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Paul Bigland

~ Blogging on transport, travel & whatever takes my fancy.

Paul Bigland

Tag Archives: Our cat

18th August picture of the day…

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by Paul Bigland in Musings, Our cat, Jet, Picture of the day

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Jet, Musings, Our cat, Picture of the day

After the long, complicated blogs I’ve been posting about railways and stuff the past couple of days I can promise you something a little more light-hearted and unusual – and it’s going to be short too!

I’ve been working from home, trying to juggle various tasks and managing to keep most of the balls in the air, most of the time – ish… The old Mars Bar slogan of ‘work rest and play’ springs to mind. Well, apart from the fact I never liked Mars Bars as they were far too gooey and sickly for my liking. Give me a Twix any day – even if they never had catchy adverts. But I digress..

Today’s blog will be short because I’ve got to be up at sparrowfart to do a job in Wakefield. It’s not that it’s far away, merely that the place I’m going to isn’t central and I have plans for the rest of the day afterwards, so expect a rolling blog to commence at some point tomorrow once the caffeine kicks in and if the rain holds off who knows what I’ll get up to. Until then, here’s the picture of the day, which has nothing to do with any of my usual photographic subjects.

Today, our cat hit the amazing age of 20. Anyone who’s followed my blog for a while will know of the ups and downs we’ve had with the old boy over the past year, but Jet always bounces back! So, happy 20th birthday Jet! Long may you be with us…

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

Lockdown. Day 60 (Friday).

24 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in Calder Valley, Coronavirus, Lockdown, Our cat, Jet, Weather

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Calder Valley, Coronavirus, Jet, Lockdown, Our cat

And then the gales arrived…

This morning we awoke to the sound of high winds whipping though the trees outside and battering the house as they rampaged across the valley. It was impressive, but also rather disturbing as life’s not exactly normal at the moment so the last thing you need is to worry about storm damage!

The irony for me was that I was sitting in the garden the other day, looking at the Lupins, which are about to flower, and thinking “I wonder if I need to stake them yet as they do get battered in high winds”. My subconscious obviously knew more than my conscious mind!

Today was another that didn’t really catch fire as the both of us were still concerned about Jet (our cat) and how he was getting on at the vets. I know that the old adage ‘no news is good news’ is true, but that doesn’t make the lack of news any easier sometime. With so many vets in the area closed down due to Covid-19 the one’s that remain open are obviously having to deal with a vastly increased workload and I can understand the pressure they must be under, but it does make you anxious, not knowing when they’ll get chance to find time to ring us as we don’t want to be bugging them.

So, the morning passed with a meditation and an easy breakfast before we both knuckled down to try and do some work. I’ve only managed to get a handful of old slides scanned this week so I was anxious to try and pick up the pace a little and crack-on with finishing the album I’ve been scanning for a few weeks. I’d hoped to have had it finished by now!

As always when scanning pictures, the time flew. After sitting for a few hours I took a break by getting out for a stroll along our tree-lined road, which was a bit like taking your hands due to the gusting winds. There was debris everywhere as the trees had taken a real battering. There were so many leaves on the road it was like autumn, only this was a sea of green.

The wind didn’t drop all day, it just kept coming! I was glad that I had an excuse to stay indoors. I’ll bet it wasn’t much fun if you were on a ship somewhere as from what I saw on social media pretty much the whole country was talking a battering.

Whilst I was busy upstairs Dawn was pottering around keeping herself busy downstairs, although both of us were waiting for the phone to ring and get an update from the vets. Jet was due to have some teeth out but we knew the vets were under pressure due to lockdown and a reduction in vets in the area, so we’d no idea when (or even if) they’d be able to get him seen to. To say it made for a stressful day was an understatement!

It wasn’t until the evening that the vets rang. Jet had come through the opration and the anaesthetic but now only had two teeth left. We were both hugely relieved but the vets would be keeping him in another night to monitor his progress, so we wouldn’t get him home for another night at least.

Whilst we’d waited we did have one fun diversion – the weekly ‘Big 6’ on Zoom pub quiz. Dredging the memory banks for answers to arcane questions is certainly a good way to take your mind off things! Tracey, Holly, Tony, Fran and Aubrey, Olly, Ruth, Kath, Dawn and I pitted our wits against questions asked by Mel in her own inimitable style – and Lancashire dialect!

The rest of the evening was relaxed and hassle-free. After all, it’s not like we’ve got to get dressed up to go out! Instead after eating we did what so many people across the country are doing – retreated to bed and logged on to Netflix. Goodnight!

 

 

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us locked-down freelances need all the help that we can get…
Thank you!

 

Lockdown. Day 58 (Wednesday).

21 Thursday May 2020

Posted by Paul Bigland in Coronavirus, Lockdown, Our cat, Jet

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Tags

Coronavirus, Jet, Lockdown, Our cat

Today was not the day we’d hoped for. It started out in style with a brilliant weather forecast suggesting it’d be the hottest day of the year so far. The pair of us were up early, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, ready to make the most of it. Jet, our cat had given us a break and slept in his own bed last night, he only leapt on this morning after Dawn had got up.

My plan was to eschew slide scanning for the opportunity to catch up with blogging, paperwork and reading. I was sat in the office typeswiping when Dawn told me that Jet had been sick. Nothing much – just some bile. It’s not unusual as we thought he’d probably been trying to bring up a furball. Then he was sick again. This time we could see there was something wrong. He retreated to his heated mat (we bought him one to ease his arthritis as he’s 18.5yrs old) and lay there looking very sorry for himself.

jet 2

The both of us were concerned but decided the best thing we could do was keep an eye on him. It was easy enough for me to shuttle between my office and the bedroom so I kept him under observation. He didn’t stir for several hours and was very quiet, which is very unlike him, he’s normally a very noisy cat and often wanders in to me for some attention. This wasn’t like him at all. In the afternoon Dawn looked in on him and decided to phone the vets. We managed to get the last appointment of the day at 17:50, so all we could do is look out for him until then. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day, which was another concern.

With the weather being so glorious I relocated to the front garden to soak up some sun and crack on with writing as well as reading up on the current news from the rail industry. The day was a real scorcher so popping upstairs to check on Jet every so often was a useful cooling off period. Poor Dawn was stuck inside at her desk as the amount of paperwork she has to deal with makes it impossible to move outdoors in the way I can.

When it was time to take poor Jet to the vets we dug out his cage and Dawn lifted him in, which produced the only noise he’s made all day. He was clearly in pain. Normally, when we take him in the car to the vets I sit his cage on my knee and leave the top off as he’s a curious cat and he loves watching the world go by. This time he lay at the bottom of the cage without as much as a peep out of him. The vets had a system where the building was closed but one of the nurses would come and collect your pet off you before taking it inside for a check-up. We had an anxious few minutes sat in the car until the vet rang Dawn to say that Jet had Pancreatitis and was obviously in pain. They were treating him with opiates, hydrating him with a drip and would be keeping him in overnight to monitor him and do some blood tests. It was a relief to know he was in good hands, but a wrench to leave the poor little bugger…

Neither of us felt up to much after that. It was already 19:00 so we went and sat in the sun with a drink and talked about the day and our concerns for ‘the boy’. With everything going on right now we really could have done without the stress of this, but what can you do?

Let’s hope tomorrow brings some good news…

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