Sorry

Sorry, there's no blog this week. I'm writing a story for children.

Sherpa's mystery ailment

Last week Sherpa, one of our two cats, developed a mystery illness or had a mystery accident. I knew something was amiss when, after several hours of lying in the boiler house, she refused the food I offered her, jumped down from her chair and walked very slowly towards the garden. On the way she found herself on the bottom one of three steps outside the sitting room. Several times she tried to get down from the step, lowering one paw but then withdrawing it before it reached the ground. When eventually she found the courage to get down, she walked slowly over the grass and lay under a shrub. I brought her a saucer of milk in which she showed no interest. Shortly afterwards she disappeared. I thought we had lost her.

Darkness fell and there she was, sitting on the window. I let her in and she jumped on a chair. I offered her meat which she quickly devoured, then I offered her more. It too disappeared, after which she lapped milk from a saucer and half heartedly licked her paws before becoming lethargic again.

She remained in her chair during the night, but after being fed the following morning she went out and once more disappeared. When she returned in the evening she was brighter. In a few days she was her sprightly self again.

I'm left wondering if she disappeared in case I decided to take her to the vet and had come to the conclusion that vets don't work after dark. It is interesting to speculate even though I shall never know the answer.

Nest

I was pruning the Philadelphus outside the gate when I noticed, too late because I had already severed the branch at its base, a bird's nest high up. I stopped pruning and left the branch suspended, but supported by the surrounding branches, hoping the bird would still use the nest. A few days later I noticed the same nest on the ground.

Its framework was woven carefully from blades of dried grass and fibres torn from them. Whole blades were visible on the inside around the rim, but the bowl of the base had more fibres than blades. The nest was further strengthened by thin wiry twigs like those of heather. These were present on the outside among blades of grass where insulation, in the form of moss and sheep's wool, was also applied.

What really touched me was that the bird had woven a strand of pale pink ribbon, about the same width as the blades of grass, around the top edge of its nest.

Repairing the Fireplace

I'm sitting in front of a blazing fire, the sort of fire we normally light in the depths of winter, with Sherpa, one of our cats, sprawled in contentment across an armchair. This fire should be hot enough, I hope, to set the special cement.

On Saturday, as I wandered around a local hardware shop looking for putty, I picked up a small tub and discovered that there exists a fireproof cement which is stable at temperatures above 1300 degrees Celsius and can be used for repairing defects in fireplaces. Our fireplace had plenty of those. I was aware of horizontal and vertical cracks that needed to be filled so I started the first part of the process: the preparatory cleaning, first with a brush and then with a ragged towel. This revealed more cracks and holes and depressions of which I had been unaware.

The surface needs to be wet so that the cement can adhere to it. I put my right hand into a disposable rubber glove and with this stuffed the cement directly from the tub into the cracks and hollows before leveling it off. It only remained to light a small fire, build it up gradually during the next four hours, and enjoy it with Sherpa in the meantime.