SQUEEEEEE!
Baby hedgehog. BABY HEDGEHOG!
For once, not from my kitchen. I saw it bumbling past in the drive and realized it was a little ‘un. And so, of course, I had to run out there and pick it up and scare it out of a year’s growth.
I tried to pick it up without gloves at first — holy cow, those spines are really sharp! It’s a little hard to tell scale here, but this one is about half the size of the adult we’ve been seeing — assuming it’s just the one adult.
Wikipedia tells me pregnancies peak between May and July and gestation is 31 to 35 days. So about right.
Ohmygod LOOK AT THAT LITTLE NOSE!
July 18, 2017 — 10:11 pm
Comments: 15
Not my cat
In honor of Charlotte’s return, we went to an open house at a cat sanctuary on Sunday. Okay, yes…we would have done anyway. But it seemed particularly appropriate just at present.
Not quite as posh as the Celia Hammond one, but I’m not sure the cats could tell the difference.
Amazing how many black and black-and-white cats were pining for adoption. It’s true in the States, it’s true here. People are weird.
We had an awesome time, bought lots of good things cheap and had a long drive across an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. (No, really, that’s a thing — it was an officially designated AONB).
This guy bites. The guy in the picture. I knew that, but I didn’t tell anybody. I just sat on a bench nearby and watched the fun.
One of those cats who strings you along happily for a while and then goes full psycho for a nanosecond. He didn’t seem to hurt anybody, so I could spectate with a clear conscience.
Who could have guessed a cat that looks like Hitler would be evil?
July 17, 2017 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 13
The monster that eats cats
This story has a happy ending, I’ll let you know right now. I wouldn’t tell it to you otherwise.
A few weeks ago, our neighbor came flying over to tell us she’d spotted Charlotte, our dear old kitty, in the bottom of her garden in a very bad way.
Dear god, was she ever. So much blood and fur. Her head was so messed up and bloody I thought she’d lost part of it. I was pretty sure I saw an ear in the grass. She was alive, though — panting hard and shocky.
It was a Sunday (of course). I scooped her up in a towel and Uncle B called around until we found a vet on duty.
She’s fifteen. Learning that visibly changed the vet’s attitude but, do him credit, he gave her a thorough exam (including the usual few expensive tests) and hooked her up to an IV overnight. No broken bones, no internal bleeding, no apparent brain damage (still has both ears, thank goodness). But she wouldn’t stand or respond, except to scream when moved. She tore a bloody strip off a careless veterinary assistant.
The only injuries he could find were two deep, horrible holes with long gouges in the top of her skull, like something with big canines clamped her whole head in its mouth and tried to pull her down into the ditch we found her by. I believe now that our neighbor startled whatever it was – which was more than lucky. No-one goes down that end of the garden much.
She began to purr the moment she knew she was home, but that’s all I could get out of her. For almost a week, she wouldn’t move or eat or focus. I forced water on her with a pipette several times a day (she could swallow okay) but otherwise let her be. I was sure she was starving herself on purpose, the way animals will when they’ve had enough.
But after four or five days, she would lick food off my fingers if I offered it. A couple of days later, she used the litterbox (I was never so thrilled to see a cat turd in my life). A few days after that, she staggered out of the back room and refused to return to her sick bed. She’s unsteady and a little loopy, but she’s positively back and absolutely her old self.
The pic is old. I took some new ones this afternoon, but you have to get close to see the scars, and why would you want to? She looks just the same otherwise. A little skinnier.
We’re so very grateful to have our old girl back. And with that happy thought, we wish you all the best of weekends!
July 14, 2017 — 9:34 pm
Comments: 32
Say, this glove smells like…hmfff…mff
Yeah, sure, y’all laugh, but Onkle B looked down yesterday and realized he’d tracked hedgehog poo from one end of the house to the other.
Yes, we’re keeping the kitchen door closed now.
July 12, 2017 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 17
Shoo!
I have bailed this hedgehog — or a hedgehog, anyway — out of the house every night for a week. Sometimes twice.
No, he’s not tame. Every time I walk in on him, he gets that “oh, shit!” look on his face and disappears under the nearest piece of furniture. Little bastards are quick. Once he panicked and pee’d the floor. And then disappeared under the nearest piece of furniture.
In the end, we got some advice from Sussex Wildlife Trust. We were worried he might be sick or something. Nope. He (it’s almost certainly a he) has developed a powerful cat food jones. It started with the leftover bits of nasty old cat food I flipped out into the grass for the chooks and graduated into breaking and entering.
So I’m trying an experiment. At the end of the day, I’m putting the cats’ bowl out back for him. So far its…well, see the picture. The cats don’t seem to mind a bit (cats are communists).
Got a note from my next-door neighbor this morning: she put food out on the deck for her cat and caught a hedgehog with his nose in it. Broad daylight.
Either we have a family of the prickly little bastards, or we’re going to have Sussex’s most morbidly obese hedgie.
July 10, 2017 — 9:32 pm
Comments: 24
At the sign of the poopin’ fox
Hey — HEY! — I didn’t make the ‘hole in one’ joke, did I?
Yeah, I’m reduced to the comedy animal photos. It’s Summertime and I’m AFK.
This photo reminds me. Uncle B was potting up some flars yesterday (he does a couple dozen pots every year, and very lovely they look around the house, too). He’d left behind the merest skiff of potting soil on the lawn. Jack the Cat came along, stuck a paw in it, decided It Was Good and took an enthusiastic crap in the middle.
July 6, 2017 — 9:23 pm
Comments: 8
how cats achieved world domination
I’m taking a life drawing course on Wednesday nights again, making me late to home. So have a gander at this article on kitty genetics that I’ve had open in a tab for a while.
The gist of the chart is that the ‘blotchy’ tabby coat is a recent mutation — like, Medieval — but that 80% of cats carry the gene for it now.
Thing is, I think of the blotchy tabby coat as being a strictly British thing. All the tabbies I’ve known in the US have been the mackerel kind. You know, straight stripes.
Would you agree?
July 5, 2017 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 9
Genius loci
What’s the difference between a crow and a baby rook? NOBODY KNOWS!
Erm, at least, it’s very hard to tell by looking. Baby rooks have yet to develop that crusty white flesh where the beak meets the head, the signal characteristic of the adult rook.
Pretty sure this one’s a baby rook, though. A) he had some remnants of babyfeathers sticking out of his back, B) this area is known to be alive with rooks. Not so much crows. And C) he was acting like a knucklehead chattering to Uncle B for a solid half-hour. Got some cracking good pictures, though some of the best had stupid bits of grass waving in front of strategic bits.
June 26, 2017 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 8
All present and accounted for
So for everyone who’s been watching Corsica’s litter grow up, they done growed up and have been promised to new homes. For those of you on FaceBook, the update is here. For the sensible people who eschew social media (eschew, I say!), the score is:
Corsica & Faberge (that’s the tortie mama and the big black kitten – honestly, he was half again bigger than the others) go together to one home. Hatch & Florentine go together to another. Hatch is the ginger who had to wear a sock for a sweater because he had a wound he kept picking at, and Flo is one of the tabbies. I think the only girl in the bunch. Scrammy & MooShu are adopted together, too. That’s another ginger + tabby, though which is which I can never remember.
My experience is, cats are happier when they live with a sibling, but a lot less human oriented. I’m selfish enough to miss that last bit.
If you follow that FB link, they all have pages you can follow. Kitties pack their bags tomorrow (they’ve teased some kind of special performance) and move out on Saturday. Watch here.
June 22, 2017 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 9
That’s illegal, surely
Weasel baiting. Okay, it’s only part of a weasel, but still.
Terrier races from a local village fete this Saturday. Third from the left — the long-leggedy one — won three out of three while we watched. I think they ought to have instituted a size class.
This fete is currently our favorite. Good beer, superior ice cream from a local dairy, some interesting stalls.
Uncle B bought me a coat that I may or may not have the courage to show you (or, for that matter, wear in public). I wouldn’t think of modeling it today, though — it’s what passes for super hot here (mid-80s, at a guess).
If they call it a fun dog show, why was everybody so serious about it?
June 19, 2017 — 7:50 pm
Comments: 33