Cat sitting, continued

Rocky continued to cower beneath the towel for four days with no visible signs of performing any bodily functions, eating and pooping in particular. “I’m afraid he will die of constipation before you get home,” I told Jane Monday night.

Rocky cowering under the towel.

“That would be something of a relief,” she replied, since all Rocky ever does at home is hide in the basement, “but I know you would feel bad about it. Maybe you should just take him back to my house. He only eats dry food anyway. You can check on him once a week.”

I skipped the optional meeting I had Tuesday afternoon to take Rocky home. As I predicted, I only had to put the cat carrier in the kennel, and he crawled right in. Jane emailed me twice and texted once with instructions on where to find the covers for the furniture, where litter boxes had to be moved from the garage into the house, could I check on the box turtle’s water as long as I was there, and so forth. Email has become our preferred communication method. Phone conversation has been difficult while she has been in Florida. For some reason, the calls get dropped after 4 minutes.

I left Rocky in the carrier until all was ready in the house. I opened the carrier door, and he shot out across the living room and to the basement, never to be seen again. I checked on him again when I had to be in Elgin two days later for a doctor’s appointment two days later. The dry food had gone down, and there were two poops in the litter box. All good.

Skippy was happier too. The boys get along okay at Jane’s, but being together in a kennel put a strain on the relationship. Skippy complains about being in the kennel and takes exception to only having five minutes of pets and belly rubs in the morning. I remind him that if he was at the real kennel, he wouldn’t get out at all.

We have lap time after supper when he’s in the mood. Sometimes he just paces around the chairs and does random walk-overs. At other times he settles in quite well. He loves the red blanket.

Skippy lays claim to my lap

And settles in between my legs.

In other news, Gracie and/or Nadia have started laying again! We have had two white eggs this week.

The return of white eggs from the Silver Crested chickens

Hilda and I had a lovely walk to the creek today. It was 40° and calm. It almost seemed like spring except for the winter sun. We are hoping that we don’t get smacked with another ice storm Tuesday, but the El Nino pattern is likely to produce another warm wet front colliding with a cold one.  Not much we can do about it.

 

The winter sun on a cloudy afternoon