The big freeze, New Year's Resolutions and a New Kitteh on the block

You know that saying careful what you wish for? Well we got a prime example of it in the last few days. As I'm sure most of you know, Ireland regressed to the Ice Age over Christmas, and it's only in the last couple of days that we're beginning to thaw. Temperatures went down as far as -8C, which for us is bloody cold. Strangely enough, our little town didn't get the snow until Saturday, and we were beginning to feel a bit left out, watching the rest of the country on the news under several inches of the stuff. The inner children in us were longing for a good old snowball fight.

We hadn't got over to visit my in laws, who live a 40 minute drive away all Christmas, because the roads were just too icy. John had been talking to them every day, and it had got to a stage that their water had gone on the blink. So last Saturday we decided icy roads or not, we'd get in the car and drive over, even if we had to go 20mph all the way. Halfway there, it started snowing. Shortly after we arrived at the house, parents in law arrived back from a trip to town to bring home one of the cats from the vet. They have what I could only describe as a tribe of black cats in their yard, mostly feral, who would make great extras for a Hitchcock type movie. Anyway one of them came out the wrong side of a fight a few months back with what we guess must have been a dog or a fox, and she lost more than half her tail as a result. It got infected, and the poor thing was in pain, so mother in law got some sort of trap from the vet to catch her and bring her in for treatment.

She was released from the vet with instructions to keep her indoors. Now I knew there was no way in hell that my parents in law were going to do that. As far as they are concerned humans live indoors, dogs and cats live outdoors, end of. She was very distressed from being in a cage and travelling in the car when they got her home. I opened the lid of her cage to pet her and calm her down, and within minutes she was purring and nuzzling my hand. So I took pity on the poor little thing and after working on John for a couple of minutes, declared that we would take her home to care for her. So we loaded her cage into the back seat of the car, and off we went into the snowy night. Driving on a windy crappy road in the snow at night can be a stressful enough experience, but when you have an extremely traumatised injured cat providing the soundtrack, it's pretty headwrecking. We stopped off at the supermarket en route to buy her a bed and some extra food, and by the time we got home it was 7pm.

Once in the house, I went to fill the kettle. No water. We checked with our neighbours, and their water was fine. Ours had frozen over because we were out of the house all day. D'oh. That was Saturday, it's now the Friday, and it still hasn't come back. So we've been showering in the gym and filling our water tank in the attic via a hose from our next door neighbours. On top of that, we both came down with colds this week. I am still smothered with it. Yuck.

We made a little safe haven for the new cat in the sun room, and managed to smuggle her in without our own two cats noticing there was a new resident under our roof. Little by little I started to gain her trust, to the point I got her to sit on my knee. When she does this she purrs like an engine, then she claws me to ribbons in happiness, and drools profusely. Nice. Yesterday I spoke to her vet who told me that what's left of her tail needs to be bathed three times a day. Ever since I have been having great fun and games trying to get at her tail, and every time I get near to clean it, she tucks it in under herself. Our cats have begun to cop on that there is a house guest in residence. So far there hasn't been too much hostility which I'm surprised at really, they are normally extremely territorial when it comes to their home turf. So I don't know yet if we'll keep her or try and re-home her. Whichever way, I'm not sending her back to her original home as she will only get booted out the door again, which is a pity because she has great potential to be a really affectionate lap cat. But I'm afraid that I am on the slippery slope to becoming one of those witchy old cat women if I keep her and then have three of them.

Anyway, enough pussy talk (fnarr fnarr). I gained quite a few pounds weight in the last month or so, between Christmas and a post ectopic pregnancy comfort eating binge, so I decided to do something about it for once and for all. I signed up and paid up for a 20 week weight loss programme with Motivation Weight Management Clinic. Two of my brothers did their programme and had great success with it, one of them lost three and a half stone last year (49 lbs) so I decided to give it a go. I want to lose around two stone (28 lbs). So far on the first week I was down 4 lbs. My sister in law has very generously booked us flights to visit her and her husband in Dubai in March, so my aim is to be down at least 14 lbs by then. I was doing well on the exercise front until this cold hit me, and now all I want to do is curl up in bed with a hot water bottle. But hopefully I will shake it off before too long and will be back up on the treadmill soon.

So there's my New Year's Resolution. To be back in size 12-14 by Summer time. And hopefully I will then go and undo all my good work by getting pregnant and actually carrying it to full term.
I'd better go now, I have to play Florence Nightingale to the furry amputee. Here kitty, kitty.....

Speaking of me kittehs....

I used to think that teeny tiny kittens had the monopoly on fluffy cuteness until our two grew up. Here's some seriously cute kitteh video footage. Warning: this contains some disturbingly incestuous tongue action between two litter mates.

The ice breaker

When we moved five years ago to the town we currently live in, we knew nobody here. I had never lived in a small town before. I grew up in the country, where everyone seems to be a distant cousin of their neighbour and the postman knows what you had for breakfast. From there I moved on to university life in Galway, a small city in the West of Ireland. College life is the easiest time to make friends because everyone is up for partying and meeting new people.

After that I lived in the UK for a short stint, on the outskirts of London, and from there I moved to Dublin. Dublin is an easy place for a country person (or culchie, as the Dubs like to call us) to make friends, as there are enclaves in Dublin, mainly around the Dublin 6 area, inhabited by culchies in their twenties and early thirties. Working in any large organisation in Dublin, you will easily make more friends from outside of Dublin than Dubs. It's a sense of all being in the same boat which fosters a certain cameraderie.

So it was a bit of a culture shock to say the least, when I moved down the the arse end of Tipperary, to a town with a population of around 7,500. Work colleagues my age were people local to the area, who had never really lived anywhere too far from home, so they had their own lives, family units and social circles well established, and had no interest in meeting new people. My sister had moved to a town outside of Dublin in the mid 90s, and she always said what broke the ice for her was her kids. She struck up friendships with women at mother and toddler groups, or even just striking up conversations with other pram pushing Mammys when she went out for a walk. Once her girls started school, she made new friends at the school gates. So all in all, when you move to a new town, kids are the ultimate ice breaker.

So what happens when the kids just don't come along and you're living in a small town? Well we were lucky enough to meet a younger crowd of people through my work. Mainly professionals in their mid twenties to early thirties, these people were blow ins just like us. Unfortunately, now that the plant has downsized hugely, most of these people have moved on, and we are getting back to square one. I often go out for a walk during the day, and I notice how the women with babies and toddlers in buggies tend to stop and talk to each other. I often wonder will I ever be part of that.

One day when the sun was shining last week, I pulled on my runners and set off to walk the three mile round path that starts at the end of our estate. I had borrowed a cat carrier from my vet a few days previously when I was bringing the fur babies in to get microchipped. Since the vet's surgery is only a ten minute walk away and it was on my route, I grabbed the cat carrier on my way out the door since I was going to be passing the way. As usual, I met a few mothers and babies along the way, and I just smiled and nodded hello at them.

Then as I walked along, a lady came up to me and the following conversation ensued:
"Ah, are you bringing your cat to the vet?".
"No, just returning a carrier I borrowed to bring them the other day".
"Are they ok now?"
"No, they weren't sick, I just took them in to get chipped"
"I'm up and down to the vet the whole time with my two, they're getting very old. How many have you?"
"I have two, but they're only four, so they're fairly healthy apart from the odd eye infection or war wounds"
"I don't know what I'll do when mine are gone, you get so used to them around the house don't you?"
"I know, I dread the thoughts of anything happening them, you just get so attached"
"Ah sure they'll be fine, they're only young yet"

And with that, we went our seperate ways, me with a smile on my face. So you see, kids aren't the only icebreakers.

My fur babies

Yes folks, I have to admit it, I'm a loopy old lady with cats. I just had to put a photo of them in. This is their baby photo, when they first adopted us. It's not very obvious, but they are litter mates. Same mother, different father. Obviously a pussy of questionable morals. But hey, we don't mind if their mother is a slut. They're three years old now, or 24 years old in cat years, so we have been through the teenage trantrums, the slamming doors and rolling eyes, and now they're young adults.


But it's about time they went out and got jobs and stop treating this house like a feckin hotel. Look at them, lying around on the sofa all day, when they should be earning their keep.

They hardly ever bring a mouse in, even. I'm
thinking of sending the fluffy lad up chimneys.
I'd bet he could earn a few bob for us. It'd be cash in paw too.




But like any parent, I'm concerned about the drug culture that pervades the youth of today. Especially all this rave culture. Here's one of the young fella taken at recent rave. Paws in the air, eed out of his little furry tits he is, look at him! What are we rearing at all, at all?