Some time since the last post...

Happy to say nothing amiss. Several anniversaries to record. farthest back was Binks' first Christmas. We read that some huge proportion (85%?) of pet owners give presents to their animals over the festive period but we did not - does that make us bad?

Another potentially sentimental day passed more or less unremarked upon - January 6th, a year since his arrival. Amazing how that time has flown. All of us have settled down into mini routines and those, fractal-wise, comprised of smaller and smaller repeated and reinforced acts; fast and slow coming downstairs, the morning visit in the bathroom after breakfast, the vocal greetings, the foot biting in the morning. Once it seemed that all anecdotes belonged to the 'old' cats but now Binks has his own.

We did the annual visit to the vets too. That was more or less without incident. The scariest - though played down - was that he has the slightest of heart murmurs. In the complete absence of clinical signs (shortness of breath etc.) , we were told not to worry. He is very active and the vet did say that it might well go away. He got all the injections as usual and was given a worming tablet about which, rather sheepishly, we had to confess we'd done nothing.

He had been rather unforthcoming on the prey front recently but he celebrated two days after his vet's visit by catching, killing but not eating a rat. Not a very big one but as Jean was at home on her own, she was grateful it was dead. Prior to that we'd had two blank visits to the country; it's been pretty awful weather (though, of course, it never snowed while we were there) and it is most likely the mice and voles are hidden away. You have to go back as far as December to find a score (two, one alive, one dead and (ugh..) trodden on). One day I'll add all these up.