A is for Animal

I've let this blog languish for far too long, and I'm determined to rehabilitate it. Over time, I've found the most fun thing to do is these alphabet sequences. They satisfy at once my nerdish love of correct ordering and my writerly love of randomness. So without further ado, today's focus is A for Animals.

These are my animals.

The grey cat in the front of the picture is Ferret. Ferret is an elderly cat, and for a couple of years he's been steadily losing a trickle of weight. It's very slow, but steady. The vet charted it on a spreadsheet. Now we've had a full blood workup, and there are no signs of anything wrong at all - all organs are functioning well, there aren't any signs of cancer or infection of any kind, basically he's a healthy cat, but he still is losing weight.

Late last year I embarked on a course of rich feeding and constantly tempting him to consume extra snacks. It's hard going, because Ferret isn't really much of a foodie, but after two months of this I took him back to the vet and the vet said we've halted the weight loss, and he was more or less stable. The recommendation was that I continue what I've been doing for another three months and then we see him again.

Unfortunately, then I became very ill, and the constant snacks fell by the wayside for a while, but we're back on it now. This morning, Ferret has had a small bowl of cream, although he wouldn't drink all of it, and I have cooked two slices of bacon which I'll cut up small to tempt him in the afternoon.

This is Ferret back in 2012. He was quite chubby then.

I'll welcome any comments from my readers, if you have any ideas of different things that might tempt Ferret to eat more.

Now that's Ferret, but he's far from the only animal in my life, or in the world for that matter. Let me introduce you to the late RooRoo.

RooRoo came into my life one dreary Friday night. I had just lost my beautiful dog, and I was grieving. He walked into my house, demanded food, and settled down to stay. He was with me for twelve wonderful years, and I always felt he'd rescued me more than I'd rescued him. When he died, I started RooRoo Day as a living memorial to him. It's an easy movement to be part of; all you have to do is an act of kindness for an animal, on that day. RooRoo Day is 14 May every year. I chose that date because that was the day he first walked into my house. I never knew how old he was, but he was fully adult, and the vet guessed about three, so I always observed 14 May as his birthday, and now it is his memorial day.

There's a Facebook event for it every year, and you can find this year's one HERE, in case you'd like to join it and perhaps share your ideas. You don't have to, of course. There's no sign-up required for RooRoo Day, no fees or costs - all that's needed is the will to celebrate it. There are lots of things you can do that don't cost much, or even anything at all. Please join me in this.

We have a poster that gives the basics of the day; if you feel you'd like to put one or two up, just email me at Tabitha.Ormiston.Smith@gmail.com, and I'll send you the pdf. It's displayed below, but there's also a version that's less heavy on the coloured toner, which I can get for you.