Charlie the Cat stories

Well, I never thought that I'd end up an old lady with a cat - but there you are, and here I am with Charlie. This week Charlie has new toys to keep him occupied while I am at work .... The toys are pretty good value because Charlie invents all sorts of ways of maintaining interest in them, such as burying them under the beautiful rug in my lounge room. This requires much clawing at the rug to get it to lift so that he can access the toy underneath it .... and hiding it under the curtains so that he can attack the curtains with true tabby cat ferocity and regain his rightful possessions.
This weekend Charlie discovered how to jump onto the table which is parked at the end of the sideway and to go from there, up onto the fence and out into the front garden (read ROAD). This caused a re-think in my `Living with a CAT Strategic Plan'. First Action item was to catch Charlie in the middle of tearing up the sideway passage, before he gets to the table and BLAST him with a jet stream of water from the hose. Worked beautifully twice, but an absolute failure the third time when he got a head start on me and made it to the table before I turned the hose on. The jetstream of water only caused him to jump higher & faster off the table and over the fence. The first time he escaped, he startled himself - he found that he was in unfamiliar territory and went to ground. I called and made smooching noises, but couldn't hear his bell anywhere. I decided the best plan of action was to stay out in the garden, pottering in and out from back yard to front and making little noises that a scared cat might be listening for. Sure enough, after half an hour, on my second trip out through the driveway gate - here's Charlie - trying to look as though nothing unusual was occurring, standing in the middle of the carport drive and VERY happy to follow me back through the gates to the safety of the back yard. When he got over the fence the second time, in the evening, I just went straight through the house to the front door, and there he was in the carport drive - very happy to come straight back in the house.
Next step in the `Living with a CAT Strategic Plan', now came into play. LEAD TRAINING.
I've got a new job and now I'm out of the house from 6.50 am until 6.30 pm. Poor Charlie - no outdoor playtime. So Charlie is learning to walk on a lead with me. and on Monday and Tuesday evenings has come out for a walk down the street. On Monday night he was the biggest Scaredy Cat you've ever seen. I ended up carrying him most of the way. Tonight he was much braver, and at the end of the walk, threw a tantrum about having to come inside again becase he's just found THE tree that all the birds live in. Until all three of the neighbours kids rushed up wanting to see him and pat him - then he went under the car so fast he nearly dragged my arm off.
It is nice to come home to someone who is desperately waiting for me to turn up! I wonder if I can con him into riding on the bike with me?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Closed Loop Here I come!

Image
Day One of the big research project and I have to be at the hospital by 8am. Up at 5:30, I'm worried about not taking the dog for a walk and I leave the house with the back door wide open so she can go outside. She looks at me lazily and only gets up 5 minutes before I leave at 6:40. I'm anxious about parking in at the hospital, I'm broke and don't want to spend money on parking fees, so I catch the train to North Melbourne and ride my bike up along Victoria Pde., to the Daly wing at St. Vincents. The Diabetes Education Department is on the fourth floor in an old ward which looks as though it hasn't been repainted since it housed patients. I wonder about the psychological impact of such an old building on the people who work here. My appointment starts at 8am and the morning is spent meeting the team who will be working with me over the next two and a half months.  I meet my 2 DNE's, the 2 research Doctors, the 2 Psychologists and the woman who brings t
Read more
Image
30 Days of Looping I decided to document a 30 day period in my looping life, when I was pondering life before and after looping and questionning whether it was the looping or the use of 24/7 cgm that was having the most impact on my HbA1c's. I also wondered how much of my results were really in my hands and how much of them were from technology fails. The green-yellow-red dashboard above gives a partial answer. The red squares are the days when site fails or data errors from either the cgm or the apps, caused havoc with the outcomes of the loop system. The yellow days tend to show carb entry miscalculations causing errors, (although not necessarily bad ones) and the green days are perfect or very nearly so!  I've been looping with the ios Loop for just over 12 months. My 'rig' consists of an Apple iPhone with Loop and Spike apps, a 'Rileylink' transcoder amd Dexcom G5 sensors running with one of Simon Lewinsons' rebatteried & rechargeable De
Read more

Too many drugs

I got through Friday by taking a Nyal Herbal remedy for Sinus relief. It was one of those ones that have different tables for day and for night, mainly because the night ones have a soporific effect. So I took two of those on Friday night as I wanted to make sure I got enough rest to handle the flight back to Melbourne on Saturday morning, and the interview process on Saturday afternoon. They worked. I remember getting up at about 4am to go to the loo and thinking - "Hmm, I hope I can walk better than this tomorrow." Then I had a weird dream in which my dog (I don't currently have a dog) was with me in a high set Qld style house and there was a BBQ happening, and I threw a bit of gristle out the back door. The dog went after it and simply plunged off the landing at the top of the stairs and fell onto a bare earth patch that looked as if it had just been dug & was waiting for planting. The dog got up and sort of staggered and I looked down into the backyard and saw Ger
Read more