I am sorry to say that yesterday’s traumatic encounter with the vet left poor Guffy feeling most unwell.
This seemed to be the result of a combination of a vaccine and a dose of worming medicine, all of which had such an insalubrious effect upon her digestion that she became quite incapacitated.
The poo was leaking out of her in a steady drip.
Mostly she made it to the litter tray apart from a couple of moments when she didn’t, and I had to clean up several spatter trails left behind by a mortified kitten.
In between outbreaks of unwellness she consoled herself by crawling on my knee and curling up tightly, purring miserably in an unhappy attempt to reassure herself that the world was not actually crumbling around her.
I knew how she felt. I recall similar unhappy moments in my own life, usually brought about by an excessive consumption of red wine.
She did not join the dogs in their usual shared activity of begging for bits of chicken, and ignored the smoked salmon that I put down next to her on the arm of the sofa. It disappeared in the end, but I knew that Rosie had been responsible, which in itself was concerning. Rosie does not usually steal from Guffy, who has paws full of uncomfortably sharp bits.
It was very disconcerting, and I was relieved when she began to revive a little later this afternoon. Eventually she bit me when I reached down to stroke her, and I knew that the crisis had passed, the way it didn’t with Beth in Little Women.
Apart from occasional anxiety about Guffy, it has been an uneventful day. Oliver has managed to find himself some gainful employment, in the usual Lake District way of ringing somebody up to see if they need staff and five minutes later sending them an email with his National Insurance number, bank details and chest size for his uniform.
He is going to work for another security company, standing outside pubs and looking menacing. It will keep him in gym membership until he goes back to the Army.
He has been having something of a difficult time this week. You might remember that his brake calipers were causing him problems. He dismantled the back of his car yesterday, but ran into difficulties.
I do not really know what the difficulties were. Car repairs, as regular readers can attest, are not exactly encompassed within my sphere of expertise.
I mentioned this to Jack when he called last night. Jack works for the RAC, and nobly volunteered to come up and help with the repair.
He duly turned up this evening, looking very heroic in his RAC uniform, complete with his shiny tool kit, just before I went off to work. This was remarkably selfless, having had all day driving around fixing cars, he had undertaken to drive for another four hours and bash together another hopeless lump of rust. We were very grateful, and told him so.
He and Lucy think they might get married one day. I am very pleased, you can never have too many mechanics in a family. He hasn’t exactly asked her yet but I imagine he will get round to it sooner or later.
I am sure that Mark asked me to marry him once, but I don’t remember a thing about it. I can only imagine that I must have been drinking, which seems likely enough. Certainly I don’t suppose it was a surprise, I can’t imagine Mark doing anything so outlandishly bold without a clear set of instructions.
Oliver and Jack fixed the car in the end, of course, despite various setbacks, after which they took it around Windermere and tried out doing handbrake turns to make sure that it really would stop, which it did.
I am very relieved indeed, it is a huge problem that has been solved, and especially a relief because Mark’s oil rig job has run into delays and he will not now be back until next Monday, which would have curtailed Oliver’s new job activities considerably.
It is all right. The Gods have smiled upon us.
What a splendid family we have.
