One cat just leads to another - Ernest Hemingway

According to my husband I have some sort of 'weird magnet' that makes me an interesting target for assorted 'odd bods'. He does have a point even when I visit new places I seem to attract the 'square pegs' of this world. Last autumn I visited the Severn Valley Railway for the first time, as I stood in Kidderminster  Station chatting to Robbie a little man (he was considerably shorter than me) entered the station area from the platform and marched straight up to me, shook my hand and launched in to a long explanation of why steam trains are better than diesels. Suddenly he stopped talking about trains, informed me that he had important things to do and marched off in the direction of the refreshment room. Robbie thought it was very amusing that the man singled me out when he had a whole crowd of people to choose from. 


I had a similar odd experience earlier this week. I gave my daughter a lift to work, on the other side of town. Her office is located in an area that was once a village but it got swallowed up by the town many years ago. I dropped her off, turned the car around and I was just about to pull away when a middle aged man approached the car and knocked on my window. He didn't look like a mad axe man so I opened the window a little and he asked me if I would like to take him to town. I was rather shocked, I am not in the habit of picking up strange men especially before 9am! I told him that I was not going to town, he said "never mind, I didn't really want to go to town anyway". It may not be a village any more but clearly they have at least one contender for the position of village idiot! 


I don't know why I have such a well developed 'weird magnet' perhaps it is because I find people interesting. A friendly smile costs nothing and makes everyone feel better, very often you find that people who seem a bit odd at first are very interesting when you get to know them. The trouble is I seem to attract the waifs and strays of the animal kingdom too. Looking back through the blog I am reminded that we have had a parade of uninvited guests over the years. A toad once came through the cat flap to visit us. On two separate occasions birds have fallen down the chimney - and lived to tell the tale because I went to to considerable trouble to rescue them. One was a collared dove and the other was a huge and rather stupid pigeon. Then there was Dave the cat, he turned up ill and exhausted and set up home in one of our recycling boxes - he is still here! Now there is 'Bernard' the cat who kept coming in and hiding in the utility room, she is still here too.


The problem is that I don't have infinite resources. When Dave found us a few years ago we were strictly a one cat family, but he was so poorly and so much in need of someone to care about him that before I knew what had happened we had become a two cat family. I had no idea how much time effort and money it would take to restore him to health. He is now very much part of the family, in fact he thinks that he runs the house. He and Oreo are good friends and we love them, but they are expensive to to maintain and looking after them is time consuming. Bernard is really sweet and she is becoming less timid but we really can't cope with a third cat. I can't turn her out and all my efforts to find her original owner have proved fruitless, so we really have to find a new home for her.
According to the vet she is about 3 and in good health. She is very clean, we haven't had a single accident since she moved in. She is timid but she enjoys attention, she just needs gain trust in the people around her. She is scared of other cats and she tends to hiss if they go too near her, but she is not vicious, she just keeps out of their way. Please contact me if you know anyone who can offer her a loving home.

Revenge of the Pigeon

When we went to bed on Saturday night I remember hearing a slight noise and I thought perhaps it was the radiator. I woke up just before 4am because I could hear a noise I thought Robbie had accidentally allowed the cat into the room and I gave him a prod and told him to sort it out. He said the cat was downstairs and told me to go back to sleep. I heard the noise again and I sat up and put the light on and found the pigeon had decided to get into bed with Robbie! After a chorus of expletives Robbie chased the pigeon around the room wearing only a pair of luminous green socks. I felt sorry for the poor bird, it had suffered enough so I made Robbie put some clothes on! He resumed the chase wearing Homer pants, loud socks and a pair of gloves. It was all too much for the pigeon and shortly afterwards it surrendered, Robbie escorted it to the window and it flew off in search of peace and quiet. Robbie was asleep again within minutes, but I lay awake thinking about the mess and listening to a song that kept playing in my head - 'catch that pigeon' from the Dick Dastardly cartoon!

Look Who Came Down the Chimney!

I first wrote about the bird that came down the chimney over two weeks ago. We could hear the scratching and fluttering but despite pulling out the furniture and opening up the sealed off fireplace we could not free the bird. It seemed to be stuck on a ledge about a foot above the fireplace and there was nothing I could do to get it out. Robbie didn't seem too bothered about it, but every night I would lay awake in bed listening to it scratching and wondering what more I could do to save it. I had almost given up hope, but at lunchtime on Saturday there was an almighty bump and the most enormous pigeon landed with a thud in the fireplace. The poor thing looked rather tatty, but I am amazed that it survived. It eventually flew around the room a few times and we threw the window open to allow it to escape. It didn't seem too keen to redescover the great outdoors so we left it shut in the bedroom with the windows open and when we went back an hour or so later it was gone.