A pair of pigeons have built a nest in the bay tree in our back yard.
It is a very splendid nest, sturdily constructed of robust-looking sticks and jammed between the branches of the bay tree and the rose bush that twines itself up through the middle. Birds are really clever. I would have struggled to produce anything quite so functional even if I had been allowed to use gaffer tape.
I am very pleased indeed about it, and am trying to open and close the back gate carefully in order not to bash the tree about and disturb them too much.
I can hear them burbling contentedly together when I am pegging out the washing. I do not know if they have got to the egg-laying bit yet, but I don’t suppose it will be long.
Guffy tried to investigate it the other day. There was an alarming clatter as she fell out of the tree into a pile of buckets that Mark had left stacked beneath, and she rushed away, trying to look as though she had really intended to come down in such a hurry.
She has ignored it ever since. I am very glad about this as well. She is not quite as big as a pigeon yet, but she is still big enough to be a dreadful nuisance to a feathery little family.
I am afraid her poo problem has not yet abated. It is possible to see where she has been at the very moment when the urge to visit the litter tray overcame her, because there is a small trail of very horrible splashes in her wake, like a disgusting version of Hansel and Gretl.
The vet’s latest costly medicine has not worked. I do not know what we are going to do.
Mark said that she will get better in the end and that we should be patient, but I spent a very dispiriting afternoon scrubbing the living room carpet yesterday, and I am not feeling very patient.
I like her very much but it is not a nice disability.
Apparently it is possible to purchase nappies for cats. I read about this with some interest, although not, I can assure you, with any intentions of purchase. Cat diapers, the website explained (it was American, you might not be surprised to learn), can be challenging to put on.
I did not have the smallest trouble believing this. I have been giving Guffy her medicine, which is via a syringe that needs to be poked down the back of her throat. Both Mark and I have sustained bloody injuries during this process. The prospect of attempting to swaddle her furiously protesting body in an American cat diaper appeals rather less than an opportunity to try and wrestle down a grizzly bear who happens to be halfway through robbing a nest of disgruntled bees.
Already Guffy’s preferred method of expressing her loving affection is to clutch your hand tightly between her claws and then sink her teeth firmly into the web of skin between your thumb and first finger.
When she does this you know you have won her heart.
Mark has finally departed this afternoon. He will be away for three weeks. We dashed over to the camper van before he left this afternoon, hoping to get the back windows installed, but we did not quite manage it. The holes are now cut to their right size, and everything is in place, but the new aluminium needs rubbing down and spraying with grey primer first, and we discovered too late that we did not have any.
It does not matter. We can do it when he gets back.
I am sure that three weeks will pass very quickly.
