A Toby bulletin:
No matter how much we feed him, he’s still very thin.
He’s old and he’s arthritic.
For how long, I don’t know, but he seems to have come back from the brink once more. He is not quite as wobbly and his face is more animated.
If you relate closely to an animal, you just know when they are not well.
So when Toby sat on my keyboard this morning and caused a major hiccup, I was delighted!
Well, maybe not delighted…..for a few days he had just been dragging himself to sit in a window and I watched his breathing because I thought he might leave us.
But he’s back to old habits..
Each morning now I am awakened by feline assault.
Patches comes to lick my face. Cats do this if you are so honoured, but Patches does it with abandon. If I did not restrain her, she would have the skin off my face.
7 pounds of feline determination is not that easy to discourage. Mostly because she is so sweet and I don’t like to disappoint her!
As I try to rebuff the assault on my face, Toby arrives to pull my hair.
It is no joke, either. It does nothing for my coif!
And it’s painful, so now I keep a spare pillowcase within reach and I wrap it round my head.
But the other night, Toby decided to do bedtime hair dressing, so I out with the pillowcase and ended up falling asleep with it on my head. Only to wake hours later from a nightmare wherein I was being attacked and smothered.
Yesterday, I became anxious about Willow because she was absent at breakfast when she usually socializes.
She was nowhere to be found. Cats, like people have their moods and she is certainly entitled to stray from her routine.
But I needed to know where she was, just so I could be sure nothing was amiss.
She was in Yeti’s old house. Just a basic house-shaped box that I couldn’t bear to get rid of when Yeti died.
The other cats have checked out Yeti’s Retreat, but none of them ever spent time in it, until Willow and she only rarely.
She was in “do not disturb” mode yesterday.
Not interested in being photographed, or talking.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Leave me!”
Well OK then.
Most days, Willow sits with us at breakfast.
Sometimes keeping an eye on the outdoors creatures…
….sometimes in a box
Sometimes watching for the red dot…
“I know you control it!”
Sometimes she likes her tummy tickled.
But you had better do it right.
And stop when she says “Stop!”
His Nibbs has been arriving at breakfast to stare at us.
“If you bring me some kibble, I won’t eat your birds!”
Well of course…
Then he sits by a bush as if waiting for a ride. But he’s really looking out for Zoomer.
“Can’t a chipmunk get a snack without risking life and limb?”
“You’re supposed to be hibernating Zooms!”
“I was, but I got the munchies.”
Delightful, as always Carolyn!
Keep the info coming re your cats’ moods etc.
I hope Toby can hang on a bit longer for you, and for him. His face still looks full of life.
Best wishes, Pete.
Dear Toby – I’m happy to hear he’s doing better 💌. Lovely pictures of the cats … and I was thinking, who can sleep when you’ve got the munchies? My sympathy to little Zoomer!
Yeti is gorgeous!