I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned my cat (!) but she is now an indoor/house cat. Two new cats have moved into the area, and are intent on taking over her territory (basically our back garden). So she has ended up at the vet, needing anaesthesia and stitches in her leg, antibiotics and pain relief. Fortunately the vet is so skilled with the stitches that she hasn’t needed one of those cone collars. She really doesn’t cope with those. Anyhow, the wound is healing well, but she’s not terribly happy that she’s not allowed outside. So I bought a Feliway diffuser, which is supposed to replicate happy pheromones which calm upset cats, and a couple of new toys. She has of course ignored the toys so far, and is currently sulking under my bed. Ho hum. The vet agreed that she will be safer inside. And she’s 13, so an older cat. Hmph. As you can see from the photo, however, she doesn’t seem to be in any pain, and is quite relaxed. You can just about see a small “hole” in her fur – it’s her left back leg which was bitten – so she was actually running away.

And I got very cross indeed with Windows 11 when it stopped printing. Hubby was able to print from his pc with Windows 10 on it, so it wasn’t the printer or any connections. I have installed Linux 22.04 and all is working fine, except for my favourite suite of card games (Pysol fc). After much research, and discovering that Pysol just doesn’t work in Ubuntu 22.04, I’ve installed wine, which is an emulator, and installed Pysol inside that. It basically means that Pysol thinks it’s working in Windows. Phew.

Meanwhile I’ve been selling stuff on ebay and having such trouble with the couriers! Royal Mail took almost a week to deliver when I’d paid for a 48 hour delivery, despite delivering a parcel collected at the same time within two days. Then Evri didn’t pick up a parcel, I rebooked it, and only managed to get it collected because their courier happened to be delivering to us that day, but wasn’t expecting to collect. Jeez. Also, a winning bidder decided to cancel their bid, which means I have to re-list (but can’t do that for a few days). I’m trying not to be too cross about the inconvenience – anything could have happened in their life – but my first reaction was, to be honest, to be irritated. So I won’t put any feedback, because it might be totally inappropriate.

And last of all, we have another damn blasted rat in the garden. We think they are attracted by the bird food which gets dropped by the birds. So. Hubby has blocked off access to under the shed, and when he did that he found that the rat/s have gnawed their way through the wood so that they can get in the shed. Now I’m a bit worried (terrified) that next time I go in the shed there will be a rat/some rats in there. We shall see. If we see another rat, the next option is to call out the rat catchers (£144!) who will lecture hubby (again) about the bird feeders.

It is another reason, though, to be relieved that the cat is now an inside cat. Two aggressive new cats and a rat does not make for a safe outside environment. Hmph.