Mr Tibbs Update - 4

I've just telephoned the vet and Mr Tibbs is still with us. He seems to have stabilised again and the bleeding from his shoulder stopped although he is still very weak. While this is not great news it is still good news as it means the healing process can continue.

Not much work is getting done here at the moment due mainly to bursting into tears every so often and keeping fingers, toes and just about everything else I can crossed. I'll be 'phoning the vet tomorrow morning and he will 'phone me if the news is bad.

Right, I'm now going to find something to do to take my mind off Mr Tibbs; he's in the best place for his recovery - we cat lovers get a bit sentimental don't we?

Mr Tibbs Update - 3

The news is not good from here, Mr Tibbs is not responding to treatment. His blood is still failing to coagulate and I noticed that an injection site from this mornings round of injections was still bleeding this afternoon.

He is now back at the vets where he is staying; his temperature has dropped noticeable from this morning although I did think he was looking a little more alert. It is however the internal bleeding that is the real problem. He does not appear to be in any pain which is a blessing but I fear for the worse

Mr Tibbs Update - 2

All the improvements Mr Tibbs made on Tuesday disappeared on Wednesday, well nearly all and by the end of the day he was a very subdued cat and was again passing a little bit of blood. He had totally lost his appetite, refusing the dried food he loved, the tuna and the special invalid cat food I have and by 10 pm I was really wondering if he would be alive this morning.

Thankfully he was and we’ve just had another trip to the vet. The vet agrees that the bleeding seems to have stopped which is good. Mr Tibbs has had another round of injections and will be going back for the next 3 days for more plus he still has to take the carbon tablets and the vitamin K1 tablets. The vet is quite happy to give the morning tablets for me so I only have to try and get one down Mr Tibbs throat.

So Mr Tibbs is currently asleep under the kitchen table surrounded by water, milk and morsels of food to tempt him. He still is quite bright eyed and reasonably alert when I stroke him but quite obviously doesn’t want to make an effort to do anything other than sleep.

Mr Tibbs Update

This morning Mr Tibbs is acting a lot better. He spent a quiet night and is feeling well enough to even follow me outside when I went to get the post.

I still have to give him charcoal tablets morning and night for 3 days and half a vitamin tablet a day for a fortnight. This morning he’s feeling well enough to refuse to swallow them, a good sign. He will not touch the chicken and rice, and neither will the other cats but he was tempted by a bit of tuna so 2 out of the 3 tablets for today now administered. The bleeding round his gums seems to have stopped too so the early signs are positive.

Hazel then gave me a scare. She hunts most of the night and sleeps most of the day. This morning she was nowhere to be seen. I really don’t like it if my cats don’t check in at their usual times, I didn’t worry much up to now as I’m a long way from a main road (my worry in the UK) but if there is rat poison around and I don’t know where I just have to hope that none of the other cats eat a poisoned rat or mouse.

Edit: Hazel turned up not long after I posted, I guess she had just found somewhere comfortable to sleep. So all cats present and accounted for and Mr Tibbs is now following me around again and curled up on my lap as I write this.

Worrying News

I’ve just returned from taking the cats en masse to the vets. It is an interesting experience trying to get all five cats in one place at the same time and into the cat baskets and loaded into the car. My original 4 were all due their booster vaccinations and the idea was to get Mr Tibbs done too all on the same date.

Unfortunately things, as ever, did not go entirely to plan – do not read further if eating!

I noticed that Mr Tibbs had started passing a little blood in his faeces; he’d also started defecating indoors too. The indoor bit I put down to just getting used to being a house cat. I put down a litter tray and the plan was to gradually move it closer and closer to the cat flap and then get him going outside. At first I though the blood was due to a mouse he’d eaten, then as he was passing the blood more frequently and there was some mucus I though it was colitis and I was going to get it checked out today. Last night when I returned from my meal it was clear that Mr Tibbs was feeling a lot worse.

I ended up waking at around 3:30 this morning worrying about him; he followed me towards the kitchen and was sick. He headed for the door to the barn and was promptly sick again and just sat there while I cleaned up round him. He then took himself off to the barn and didn’t come back inside and that is where I found him when I needed to get him for his trip to the vet.

The vet doesn’t think it’s colitis but that Mr Tibbs has eaten rat poison. Unless it is very old, put down prior to my arrival, there shouldn’t be any on my land but I don’t know if he wandered off onto the adjoining land or barns. The vet pointed out that Mr Tibbs is also bleeding from the gums and that is why he suspects rat poison – my guess is that he sees quite a few poisoning cases so I trust his word, the supermarket shelves here are stocked with poisons to kill everything.

So Mr Tibbs hasn’t had his vaccinations but has had various vitamin injections and other things to help. I have to take him back if the bleeding hasn’t stopped by Thursday to try something else.

As I thought he had colitis I was going to make him some chicken and rice and I’ve decided that I will anyway as it should be better on his system and might encourage him to eat. It will be soft – my cats get dry food only – and the dry food might be hurting his gums.

So keep your fingers crossed that he pulls through, he’s such a soft cat and is currently under the bench in the kitchen where I can keep an eye on him and he is close to food, water and litter tray.

Computer Update

Aims a while back commented on weird characters appearing in my posts, something which didn't show up on my screen. While I've not worked out exactly what it is I think it might be something to do with Internet Explorer.


I use Firefox and as I said there are no weird characters or HTML shown where I've inserted Paragraph marks to separate text from the pictures.


However, when I view the page on IE I now see the weird stuff. I'll keep surfing and see if I can find the reason.


I also mentioned a couple of posts back that I was having problems with AVG and AdAware. I finally managed to uninstall them. It turned out that they were automatically loading parts of their programme suites and that was causing the un-installs to fail; both their own uninstall routines and the Add/Remove from the Control panel.


I eventually got rid of them by watching Task Manager and closing them manually each time they tried to reload.


Avast seems to be working well but I will have to find where to disable the 'voice' that tells me the virus database has been updated. The computer is now working so much faster. Instead of 10 - 12 minutes to boot, I kid you not, I could start the computer, put the kettle on, go out and let the chickens out, then make a pot of tea before I got to the point where I could connect to the Internet, it now boots in about 20 seconds. Likewise, when surfing pages are back to almost instantaneous.


Another bonus from looking at Task Manager is that I saw how many programmes were automatically loading at start up, so a quick edit in Services and Msconfig has removed about 10 processes there. Happiness is a faster computer which has resulted in me spending far less time on it.

Rain Graph

I was beginning to wonder if I was really getting into farmer mode and complaining about the weather but it really has rained a lot over the last two months compared to last year. I only started collecting data half way through March last year so only have the last two months where I can compare the rainfall and here it is – a bit out of focus but I couldn’t cut and paste the chart from Excel:

In figures April last year was 41.50 mm but 120.50 this year and May was 102.50 last year and 160.50 this year. The folklore here is that you get bad summers when there are 13 moons in the year. There were 13 last year and 13 this year; I’ve no idea about next year but I do hope it’s 12. It’s the first of June today and even as I write this I can hear the thunder in the distance and now the heavens have just opened and it's tipping down.

Today has been taken up with helping Ann at her Vide Grenier (Empty Attic, or car boot) at her place to raise funds for her work with stray cats. Despite the weather forecast of showers this morning and thunderstorms this afternoon, the rain that greeted us at 7 am, cleared by 8 and it remained dry all day.

Of course a few items tempted me, there were a couple of cotton sheets that if good, will be wonderful if it ever gets really hot this summer. If they are not good they will make wonderful cleaning cloths that should keep me supplied for years to come and a couple of books. There was a copy of the first Cranks cookbook with their wonderful carrot cake and there was (I guess from the typeface) a 1940/1950’s copy of Pride and Prejudice. I’ve seen the film but never read it. So I spent a lovely afternoon chatting and reading the book. I also bought this:-

It’s a foot warmer; there is a little metal basket inside to put coals or ashes in and wooden bars on the top so you don’t burn your feet on the metal casing, just what I will need when winter comes round again.

I’m off for another duck dinner tonight along with Ann, Regis and some of the others who helped so an update on the strawberry jam will have to wait a bit longer.