Within Reason: Category Cat

Fine Till You Came Along

Ceri Davies — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:54:00 +0000

Murphy didn’t wake up this morning. There are no words that fit here.

Never call a cat Murphy

Ceri Davies — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:27:00 +0000

“Lucky should be avoided too”.

So said the vet when we picked up Murphy yesterday morning.

This photograph is from two weeks ago, but he doesn’t look much different facially, except that the swelling in his right eye has gone done some.

He is blind, very skinny, somewhat atrophied and currently on liquid food only. When he eats, it goes up his nose and he has to sneeze it out.

I was worried that he hadn’t been to the toilet in 24 hours, despite his huge intake of water, but this evening he graced us with some dark matter and urine.

Frankly, I’m finding this pretty hard to deal with. I was explaining how I felt to Stef just before dinner, saying that I felt that he was just sitting there until it was time to walk or stick his face in his food again. He probably heard me, because then he started walking around yelling at stuff, just before bumping into it. He hasn’t stopped in two hours. This is, at least, some progress and he needs to get some kind of exercise.

Stella is freaked, and can’t believe that there is another cat in the house, let alone one behind a closed door (we never close doors).

Tied to machines that make me be

Ceri Davies — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:26:00 +0000

Wednesday night, just before midnight, the phone rang. After nearly nine months being AWOL, a vet in Bridgend had found Murphy, still wearing his collar with our contact details. Bridgend is quite far from here, even if you’ve had 9 months to find it.

As the name suggests though, there was bad news. He had been found because he had been in a road traffic accident, and a pretty nasty one too. He had fractures to his upper jaw, his lower jaw, his palette. His good eye was inflamed and there is a possibility that he has lost or will lose sight in that one too.

The specialist had said that there was no hope of resetting the fractures in the head and that it would be necessary to just wait and see how (and if) they heal before knowing the next step. I’m not sure how good large amounts of opiates are at dulling pain, but they seemed to think that he wasn’t suffering at present.

After getting over the shock, I managed to get to the vet to see him today. They had discovered more problems. Just seeing him again after so long was emotional enough, and although he looked slightly better than I had expected, the damage to his eyes was worse than I had hoped with, cruelly, the worst of it on his good eye. Of course he’s having to be fed via a tube, so his neck was bandaged where it had been inserted. He has made no effort to stand, although his legs seem to be sound. Also, his tail has been damaged which, as we learned with Stella some years ago, can often cause the loss of bladder control in cats. Again, the vet is at a loss to predict how this will pan out right now.

We had a chat and I brought him up to date on what has been happening since October. He wasn’t too talkative and didn’t want to be drawn on what he’d been up to, but under the circumstances this is understandable enough. I believe he recognised me, or at least my voice, too.

I agreed with the vet that we’d wait the weekend to see if he could get some healing done in that time, and when Stef gets back into the country on Monday we’ll go back and see him, perhaps for the last time again.

Recovering from his loss was difficult the first time round, but to have him come back to us in these circumstances is simply cruelty. It has taught me this, however: if you are going to start crying and bewailing, do it before you hit the motorway. Also, never cancel insurance on a missing pet — having to consider finance as a factor at these moments is bitter indeed.

I think I feel good about it

Ceri Davies — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:43:00 +0000

Bad, bad week was last week.

This was illustrated in no small way to me when I was compared to Marvin on Saturday night. Funny thing is, I thought that I was in a good mood.

The harsh reality is that I found out that I have been paying some kind of mate’s rates on my tax for the last six months, so come April I am £140 a month worse off. Also, Stef lost the overtime that she was doing, pushing the line even more. Hard times ahead…

On the plus side, I saw a kingfisher on Saturday in the park. I’m assuming that his appearance was due to the cold weather failing to have slaughtered them all, as opposed to some kind of habitat destruction outside the city, so that’s a good thing, right?

I'm not always so stupid...

Ceri Davies — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 12:06:00 +0000

As the words of The Wedding Present song go, every time I hear a bell I think it’s Murphy.

Some days it still hits me and I really miss the little guy. It’s been too long since I got covered in cat dribble. Unfortunately, he’s been gone about 5 weeks now, so we took down the posters.

If we only knew…

If you taser me, do I not piss myself?

Ceri Davies — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 12:15:00 +0000

Dick just brought my attention to the all new consumer Taser. Holy shit.

The promotion on the website has a picture of a man embracing his daughter at graduation, with the tagline of:

You saved money for her tuition…
But did you teach her how to save her life?

Unbelievable. Do these people really not think that a mugger/rapist/cop/burglar might find it slightly less hassle to Taser a victim rather than wrestle them to the ground with a knife? No, we’re all safe now that everyone has guns and Tasers…

Between that and the patent application for stories I’d love to gloat at the USA but these things are probably all coming here eventually.

In other (non–) news, the cat is still missing. Fate managed to crush my soul just a little more last night with the gift of an ultra-realistic dream wherein he came home and was fine. Fuck you, REM.

Ask and ye shall receive

Ceri Davies — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:18:00 +0000

A guy 24 doors down responded to our leaflets this morning; he saw Murphy at about midnight last night and tried to tempt him into the house with some tuna (like that ever worked for me…).

I went to see the chap this morning and had a chat and it sounds like it was definitely our cat. So he’s alive, not trapped somewhere and has now had something to eat. He’s even still wearing his collar, so he’ll be able to get in the door if he does find his own way back. Good news.

Stef is wondering why he hasn’t come home if he’s neither dead nor stuck somewhere; I think it’s because 24 doors is quite a long way when we can’t even see the garden 4 doors down, and he probably just can’t find it. With that in mind, I’m leaving work early today to stand in the garden and shout — I know that there is a point to it now so any concerns about annoying the neighbours will have to wait. I’ll say sorry later.

I hope he’s not watching me walk away

Ceri Davies — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:11:00 +0000

Murphy has been missing for nearly 48 hours now.

We threw leaflets through all the doors round the block and put some posters up, and I checked all the gutters and under every car.

There are fireworks every night at the moment so hopefully he is hiding in a shed or house that he can’t quite get out from and will be found soon, but I don’t know. Even Stella seems to miss him; she has no-one to pounce on anymore…