It's been an interesting few months for Rob the Furball, and I mean interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word. He's had four bladder infections in a row since Christmas, the third one being serious enough that he was in the vets for 3 days. However, the vets didn't give up and neither did I and so far, he seems to have finally beaten the thing.

Of course, being him, having tested him out on some free samples of special kibble and finding out which one he liked best, he decided after 3 days that he didn't like it. Well tough, young cat, that kibble was sufficiently expensive that (to borrow a phrase from ursulav) it must have been made from ground up unicorns and as I bought a Very Large Bag of it, you're stuck with it for quite a long time. I've been mixing a lil' bit of his el cheapo Whiskas senior dried food into the new stuff and that seems to have persuaded him it's not vile and evil, so we'll see. It's not an appetite problem because he's hoovering up his daily ration of wet food with his usual enthusiasm.

He's been sick a bit this past week, and I was all "Oh NOES, not again!" because that's been the symptom of when he's getting another infection, but he was still eating and using his litter tray and he didn't SEEM in pain or miserable, still being a yowly, attention-seeking guided furry missile every morning and evening and all the times in between on weekends. So I've been playing the waiting game.

This morning, the daft animal was nosing around my computer table (which is a very low table in the lounge) and got his head caught in a loop of mouse cord. He tried to move forward and the loop tightened so he panicked, launched himself off, dragging the mouse, keyboard, modem, remote controls and few bits of crap off the table. This caused him to panic even more. Your trusty correspondent was caught between trying to pin a thrashing, terrified furball down so she could untangle him and preventing the monitor from flying off and landing on top of him :P

He thrashed himself free and took off like greased black lightning. Happily there is no damage to anything at all and, as far as I can tell, he's fine. I'm letting him calm down a bit before I insist on getting a close look at him to make sure he didn't get hurt. The good news? I now have conclusive proof that his bladder is working just fine....

Woke up this morning to Rob T Furball being a yowly pest and demanding fuss and attention! It's marvellous!!

Thank you for all the good vibes, clearly you all possess superb telepathic powers :D *hugglesquishes*

*tries to explain to a furball that yesterday's wet food was a treat and no, no matter how much he yowls, there isn't any more*

Do still have to keep an eye on the stress grooming but at least the hairballs appear to have shifted :)

So that's one old bed base, one broken toilet, one bust microwave and one manky sofa out of my house :) The sofa wrangling had me covering my eyes but the guys managed to get it out without wrecking anything or themselves - which isn't easy in my flat. There's a badly designed dogleg where the hall joins the lounge and a horribly tight gap between the outside stairs and my front door, so care manoevering is required. Also, I am more determined than ever to never bring anything large in here that can't be dismantled for easy removal. :)

*cuddles the World's Comfiest Sofa, apropos of nothing*

Only downside right now is a traumatised cat. He was initially shut in the kitchen out of the way but yowled so piteously that we attempted to send the Thesski in there to keep him company, only for him to find the only gap between us and freedom and leg it outside. So he got locked out for the duration. And then when he scurried back in and tried to dive behind the old sofa, which is his prefferred hiding place, we'd gone and taken it away!* He's not a Pleased Kitty right now. Which is why while I was out earlier, I picked up some nail clippers and flea treatment - I figure, if I'm going to be hissed at for the rest of the weekend anyway, I may as well really deserve it.

The Thesski is currently perched in the rocking chair, attempting to wrangle a keyboard. This does not look comfy but she insists it could work. I'm on the lookout for a cheap comfy chair though, any colour, doesn't have to be particularly good condition, so long as it's the right side of hygenic. If anyone knows anyone anxious to offload such, please let me know. I've been trawling local second hand sites for a few weeks and nothing's come up so far. A small two seater sofa would work too, in a pinch. Although I have to say, I'm loving the lounge space I've just re-acquired.

Next project - degunking and dejunking the spare room. This is going to be my new den. Also temporary bedroom. I need a room I can curl up in and be a dormouse in peace and quiet. When the spare room's sorted, I can start on the main bedroom. At the very least, Thess should end up with a bit more elbow room.

But for now! There is tea, then food shopping (we're currently making Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard look well stocked) and then a long afternoon and evening of rugby :) Life is good! *happy squeaks*

...when your kitty cat curls up next to you his head on your thigh, and he's all warm and purry.

*sighs happily*

Feeling a smidge better now, thank you for the well wishes. Annoyingly, I've reached that point where I still feel not quite OK but not badly enough to take more time off work. I'm hoping it'll be clearer one way or the other tomorrow, preferably in the "feel 100%" bit.

It's funny, technically every day is Saturday for me at the moment, but the real Saturday still feels special. I love Saturday :)

I'm currently watching the end of the Sunderland/Newcasatle football derby (1-1 atm) and when it's done, I shall scamper to Morrison's and do a small shop, as I'm out of bread and, horror of horrors, milk! I haven't had any tea yet today! *wails* I also have a strange craving for pork pie....*shrugs* No idea why but I'm happy to go with it :)

The rebuilding of the PC continues. The most tedious thing is replacing all the firefox bookmarks. I have GOT to learn to save a back up of my favourites file on a disc or something. Of course, learning to do backups is something I need to work on anyway. Until this PC, I had been really, really lucky with my computers. I can only assume this PC is karmic revenge or something.

Downloaded the next episode of Numb3rs and will watch that when I get back. At some point, I MUST catch up with SG:A, I'm so behind. Maybe I'll download 'em next week. However, I have shiny, shiny books to cuddle this weekend, so I don't want to download 'em now :)

In other news, I have been kicking the cat out of the lounge at night, for two reasons. One, I'm sleeping on the sofa and the cat can be an awful fidget, especially at 3am when he wants fuss and attention. Two, it's a long term strategy because I am tired of cleaning crap and dead things off the sofa and carpet. To this end, I bought him a very cosy cat bed, one that's like an igloo in shape, so he had somewhere warm and comfortable to curl up in the hallway, which is a smidge on the drafty side. He took to it like a duck to water but until today, hasn't stayed in it long enough for me to get a picture. Oh he slept in it, but as soon I walk towards the hall, he'd leap out and scamper down the hallway. I could only assume he felt trapped in it - maybe it reminded him a bit of his cat carrier - but now he's quite happy just to poke his fuzzy snout out when I walk past. I'll leave it a bit longer, so as not to spook him, and then I'll see if I can get a picture. It's very cute :) Which reminds me, I promised cute cat pics, but realised I lost them all in the reformat and deleted the ones of Rob off my camera :( Fortunately all the really important photos are uploaded to Flickr and Photobucket already but it's still annoying, I had a couple of really cute shots. Oh well. I'll just have to stalk him again :D

I did actually let him sleep in the lounge last night and he was very well behaved. He spent all night curled up at my feet, like a furry hot water bottle :) Didn't try and get fuss and attention once. Hmm. Maybe he's learned. I'll try again tonight and see :) But when I go back to my bedroom, he's still being shut out of the lounge, so the cat bed was a good investment. I will probably still shut him out of the bedroom, I do like to sleep with the door shut, but I may see if he's less of a fidget there too. He'd like to be nearer to me at night, he follows me to the bedroom door and looks piteously at me when I shut it in his face. Aww!

Well so much for my energetic day - The Unit Season 2 arrived this morning :D That's my day fully booked! *giggles*

I spent yesterday evening playing with the iPod. First of all, the bad news - I had to delete everything halcyon_shift installed. Seems because she used a Mac to configure it, it refused to play with my PC until the factory settings were restored. Wouldn't let me download anything off the iPod either. However, there's good news! halcyon_shift is saving all the files and putting them onto DVD for me so I can re-install the stuff from my PC in the future. Yay! And nmalfoy is making me some mix cds of great music so I can add those at some point in the future. Eeeee!

Now, are there any iPod users on my flist? Preferably PC users? I just want to find out if you have problems getting stuff from iTunes to the iPod? I used sync but I don't like it because it doesn't let me edit anything afterwards. And if you switch to manual sync, it bloody deletes everything you just downloaded. Stupid system! What am I missing out on here? Also. in manual sync, I couldn't figure out HOW to get the bloody stuff onto the iPod. I could see albums in my library but it wouldn't let me drag and drop 'em onto the iPod UNTIL i created a playlist, THEN it let me. *shakes head* Yes, I have a manual but it's not terribly helpful, so any advice?

Rob got a present this morning too - a new fleece cat blanket. I wanted something smarter and easier to wash to put on the sofa. If it works well, I'll order some more so I can rotate them. Now I'm just waiting for his new cat bed to arrive. Oh I hope he likes it, it'll make life easier when I get rid of the old sofa that he likes to hide behind. I'm hoping the cave like cat bed will give him somewhere else to retreat to *crosses fingers he takes to it*

And now I have tea and disc 1 is in the PC. Must go, these DVDs won't watch themselves y'know *happy*

My cat is dim. He caught a fat mouse on Monday and brought it in to play with. Smart mouse played dead, dim cat got bored. So it was that five minutes before I was due to scamper off to Chess, I spotted a furry brown mousey scuttling across the carpet.

The cat was yelled at to get rid of that bloody mouse by the time I got back...

Monday night and Tuesday passed, no sign of mouse, no furry corpse or pieces of meeces anywhere. I offer up a prayer Rob had eaten the thing. Last night, just before I went to bed, guess what I saw scuttling across the carpet? Towards a snoozing cat who couldn't even be bothered to open one eye and look at what was squeaking?

*headdesks*

He got yelled at to sort out that bloody mouse, after I'd spent five fruitless minutes trying to catch it. I stomped off to the bathroom and when I came out, Rob was standing over the motionless furry body of the mouse. Hurrah, I said, and told Rob he was a good boy. Went to grab some kitchen towel, picked up the mouse...and it squeaked loudly and indignantly and tried to escape.

Once I'd recovered from the fright and re-caught the mousey, I calmed it down so that it wouldn't wriggle and hurt itself and then I took it outside. It was a cute mouse and we both agreed my cat was stupid. Last I saw, it was scampering off towards the shelter of the nearby hedge. I dare say it was cat bait by morning but hopefully a smarter cat than mine caught it :P

In other news, have some pretty pictures. These are seriously amazing and would make good wallpapers too :)

http://discovermagazine.com/photos/01-each-grain-of-sand-a-tiny-work-of-art

So the cat got his final dose of eye drops today and the cat scratch tally was....NONE!!! Not a single, solitary one :) There were two instances of hiding behind the sofa and yowling unhappily and there was one morning he escaped completely because I didn't have time to prise him out from behind the sofa but otherwise, he was very well behaved. He IS such a good natured furball. *cuddles the purring kitty cat*

I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End last night. Wow! ( There be spoilers a-lurkin' under 'ere, ye scurvy dogs! Arrr! )

*yawns* I stayed up until the wee small hours reading a book *sighs* I never learn :) I found a new Barry *swoon* Eisler book, Killing Rain, that I didn't know I had - this one was hidden in one of my rucksacks. God knows when I bought it :P Anyway, it was very, very good - which is why I finished it at nearly 6am this morning. *hangs head* I couldn't help it! Honest!

And now to bed, for 'tis work tomorrow. Bah. Hope everyone had a good weekend too :)

The cat had his yearly check up today and passed with flying colours. The vet was very impressed with him and totally charmed by the furball, who was a doll to handle as usual. He just curls up miserably as close to me as he can get and lets the vet do what she wants :) Mind you, you should have heard the heart-rending yowling when I put him into the carrier to take him to the vets. Deary me, it was piteous!

Anyway, apart from a slight touch of conjunctivitis, caused by what the vet thinks is a blocked tear duct, the furball is in marvellous health for a cat galloping towards 12. He got his booster shots and a worming tablet, plus some stuff for his eye (he WILL be pleased - eye drops twice a day for a week :P) and the vet gave me some good advice about what sort of diet I should be feeding him.

I expected he wouldn't speak to me for hours when I got him home but within 10 minutes, he was next to me on the sofa, demanding fuss and attention. He's such a cutie *beams and scritches the curled up furball*

Those of you who've met my cat, Rob the Furball, can vouch for the fact he's the biggest softie ever. Once he's got used to a new person's presence, he promptly rolls over on his back and demands tummy rubs and will frequently turn into a big puddle of purr. In the 11 years I've owned him, I've been scratched just twice, both times accidentally i.e. my hand/arm happened to be the first surface his paws hit when he was trying to run away. I've given him tablets, baths (let's not discuss the soot incident), bathed an open wound with salt water, caught him on several occasions and stuffed him into a carrier for trips to the vets and trimmed his nails and the most I've had from him has been plaintive yowling or (rarely) a frightened hiss.

Tonight he was being all affectionate as usual. He's just started this new thing of coming up really close to me and purring into my ear. Sweet. He's also rather fond of toppling over onto my arm, which is a problem when I'm trying to type. I needed my arm just now and he kept coming up and trying to lie on it so I pushed him away. The third time, instead of backing off, he took a swipe at me with his paw, claws out.

*blinks*

Rob. The mushball. Took a swipe at me. For something I've done many times. Claws out.

*blinks*

OK, where's the real Rob and can I have him back, please?

When he returns from his protracted sulk, I'll have to see if he's got a sore patch or something that I could have hit accidentally. Else I'll have to chalk this up to weird happenstance, unless it happens again and then I'm going go to worry. Cat's personalities don't usually change overnight unless something is wrong.