Happenings
All my posts these days seem to be update posts because there's so long between them!
Well, OK, so what's been happening?
My housing situation is about to change. I currently "share" a maisonette with a surgeon and her partner who have been living in Chelmsford this year for her job. They "rent me a room" for an appropriate price, and when they decided to do this were, I think, anticipating coming to use their room on a fairly regular basis. Certainly my landlady said she thought her partner would be in during the week as he works near Liverpool Street but that she'd be around "less often." In the event, however, they've come back about once a month, including a couple of occasions with guests, which, no biggie. So I've had a two-floor maisonette with study and garden for the cost of a double bedroom (bills included).
Well, my sweet deal is imminently to end -- and fair enough, as apparently it's been financially crippling them. This year, her job takes her to Leeds, so now she is going to "rent out the whole flat" to me -- for double what I'm paying now, plus bills. And to be frank, it's just barely market rent at that, so I can't really complain at all. It does mean I'll have to get a flatmate, and I'm now used to being spoilt and having the run of the place. I may not get one right away for the first month -- I suddenly find myself with a cash injection in my practice account this month, after months of scrimping -- typical situation at the Bar. But I can't bear the full cost of the flat for more than a month or two because, apart from anything else, if all of that money goes on extra rent then Kit and I won't be able to have the Northern Lights holiday that I really want to spend it on. And I definitely can't bear the cost for a full year, my income simply doesn't stretch to affording a two-bedroom (at a proper price) on my own.
Kit and I -- or I, really, Kit was never that enthusiastic -- toyed with the idea of him moving in. I say "Kit wasn't enthusiastic" but I don't mean it to sound like he was completely against it; he did make a few comments along the lines of "we'll use this room that way or do this thing this other way" if he were to move in. There were several things against the idea, though. There's the usual is-it-time-yet commitment stuff, which Kit never mentioned but I'm sure was there, and I admit I've hiccoughed over myself. There's the fact that he prefers the location of his flat, thinking that his place in Holloway Nags Head with its fifteen-to-twenty-minute walks to Holloway Road, Finsbury Park and Archway stations (twenty-to-twenty-five to Highbury and Islington, also), plus admittedly a good number of buses, is "better-connected" than my flat with no tube station but Hackney Central on the overground, Hackney Downs on the mainline, and millions of buses within five to ten minutes. Let's just say we differ on that! Also, his place is cheaper, being rented from a friend of a friend who seems to have just about paid the mortgage off and can afford to rent it him and his flatmate for two-thirds what mine is going to cost from next month.
And then, to cap it all off, he's just quit his job. Which he has every right to do, it's been driving him nuts since I met him. But it does mean he has no idea when and where he'll next be working so now is not the time for house moves or commitments to higher rent.
So, that's house stuff. I've just put an ad for a flatmate on Gumtree, but it has no pictures as yet. Kit's promised to come and take some with his good camera, but we haven't got around to it yet and we can only do it at weekends so as to get them in daylight.
My parents visited a couple of weeks ago. Only for five days, it was the tail end of a European holiday which took them on a river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. Hard life I tell you! We took them to Shakespeare's Globe to see As You Like It and to the Excel Centre to see Paralympic boccia (and fencing) and it was a nice visit all in all. I head back to Canada for my first holiday since Mexico in April on 5 October and I'm REALLY looking forward to it.
Then there's the cats. Toby went missing at the beginning of July, which all of you who have me on Facebook know, I think. He just didn't come in for breakfast one day and hasn't been seen since. I put up a few posters, then more some weeks later, called all the local shelters and vets but no sign. I'm still quite sad about it but mostly just wish I knew what happened. I called the council and they said that every animal they pick up, living or dead, is taken to a vet's in Stamford Hill to check it for microchips. Toby was microchipped. So... does that mean he's still alive somewhere, or that he just wasn't found? I really wish I knew.
Up until he went, he was still the skittish, anti-social beastie he always was. I actually managed to pet Toby in daylight without a) holding out a treat and/or b) him dashing away all of, I think, twice. Leo, however, was getting steadily friendlier -- though also skittish. Since Toby went, and I may be imagining it, but my view is, that Leo has become extremely clingy-to-mummy. He's still skittish around other people and runs away if they try to pet him, but from me he can't seem to get enough affection. So after a few weeks, I began to think that perhaps Leo needs a friend, and Kit agreed with me. We thought a calm, older cat might be good, to hopefully chill him out a bit.
Well, I kept looking at all the websites of all the animal shelters around, and we even went up to Cats Protection in Archway this past Sunday after a lovely little calico I'd seen on their site, but apparently she had been adopted and the site not updated. And then I looked again at one named Anya at Wood Green. The website said she was five and a bit and "laid back and happy." Well, Kit went back to his to watch some football with a friend and I seized my chance and went along to Wood Green to meet Anya.
She was very friendly, coming up for pets and cuddles right away, and surprisingly playful for an adult. But they told me she had just come back from foster as she'd needed treatment for a skin condition, and I should speak to the manager about her the next day (yesterday).
I duly spoke to the manager, and she said I needed to talk things over with the vet. She said Anya had been fostered with her (the manager's) mother, and she is indeed a laid back cat, but they are not sure how she will react to other cats. One went into the foster home while Anya was there and Anya apparently ran away and hid for two days; but there was a neighbour cat with whom she used to sit in the garden quite peacefully. In addition, the vet needed to see her that day and decide what long-term treatment she would need for her skin condition.
The vet telephoned in the afternoon and explained that the skin condition was an allergy, exacerbated by stress, so that it got worse when she was brought into the shelter but stabilised when she was happy in a foster home. The long and short of it is that they've identified one specific big name brand of food that she can eat -- Whiskas, thankfully! -- and she's on medication put in her food once every other day, but this might be reduced in the future if she stabilises even further. I looked at the medication online and it looks like I could get it, at her current rate of consumption, for £50 every three and a half months, which is doable. As for putting her with other cats, the vet would mainly only be worried about it if it was a dominant cat, as this would stress her out. The manager and I both agreed that this is completely not Leo-the-wuss's style.
So in I went again today and had a long visit and the upshot is she is with me for two weeks on foster to see how she and Leo get on. Having a cat on foster is awesome, by the way. They've sent her along with a supply of food and medication, a carry case, a basket, blankets, and millions of toys. I wonder if they'll want them all back if I adopt her?!
I brought her home and put her in the sitting room, which is at the front of the house. Kit's a bit miffed about this because he thought I shouldn't use the sitting room for Anya because Leo goes there so much and it will really disrupt his routine to prevent him from going in there. I can't deny this. The sitting room is where Leo and I hang out during the day. But as there's no other room big enough (except my bedroom, I suppose) and Kit's suggestion of keeping Anya in the bottom of the house would require the purchase of a baby gate for the top of the stairs, plus some sort of rigged-up cardboard system to extend the top of the baby gate up higher, and I didn't have time to get a baby gate in any event, I went for taking Anya directly into the living room and closing the door instead.
Well, so far there have been a few hiccoughs. Leo was out playing when we came home, but within the hour he'd come back in and he instantly sussed that I was in the living room and began to create a racket of crying in the hallway outside, which of course alerted Anya to his presence (though no doubt she could smell him anyway). After a while of this, I thought, this is ridiculous, they each know the other is there, perhaps I should just see how they react to each other. So I opened the door and in came Leo, spotted Anya on the sofa and put his nose up to investigate. Anya went on the attack instantly, hissing loudly, and Leo retreated with a surprised hiss and a bit of a puff-up. I took him out and gave him lots of fusses in the hallway and a treat.
Since then, Anya has tried to escape from the sitting room a few times, and succeeded once, and whenever she spots Leo through the door when I open it she hisses at him loudly, which on one occasion caused him to retreat instantly out of his cat-flap! I don't think Leo is going to stress Anya out by dominating her, somehow! Not really sure how to proceed, though. Think I'll call the shelter tomorrow for advice. Meantime, Leo, Anya's blanket and I are all tucked up in my bed. I was advised to mix up their bedding so they get used to each other's smells, but Leo has twice balled up the blanket and batted it away from him! However, I just keep spreading it out again and for now he seems to have accepted it and is lying on it at my feet.
Enough for now I think!
Well, OK, so what's been happening?
My housing situation is about to change. I currently "share" a maisonette with a surgeon and her partner who have been living in Chelmsford this year for her job. They "rent me a room" for an appropriate price, and when they decided to do this were, I think, anticipating coming to use their room on a fairly regular basis. Certainly my landlady said she thought her partner would be in during the week as he works near Liverpool Street but that she'd be around "less often." In the event, however, they've come back about once a month, including a couple of occasions with guests, which, no biggie. So I've had a two-floor maisonette with study and garden for the cost of a double bedroom (bills included).
Well, my sweet deal is imminently to end -- and fair enough, as apparently it's been financially crippling them. This year, her job takes her to Leeds, so now she is going to "rent out the whole flat" to me -- for double what I'm paying now, plus bills. And to be frank, it's just barely market rent at that, so I can't really complain at all. It does mean I'll have to get a flatmate, and I'm now used to being spoilt and having the run of the place. I may not get one right away for the first month -- I suddenly find myself with a cash injection in my practice account this month, after months of scrimping -- typical situation at the Bar. But I can't bear the full cost of the flat for more than a month or two because, apart from anything else, if all of that money goes on extra rent then Kit and I won't be able to have the Northern Lights holiday that I really want to spend it on. And I definitely can't bear the cost for a full year, my income simply doesn't stretch to affording a two-bedroom (at a proper price) on my own.
Kit and I -- or I, really, Kit was never that enthusiastic -- toyed with the idea of him moving in. I say "Kit wasn't enthusiastic" but I don't mean it to sound like he was completely against it; he did make a few comments along the lines of "we'll use this room that way or do this thing this other way" if he were to move in. There were several things against the idea, though. There's the usual is-it-time-yet commitment stuff, which Kit never mentioned but I'm sure was there, and I admit I've hiccoughed over myself. There's the fact that he prefers the location of his flat, thinking that his place in Holloway Nags Head with its fifteen-to-twenty-minute walks to Holloway Road, Finsbury Park and Archway stations (twenty-to-twenty-five to Highbury and Islington, also), plus admittedly a good number of buses, is "better-connected" than my flat with no tube station but Hackney Central on the overground, Hackney Downs on the mainline, and millions of buses within five to ten minutes. Let's just say we differ on that! Also, his place is cheaper, being rented from a friend of a friend who seems to have just about paid the mortgage off and can afford to rent it him and his flatmate for two-thirds what mine is going to cost from next month.
And then, to cap it all off, he's just quit his job. Which he has every right to do, it's been driving him nuts since I met him. But it does mean he has no idea when and where he'll next be working so now is not the time for house moves or commitments to higher rent.
So, that's house stuff. I've just put an ad for a flatmate on Gumtree, but it has no pictures as yet. Kit's promised to come and take some with his good camera, but we haven't got around to it yet and we can only do it at weekends so as to get them in daylight.
My parents visited a couple of weeks ago. Only for five days, it was the tail end of a European holiday which took them on a river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam. Hard life I tell you! We took them to Shakespeare's Globe to see As You Like It and to the Excel Centre to see Paralympic boccia (and fencing) and it was a nice visit all in all. I head back to Canada for my first holiday since Mexico in April on 5 October and I'm REALLY looking forward to it.
Then there's the cats. Toby went missing at the beginning of July, which all of you who have me on Facebook know, I think. He just didn't come in for breakfast one day and hasn't been seen since. I put up a few posters, then more some weeks later, called all the local shelters and vets but no sign. I'm still quite sad about it but mostly just wish I knew what happened. I called the council and they said that every animal they pick up, living or dead, is taken to a vet's in Stamford Hill to check it for microchips. Toby was microchipped. So... does that mean he's still alive somewhere, or that he just wasn't found? I really wish I knew.
Up until he went, he was still the skittish, anti-social beastie he always was. I actually managed to pet Toby in daylight without a) holding out a treat and/or b) him dashing away all of, I think, twice. Leo, however, was getting steadily friendlier -- though also skittish. Since Toby went, and I may be imagining it, but my view is, that Leo has become extremely clingy-to-mummy. He's still skittish around other people and runs away if they try to pet him, but from me he can't seem to get enough affection. So after a few weeks, I began to think that perhaps Leo needs a friend, and Kit agreed with me. We thought a calm, older cat might be good, to hopefully chill him out a bit.
Well, I kept looking at all the websites of all the animal shelters around, and we even went up to Cats Protection in Archway this past Sunday after a lovely little calico I'd seen on their site, but apparently she had been adopted and the site not updated. And then I looked again at one named Anya at Wood Green. The website said she was five and a bit and "laid back and happy." Well, Kit went back to his to watch some football with a friend and I seized my chance and went along to Wood Green to meet Anya.
She was very friendly, coming up for pets and cuddles right away, and surprisingly playful for an adult. But they told me she had just come back from foster as she'd needed treatment for a skin condition, and I should speak to the manager about her the next day (yesterday).
I duly spoke to the manager, and she said I needed to talk things over with the vet. She said Anya had been fostered with her (the manager's) mother, and she is indeed a laid back cat, but they are not sure how she will react to other cats. One went into the foster home while Anya was there and Anya apparently ran away and hid for two days; but there was a neighbour cat with whom she used to sit in the garden quite peacefully. In addition, the vet needed to see her that day and decide what long-term treatment she would need for her skin condition.
The vet telephoned in the afternoon and explained that the skin condition was an allergy, exacerbated by stress, so that it got worse when she was brought into the shelter but stabilised when she was happy in a foster home. The long and short of it is that they've identified one specific big name brand of food that she can eat -- Whiskas, thankfully! -- and she's on medication put in her food once every other day, but this might be reduced in the future if she stabilises even further. I looked at the medication online and it looks like I could get it, at her current rate of consumption, for £50 every three and a half months, which is doable. As for putting her with other cats, the vet would mainly only be worried about it if it was a dominant cat, as this would stress her out. The manager and I both agreed that this is completely not Leo-the-wuss's style.
So in I went again today and had a long visit and the upshot is she is with me for two weeks on foster to see how she and Leo get on. Having a cat on foster is awesome, by the way. They've sent her along with a supply of food and medication, a carry case, a basket, blankets, and millions of toys. I wonder if they'll want them all back if I adopt her?!
I brought her home and put her in the sitting room, which is at the front of the house. Kit's a bit miffed about this because he thought I shouldn't use the sitting room for Anya because Leo goes there so much and it will really disrupt his routine to prevent him from going in there. I can't deny this. The sitting room is where Leo and I hang out during the day. But as there's no other room big enough (except my bedroom, I suppose) and Kit's suggestion of keeping Anya in the bottom of the house would require the purchase of a baby gate for the top of the stairs, plus some sort of rigged-up cardboard system to extend the top of the baby gate up higher, and I didn't have time to get a baby gate in any event, I went for taking Anya directly into the living room and closing the door instead.
Well, so far there have been a few hiccoughs. Leo was out playing when we came home, but within the hour he'd come back in and he instantly sussed that I was in the living room and began to create a racket of crying in the hallway outside, which of course alerted Anya to his presence (though no doubt she could smell him anyway). After a while of this, I thought, this is ridiculous, they each know the other is there, perhaps I should just see how they react to each other. So I opened the door and in came Leo, spotted Anya on the sofa and put his nose up to investigate. Anya went on the attack instantly, hissing loudly, and Leo retreated with a surprised hiss and a bit of a puff-up. I took him out and gave him lots of fusses in the hallway and a treat.
Since then, Anya has tried to escape from the sitting room a few times, and succeeded once, and whenever she spots Leo through the door when I open it she hisses at him loudly, which on one occasion caused him to retreat instantly out of his cat-flap! I don't think Leo is going to stress Anya out by dominating her, somehow! Not really sure how to proceed, though. Think I'll call the shelter tomorrow for advice. Meantime, Leo, Anya's blanket and I are all tucked up in my bed. I was advised to mix up their bedding so they get used to each other's smells, but Leo has twice balled up the blanket and batted it away from him! However, I just keep spreading it out again and for now he seems to have accepted it and is lying on it at my feet.
Enough for now I think!