the shed and we thought no more about it. However he was lethargic and did not eat his food for the next day or two, obviously under the weather but no obvious reason why.

He has started to catch things again, he brought in a shrew today, so we decided to put the collar back on to see if it would stop him…

Liv has decided that George’s Birthday is the 19th August (2003) so he is 1 year old today, to celebrate she gave him a wet catfood sachet she’d been saving specially. We also got him some salmon and catnip cat treats, but he didn’t like them!

George had other ideas and promptly caught a mouse which we had to rescue, as it’s his birthday we let him off

George slipped his collar last week (Visions of exploding collars, a la Battle Royale), so he no longer jingles as he walks.

Although I know he has been catching mice, he has yet to bring any indoors. So maybe he has learnt that we don’t like entrails. If this good behaviour continues we’ll leave the collar off.

Seems it must be harvest mite season, George has picked up a few on his ears and around any scratches. According to Cat Clinic they will drop off after a few days anyway, fortunately they don’t seem to irritate George much. All the same gave him his monthly dose of flee/tic/mite stuff (and this worm medicine) to help clear them out.

George is due for a stay in the cattery soon, so good to get him up with his medication.

Going to visit Roz and Graham, who don’t have access to the internet (luddites!), so took a few snaps of George to show them on the camera, added them to our gallery.

If you have access to the gallery, there is also a picture of Oscar, under Albums->;Other Galleries->;Friends