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Checking The Back Yard: Our Roof, Our Tabs, 

I was too tired to go looking for Tabs last night. She hides out in a shed at the end of Daigon Alley if she's having second thoughts about coming inside with the mobs. Sometimes second thoughts are caused by one Black Tom. Not allowed inside at night himself, he'll sometimes prevent Tabs and Scrap from coming inside here. Maybe it's company he's after! Scrap and he have been friends since they were kittens and he also likes Tabs.

I had counselling again on Wednesday. Although the place I go is a short distance, I was worried about being late and RAN for the bus. Not far. The pain knifed into my joints immediately and I was reduced to a hobble. Yes, I've run a few times lately, when the Big Wind came and I had to fetch frightened cats, and every so often I run a bit or dance for the joy of this beautiful place. (Odd, dancing doesn't cause as much pain as running, though both usually demand some recovery time.)

Anyway, one of the boys from the White Goods Store next to the bus stop held the bus for me as I hobbled the last few yards and the physical effort that followed has ensured a few days of pain and limitation.

Not having the wherewithall to look for Tabs and Scrap bothers me much more than the lack of movement at home and round about the place. After all, I have the computering and I have the writing and study work and I can always catch up on the house work later.

Yesterday I pushed a bit more physical effort as I dug out an infestation of Onion Weed which is amost awful weed. Every bulb sends out a multitude of smaller bulbs and one has to try to get each tiny bulblet out as well as the major plants now getting to the flowering stage.

(In times past, when I worked at Bush Regeneration Up The River, a major annoyance was the number of gardeners who'd drive up our way to secretly dump a Ute Load of Onion Weed from their gardens! You can imagine what that feels like after you've carefully and gradually worked around areas with most natural growth so that the most determined weeds such as Farmer's 'Friend', Compton Weed, Privet, Lantana, Morning Glory, Erhata, Paspalum, Tradescantia, Flea Bane, Turkey Rhubarb and so on are finished off bit by bit, only to find an onion stinking pile of That Weed, which is The Worst because it's so difficult!)

(Bush Regeneration is odd work. You can work for years on your various patches but if you speak of the work, people are puzzled. It all happens so gradually that they honestly don't see the difference. Successful Bush Regeneration means that eventually, your place will look as if no other hand but God's has ever touched the place. For the educated eye, it might be compared to cleaning layers of dust from an old landscape painting. Suddenly, after much work, the Bush reality is crystalline, pure!)

Because last night was the night for the Green Bin, I also trimmed back the Marguerite Daisy which has become so large that it's reduced the space available for the two different Lavenders growing on either side.

As I trimmed, there was a light furry slap on my wrist. I looked down to see Stanley's little quizzical face.

'Excuse me, but WHY are you messing with my hidey hole?' he said quite plainly.

I tried to tell him that with thicker Lavender, the hidey hole will be eventually much improved and that made me realise I'll have to harvest the Lavender blossoms for those bushes to grow thicker quick enough for the little ones to maintain their secret spot where they can examine the street and watch for their friends.

Stanley was very gruff with me last night.

I didn't have a camera in the Bush Regeneration days and I haven't yet got into the habit of photographing my work here yet. I must say though, that if anyone has an Onion Weed Problem, then dig it out gradually and persistently and throw it into the Green Bin, not into the Bush or the garden next door. An application of Roundup early in the growth phase will help, but it must be remembered that Onion Weed Bulbs grow very deep and the poisoning may spread to more delicate flowers. I lost a season of Heartsease that way!

Princess reports that even if she needs a little more rest than she needed in the past, she likes to get out and about as often as she can. OK, so She has to carry a Princess to and fro across the street but any suggestion that Princess can no longer climb the Mulberry Tree is a lie. Princess has an obligation to Mick because Mick's been in Hospital and needs company so it is the duty of a Princess such as she to keep him company as he sits and recovers on the back veranda! Princess remembers Hospital and even if it helped her Get Better, Mick has her sympathy.

Too Much

Plotting The Escape

It's too much to have too many cats when resources are so short.

At least I have the space and Anna helps so much.

Last night, Tabs mounted an escape strategy. First of all, all the darlings were inside and fed. Then Tabs got the lounge room door open and slipped into the front where she teased the front window open. I didn't even see it as she led Balanchine and Baby outside. 

Tonight I left the front light on. Bally had come inside from the back door and I welcomed him after his characteristic yowling at the back door.

Baby had been the first to accept her food in the afternoon. Much purring.

The routines, the cleanings fell onto place.

Truth is, I'm worrying about us all. I want good homes for the little ones. 

Sylvio, Grace and Stanley usually come inside early. The other Greys also come in early.

When they are out, I worry about dogs and cars and cruel people.

Just as I  sit down to write, there's a cry at the font door. It's Tabs, she who I take the torch to the streets to search when she hasn't turned up for her tucker.  Tonight she's rolling and purring and saying that she's sorry she got out last night, Saturday night when there's drunken whooping in the street and when dogs bark. (A most beautiful and gorgeous tabby cat, she's had her troubles). 

I feed her in the hallway and then I put in the kitchen/dining area with the Greys and Bally.

Tabs was one of the cats who was very boyish. I was horribly ill when the dental infections hit my sinuses last year and that's another story, why those delays happened. With the infection deep in the sinus, with a great deal of general physical pain, I wasn't holding them on my lap for awhile. Any touch especially loud noise was unbearable. They'd stand on the kitchen table for a purry pat and that was that.

It never occurred to me that I might have got my readings wrong.

I took Tabs to the vet, I thought when that fatal dewdrop shape happened,  they might say how many kits there may be?

Bally, well he obviously had to be de-sexed and they were a most loving couple. Tabs looked like a boy, I said, Gay cats, how charming. The vet interpreted the consultation to be not just the de-sexing of Balanchine but also a very late term abortion for Tabs.

Well there was this tooth that should have been fixed in about 1997 and the Dentist was trying to save it because OK, I'd been to bad Dentists before, there'd been delays and I was trying for a partial plate.  The tooth had got very bad. I was half way through root canal therapy that Friday when I took Tabs in for the check up and Bally in for the de-sex.

The Saturday morning I turned up to pick up both cats it turned out to be one of those mornings full of huge dogs and loud people.

My head was splitting. I apologised, 'I am only over the road,' I said. 'Can I come back just before midday when your work is done and pick up my cats in quietness?'

The slutty vet said, 'Sure.'

I got a call, she had to go out, but she had to come back to complete work later, she said, and she would call me and could I pick up the cats then, a bit later in the day?

I asked what time, she said she didn't know. It seemed strange, but I said 'OK'

Three hours it was I sat by the phone and eventually I went out back to make a cup of tea.

I got back to my office. The call had come five minutes before. (Dammit with the Dentals, my brain wasn't working well enough to make sure they had the mobile number as well as the home number in my room and I'd made sure I had the Mobile with me out back.)

I dashed across the road bare foot. Noone there.

'?' I said. The Vet said she had half an hour's work to complete and would call me the minute she got back to the Surgery! I'd missed her call by exactly five minutes!

On Monday morning I was there first thing. My little ones were grateful to see me, but that Vet who'd done the operation screamed at me for neglecting my cats when that gal had come back 'especially' so that I could pick up the cats on Saturday afternoon!

I was so upset I was late for the Dentist on that Monday morning, it was a long time before I could stop crying and both cats were crying also. The weekend of non-charming people continued, the Dentist told me the notice was too short and that I shouldn't attend his Surgery again. I lost the tooth eventually.

That gal vet, I've seen her with many partners since. Once I saw her with a boyfriend. They were carrying a cat in for a treatment on a Sunday afternoon. More extracurricular activity, I guessed.

There was a time when I said to Anna, 'I've met some horror Doctors, but I never met a bad Vet.'

She said, 'Well Doctors have a career, but Vets love animals and that's why they do what they do.'

OK, Vets may have too much to deal with, they may become irritated by irresponsibility, but if a Vet can leave traumatised cats unfed and untended in cages for a whole weekend when I only lived across the road and it was she who postponed the meeting...

And the outcome of all that is that Tabs will pick locks and open windows and doors as often as she can.

That's why we catch a cab to a vet in another suburb these days.

I do Acupressure and Massage, I do tender work with poor traumatised little Tabs, but we don't go to the closer Vet any more, I've seen how much whiskey is consumed by that lot.

Anyway, my Tabby gal came inside tonight. I fed her. I cuddled her, and I can't let her in my room because wherever she is, she's always trying to escape. I think of her in pain and grief alone in a cage unfed and crying for two days.....

I encountered that gal vet in the street not long ago with a fifth or so boyfriend.

She said, 'Hi'

I said, 'You!'

A question in a recent counselling session was

'Is there anyone in a social situation who you glare at across a room?'

At first I said No. I've had a few annoying quarrels with people, not many. Most were with those who offer porn solutions to assist my single status who then become horrid when I say No Thanks. (A bit too traumatised still by what happened with Rex the deadly ex to even contemplate a social life with a NICE man at present, let alone a creepy type!) (Besides, I have to concentrate on my dentals and on getting myself some paid work in order to make sure that I don't end up with another situation where proper valid work is destroyed by someone else.)

Then I remembered that I see that Vet at the pub on occasions.

'Yes,' I said, 'In fact I glare at a person whose passion for self indulgence created fear and trauma for two of my beloved companions.'

I don't think that counts as obsession altogether, it counts as wariness, as not forgetting any of this, even though it's been very hard to write of.

Both Tabs and Greyling (AKA Greyboy) were very masculine looking and behaving kittens.

I was horrified when having carefully left both inside at nights that they'd still got pregnant.

Greyling was the one who I'd decided to take for the operation because I felt that she'd cope better. Not as far gone, less intense emotionally than little Tabs.

The horror of that weekend affected us all. I couldn't take Greyling to Those People. That's how our population increased by five, that's how Sylvio and company arrived one Autumn day.

In the meantime, Anna had also had a bad experience with the closer Vet and one of her cats. So she found a new Vet who's terse and uncommunicative but who loves cats. If this Vet gives her word she keeps it. She'll talk more to the cat than the owner in a consultation and I like that.

This new Vet is more like the Vets we knew in the past.