Joint Birthdays

The "Pop Star" at 3 years old. 

June 3rd, so that nice coincidental date for 3 of the animals in this blog, formerly 4 but we lost Rolo in an RTA. Puppies Poppea and Towser, and cats Blue and Rolo were all born in 2012 on a busy night for animal midwifery down in Silverwood's Land. The dogs we were expecting and, in fact we were all lined up to be on call as pup midwives, but Mum (Lily) was so efficient at that stage that she slid all that litter of pups out just supervised, but not messed with at all, by Mrs Silverwood. We had our name down for a boy and had already chosen his name.

Towser at 3

The kittens we had tentatively put our names down for but did not know the expected date and, anyway, knew that some Aunt of the family was getting 'first refusal' on that litter so we didn't know for sure any of any litter would be coming our way. It was only when Mrs S phoned her friend round the corner to tell her the good news, that friend replied "Well, THERE's a coincidence! Our cat had 3 kittens too!" The 'chickens' were hatched and count-able. We were suddenly on for the pup and 2 kittens, all born in the night of June 2nd/3rd but after midnight.

Blue at 3 looking as if he doesn't actually want disturbing.

Readers who were with me in 2012 will know that, in fact, we ended up with 2 pups. There had been a bit of a silly health-scare over one of the bitches and Mrs S had held back from selling her till she was all clear, she came up to the 'farm' with the family on a week's holiday and played so well with her already-sold brother, that it seemed fairest to just re-unite them and for us to take the two pups to go with our 2 mad kittens. Poor Deefer, briefly an 'only child' didn't know which way to turn. 3 years later, that all seems a long time ago.

Buff chick at 2 weeks old.

However, with Liz not yet back from Greece and no big updates on the story of that adventure yet, and with me having only posted yesterday but wanting to mark these Birthdays, I have little to write about, so this post will be an unashamed photo album, using up some pics which I have not yet found a home for in the blog.

Tom

Huge thanks to brother Mark for continuing to use up his bank balance in coloured inks for his printer - he prints a hard copy of this blog including the pictures to put in the post to our Mum, (Pud Lady) down in Hastings, stuffing it in the envelope of his own blog. We have not yet persuaded Pud Lady to join that happy band of "grey-surfers", internet-savvy OAPs and get on line with a lap top (and some internet provision to the house, of course!) so that she can see these ramblings on screen and, anyway, I think she quite likes to have the hard copy as it feels a bit like we negligent children have actually written to her (!) - sorry Mum. Mark must rue the days when I do one of these and all his colour ink drains away. I am very very grateful.

Finally some warm weather for the bees to get cracking
pulling in pollen and nectar.

First flag iris in the pond.

Here, then, are just a few pics with captions to catch you up on extra curricular stuff.

No pictures, please! The chick flees the paparazzi

Quince blossom

Min the Hin on a high roost.

Goldie and Nugget out in their run. 

Good bud break and some fruit on the
Brown Turkey fig.

Pups,Kittens and Bunnies

We seem to be accumulating animals (or at least potential animals) at an alarming rate. Mum and Dad have been looking to bring the dog count back up to three after the passing of Haggis. I am told I am a 'natural only child' rather resentful of the intrusion and jealous of my Dad's lurve, but I get no say in this, I just have to put up with it. I am told it is good for my soul and makes me a more rounded character. Anyway, there was talk that new dog 3 might or might not be a westie, and that Dad might finally take a look at long haired Golden Retrievers despite the mud of Roscommon, although Mum was looking a bit askance at this suggestion.

Then, 7 weeks ago or so, into heat came the Silverwood's young westie bitch, Lily, and into the job vacancy stepped their young boy dog, Maxwell. One thing led to another and soon young Lily was showing some obvious signs of being with child. My top picture here is Lily at her widest and most barn door, taken on Sunday when Mum and Dad had headed down to Silverwood to collect J-M's two rabbits, Ginny and Padfoot (but that's another story). That night, the Sunday 3rd June of Bank Holiday weekend  in Ireland (Jubilee Weekend in UK) Lily decided she was fully cooked and tonight was the night. Between about midnight and 0600 first time mother Lily slid 7 new pups into the world almost with not a bother (a brief howl at the first one's exit and then one afterbirth getting beaten into the canal by a quick pup so that we had pup, pup, afterbirth, afterbirth which caused palpitations for the Midwife (Mrs Silverwood covering the night shift)

Mrs S helped break the membrane around the nose of pup 1 but after that all was plain sailing with Lily proving to be an excellent Mum, licking all the babies clean, slurping up the afterbirths as per textbook birth and nipping through the cords very neatly on all of them. She accepted all 7 onto her (conveniently 7 in number) teats and let go her colostrum and milk to beat the band. We now have 7 plump, wriggling contented pups, a happy, healthy mother and poor aul' Maxwell banished for the moment to a life of pacing the corridor outside the Maternity Ward, wishing he could nip off down the pub to wet the baby's head, baby's head, baby's head etc

Whilst all this westie production was going on, Mum was also getting a hankering for some kittens or cats back in her life like we had in the early days of Faversham, before I was born. Mum has quite often had cats in her life and loves a kitten, but had abstained after their last cat (Felix) passed away because 'we' had three dogs.

So, stepping into the fray in a timely manner came the Silverwood's builder Tommo and his wife Sylvia who have a pair of fluffy cats described as having "bottle brush tails". The female was with child and due to give birth at roughly the same time as Lily, so Mum tentatively put her name down for 2 kittens.

And so it happened that the cat decided that her kittens were also fully cooked on the same night as Lily, and on Monday morning we heard that she'd had three and that we could have, if we liked, a boy and a girl "bottle brush kitten". This will be in about 6 weeks, so about mid July. Everyone is wondering what I'll make of kittens, given that my default setting is to chase anything that runs away, but Kittens are more likely to run at you and mug you. Could be interesting. Do I have any kind of maternal instinct or not? Kittens? Pups? Where will it all end?

Deefs