A guest post from the crazy cat lady (within)

Today there was an apparently quite large aftershock at 1.30pm. I didn't really feel it though because I spent most of the day ferrying felines around to their various appointments.  I just thought it was a large gust of wind that made the car sway, plus I was distracted by the yowling coming from the back.

Yesterday I made the decision that Monty had to go to the vet. Remember his sore foot? Well, it seemed to improve a bit but then wasn't really getting better. It was very guilt inducing watching him sit with his foot held up, and this feeling was intensified x 1,000,000 when the xray revealed a broken foot.  So he was in cat hospital for a day getting a flouro orange cast applied. There are no pictures of it though because he managed to pull it off about two point five minutes after getting home. Not only that, but we had been plotting heavily how to keep it dry and he foiled that plan too by peeing all over himself and The Programmer on the way home.  

He had been in a cat bag - porous, naturally, on The Programmers lap.  Also, and you need to know this, if you release a wound up and cat-pee covered cat in your house, you will have cat-pee everywhere.  I've cleaned up and am burning incense, but all I'm getting is eau de cat-pee with a slight tinge of jasmine.  Mmm. 

So, here (pic below) we have Monty wondering why the catflap is locked and he can't get out. This is when I was about to try and stuff him in that bag in the foreground - which is in itself an act that should only be attempted by a contortionist.

Here he is, in the bag, probably already planning a complex system of revenge, involving cat pee and cat cast evasion.

While I was there with Monty, the vet told me that they only had a few free microchips left, so I booked the others in and spent the rest of the day stuffing perplexed cats into bags or cages and letting the vet stab them in the neck with an enormous needle.  To be fair, only Miranda seemed to notice this and gave a little growl, even though it looked horrendous.  So, I'd say microchipping is fairly painless. It certainly relieves my mind of the anxiety of losing them permanently if we have another big quake. It also gives the cats the ability to skite about being registered companion animals. I'm sure that will impress their frenemies.

In between the cat-chipping performance, I did a 20 minute workout that was sufficiently difficult to make me realise that I need to increase my CV fitness quite a lot. I used a Tabata timer and did intervals of things like jumping squats - 20 seconds jumping, 10 seconds rest, for 15 rounds.  Try it.. it's not as easy as it sounds.

Now it is time for a nice glass of red and a stovetop tagine. That's not the traditional way to make it - however, the proper traditional way is to bury the whole lot in sand, so we do what we can.  Something with Moroccan spices in it is just what I need after subjecting all my pets to a day that will live in infamy.