Good Day Bad Day

There are days when everything seems to be going right, and Monday March 2nd appeared to be one of those days. I set out with the intention of filming the Snowdrops that are in full bloom. I had spotted this particular clump last year when they were past their best, and I wanted to return to film them. I got the shots I was after and as I was in the area where the Red Kites are most frequently seen, I decided I would try and film them.

I was rewarded with some great views and some good footage. I was very happy and set off towards home earlier than I had expected. I thought that I would get the footage uploaded, edited and posted straight away. Even so I went via the woods and was rather surprised to see a Grey Heron standing at the edge of a vernal pool. I tried to unpack the camera but my stopping obviously alerted the bird to a threat, and I had not contacted its agent, it flew off before I had even unslung my backpack.

When I got home I could not have felt happier and while my cat Trouble was there to greet me she did seem a little sluggish. I refreshed her food and while I tried to get my boots off, she kept trying to come on to my lap. An old game but this time it was more like crawling up than her leaping while I am not looking approach. She seems to think that I don’t know what she is doing. I carried her into the kitchen and while I made myself a cup of tea she fussed around my legs. When she does that I do wonder if she has taken out a life insurance policy on me.

However, as I went upstairs with my tea, I noticed that she had urinated quite a lot. As I had changed her litter the previous evening, Monday being bin day, it was noticeable. I switched on the computer and went to wash my hands. Then trouble started making this awful mewing sound. She was lying on her side in the kitchen doorway and was obviously in distress and pain. I stroked her and tried to work out what the problem was. While there she passed a small hard stool. I took her to the litter tray but it was clear that she was having difficulty standing and went to lean against the wall where she strained and passed a further stool.

Now there has been increasing occasions when she appears to have missed the litter tray and I have just put this down to her either being stupid, she will never win any prizes for intelligence, or just her age. She is after all fourteen years old. But this was distressing, as she then collapsed by the kitchen door and was obviously still in pain and distress.

As she has been quite healthy all her life since moving to the village I had never needed to take her to the vet, until her injury at the start of the year. Those vets charges were well over the top, as he charged over one hundred pounds for the consultation and wanted me to pay for some very expensive tests on top. So fearing the worst, I called a vet in Consett and was able to get an appointment that day. Even better, it enabled me to get her there on the bus and fitted in with the timetable too.

Well she still needs tests but she may have Diabetes or Dementia. Personally I think it’s the latter, as she always was demented. When I got her home I let her sleep, my bed is a great cat bed she thinks. She was off her food, but after sleeping she seemed to perk up and started feeding and drinking again. Phew that was a relief, as she had not feed or had a drink since I had returned home from filming. She also wanted a cuddle and a fuss and while on my lap, I was able to give her the medication the vet had given her. It was not nearly as difficult as it will become as she recovers. An unwell cat is calmer, take that from someone who bares the scars of trying to administer medication to cats at a rescue centre.

As I say the day started out with everything seeming to go right, and while the cat plight had me worried, she appears to be back to near normal. However, just as fate seems to deal you two good cards it also deals a crap one, my new computer has died. While not quite all of a sudden, the signals were there that it was not working, as it should. The Hard disk was partitioned in a strange way. Had it not been that I am using it for video I would not have discovered that this had been done to hide that the hard drive has bad sectors on it. Well, the windows operating system will not load as it has a bad sector right in the middle of the boot up sequence.

While I can fix it eventually and I hope recover the files and data from the old hard drive, it will mean replacing the hard disk. Thus what should have been a budget computer will turn out to be an expensive one. I have already had to replace other components that have failed. All this had done it ensure that I never by a computer or software from Ebay again.

Post script; this posting was made from a fourteen year old computer that while slow, still works better than most modern ones!

However, more importantly, trouble the cat seems to be back to her old self and is milking all the extra fuss for all its worth.