A journey more calm

Pheromones are abound in this household; cats are calmer and not so much hissing fills the air. The plug-in diffuser seems to be working, so I shall sneak off to the Gym while both cats sleep. I wish I could have had a plug-in diffuser to elimate the early months of painful grief.

Just six months' ago I wouldn't have been in the right frame of mind to look after a wild rescued kitten of just 9 weeks; it would've been all too much. It's only now that I can look back with reflection and see just how grief-stricken I have been while all the time pretending to be 'just fine' smiling and saying 'I'm okay' to anyone who was brave enough to ask.

It's only now that I can look back at my own behaviour with regret, after my father died leaving my mother absolutely grief-stricken after 35 years of marriage together. I didn't understand... I thought I had an inkling of what she was going through at the time and I thought I'd done all I could to help - at the time. Only now, having lost the only person in my whole life whom I've loved with all my heart, mind, body and soul, do I understand the enormity of the loss. If only I could go back in time and with this painful knowledge, do and say things differently for my mother. I may have been able to ease the passage of grief, and she may not have died just one year after my father. I'm so sorry Mum.

The Wheels are (nearly) in motion

There has been a slight change in the dynamics between the two cats; Pebble is now more confident, a little bigger and is asserting himself by trying to pounce on Banjo. She is still having none of it though and I hear hisses now and then.

I have decided to just leave them to it; I have resigned as Cat Nanny and now want to get the wheels in motion for my new business. Lots of research still to do and people to talk to.

Two and a half weeks have been taken over by the new kitten; enough! I had my nose nibbbled this morning as he attempted to wake me at 6 am. No sign of Banjo whose job is usually that of early morning wake up caller. Pebble is taking over the place, and I came downstairs to find eight rows of knitting off the needle and in a jumbled pile on the floor.

It's a long road

To walk around the entire circumference of the Farmoor Reservoir is approximately two and a half miles. When I first took my two young grandsons there for a walk they moaned and groaned and said they couldn't walk that far. Two years' on they often walk and run around the track and don't think anything of it.

Pebble and Banjo still have a long road to conquer; I'm playing Referee constantly, separating hissing fits and intervening in long cat stares. Last night I gave up and went to bed leaving them the whole house to sort out their battles. I read for a while and as soon as I switched off my bedside lamp Banjo jumped up on the bed and assumed her usual and rightful position. I heard nothing of Pebble and wondered if he'd been mauled to death in the Utility room. At around 7am I felt rather than heard or saw a cat near my head and thinking it was Banjo about to put out her paw to wake me as usual, I stretched up my arm to stroke her. It was Pebble who immediately began purring; phew he wasn't dead, but had hidden away somewhere and miraculously, Banjo had allowed him on the bed. Growling has stopped but hissing continues.

I await a feline behavioural plug-in diffuser ordered from an online Pet drug company in the hope that it will render Banjo reasonably soporific and hence maybe accept Pebble. Apparently it gives off pheramones (don't think I've spelt this correctly); maybe it will do me a power of good too! But what does one do when loaded with pheramones? Walk around Farmoor Reservoir!

Destiny or not

When a white kitten with orange markings bounced around under my moving car I felt sick and useless. It had run out from the hedge at the side of the busy road straight under my car. I braked and in my mirror I saw it run across the road and into a disused industrial site.

I, along with some others who worked nearby scoured buildings and hedgerows but could find no sign of the kitten. A man said the kitten was wild and lived around the buildings.

And so, another call to the RSPCA; it would definitely have been injured, therefore unable to hunt for food and would most probably die shortly. I lay awake that night wondering why? On a long stretch of empty road, why did it run out under my car?

Do things happen for a reason? Or, is every living moment an unknown game of chance with no reason for anything? Why do animals and indeed people die when they do? Not being religious, I don't subscribe to anything being 'God's Will'. Existence is fragile and frightening with some good bits thrown in every now and then, unless there is such a thing as a plan or destiny for us all from the moment we are born. Who knows? I don't. I just cry when I am part of the demise of a lonely wild kitten.

I have saved one kitten, and have probably killed another...