It's Not All Black and White

The sun was shining, the work was done for the day and the garden called.  I was alone, Mick having gone into the Peak for a few days to practise his dry-stone walling - a jolly with his volunteer friends.  I got out my sun lounger and settled in for a good read in the quiet and peaceful surroundings of my flower-filled garden and had been so engrossed that at first the persistent calling didn’t register.  But eventually it seeped in and, thinking some animal must be in distress, I prised myself out of my chair to investigate.

I began to hurry down the path, but had only ventured a few steps before I was stopped in my tracks – a black cat with a tiny kitten at her feet was looking at me warily – the loud mewing continued.  As I gently picked up the little black and white bundle, the mother growled and spat at me, but took her aggression no further as I examined the kitten.  Its tummy seemed full and its beautiful blue eyes were wide and shining.  I quickly put it down and the mother immediately picked it up by the scruff of its neck and set off back the way she had come.  The kitten was obviously getting too big for her to carry and she stopped several times to get a better grip before disappearing up the path towards neighbouring gardens.  As mother and kitten disappeared through the hedge, the source of the wailing came into view – another kitten, which tried to follow but wasn’t quick enough.  It sat looking at me, not knowing what to do.  It sat there for a long time.  I kept expecting the mother to return for it, but each time I checked it was still there, silent now, looking at me pitifully.  And then it was gone.  Were they under our neighbour’s decking, had she taken her family further afield?  I didn’t know, but realised there was little I could do about it.

Animals have been a feature in my family for as long as I can remember.  We have a photo of me when I was about three years old holding Blackie and some time later we had Tish and Tess, a cat and dog, whose names when said quickly together always produced some shocked amusement.  Later still, we had Sandy, the greyhound who was destined to become my father’s goldmine, but who instead caught mange and proved to be a silent witness when we had burglars one night.   After we were married, our first house became home to Tiger, a stripy kitten Mick brought home from the pit one day.  She had kittens, one of which we kept and Dandy lived to be about eighteen years of age.  We also owned, bred and exhibited Chihuahuas for about twenty years until, in the 90s, and generally in old age, the last few passed away, Mick retired and we decided to travel.

For the past sixteen years, we have done just that, but since 2003 have settled into a more homely routine and there have been times when I would have enjoyed having an animal around again.  Could this be the time? 

Mick phoned that night and I regaled him with the news that we might have some new residents.  I knew at heart what he would say but, despite knowing that he was right, was still a little disappointed that he should be so definite: “Ring the RSPCA first thing in the morning”, he said.  “See if they will take them.”

Wednesday morning arrived and the cats were still on my mind.  A black cat had been around for some time, but nobody seemed to know anything about it or own it.  I didn’t think anyone fed it either – unless it got scraps from the pub next door – more likely it had been chased off.  With kittens to feed, it would be hungry, I thought.  We don’t have a big garden, but it’s full of plants with no lawn depriving them of space, and places to hide were plentiful.  I set off to investigate.  Despite the onset of Autumn, the borders are still full, with plenty of colour to catch the eye.  The insects were busy that morning and, as baby grass snakes have been around for a week or two – had eggs been laid in the compost heap again? - it was necessary to watch where I put my feet.  And so I walked carefully, slowly, to the top of the garden where we have a raised water feature in the corner surrounded by shrubs and flowers.

Her green eyes watched me as I drew nearer.  The kittens were snuggled close, definitely two, but was that a third?  It was hard to tell and I didn’t want to frighten them off again.

Most of Wednesday, I spent either following Mick’s instructions or traipsing up and down the garden keeping an eye on the new family.  I offered the mother a saucer of milk which she quickly lapped up and looked for more.  The local RSPCA were full, the national body offered me a cat pack so that I could put leaflets up around the area.  “Sorry”, I said.  “There’s no way I am starting that.”  I had already decided she was a stray.  Why else would she be sitting in my garden and not at home being looked after and fed by her human family?   Why had no-one been around looking for her?  The young man at Cat’s Protection League was very kind and sympathetic and offered me a couple of local numbers to try.  The internet produced one or two more.  I tried them all and was eventually rewarded by a lady who said she would take them at a push, but she already had too many and would I try another number first.  Yes, I’d try anything.  She gave me the number.  I rang it and the lady said she would.  Now I just had to catch them. 

A mixture of tuna and muesli seemed like a good idea and was wolfed down like there were no tomorrows.  When I took the dish away, she nearly bit my hand off, and in fact she did break the skin.  Yes, she was definitely hungry.  The next step was to find a carrier in which to hold them.  I knew my neighbour had had a cage five or six years before because he had lent it to me when I had to take my mother’s cats to the RSPCA after she died, but we had been flooded since then.  Would he still have it?  Fortunately, the answer was yes.  He had nearly thrown it out, but on second thoughts had decided to keep it.  Thank goodness for that.

So, I’d got the cage, now I just had to get them all in it.  The mother proved to be easy enough.  So long as I had food, she would come to me.  My fleece and winter gloves offered protection.  The kittens weren’t so easy.  I guessed they must be about four weeks old and that, if I didn’t get them now, it wouldn’t be long before they were completely wild.  Even at this age they could growl and spit.  The problem was, though, that having got the cat in the cage, I had to tie the lid down so that she wouldn’t escape – and how would I get the kittens in if the lid was tied down?  I looked for a garden trug – all filthy of course – but found a large one which I cleaned out and lined with newspaper.  Hopefully I could put them in there as I caught them before transferring them to the cage.  At various times throughout the day, I had the mother or two kittens or the mother and two kittens, but never the complete family in the cage.  Where was the third kitten?  It hadn’t turned up by dark so I let them all out again.

Thursday morning dawned and all four were back together again on the water feature.  With another dish of food, the mother was soon caught and two kittens quickly followed into the trug.  The third once again slipped my fingers and disappeared under a stone shelf which I hadn’t realised was there.  On top of the shelf was our wood pile – perhaps it was hiding in there, but there wasn’t a sound and the mother didn’t seem interested in calling for it.  I let the mother out again in the hope that it would be drawn to her for a feed, but no.  She sunned herself languorously all day, as though without a care in the world, and gradually ate enough to seem satisfied.  Perhaps she was glad of the rest.

If she was feeling rested, I must admit I was feeling quite stressed out by this time.  Mick returned home mid-morning and was at least sympathetic.  The lady who was due to have them was understanding, but couldn’t do much to help.  The missing kitten remained invisible.  Both mother and kitten seemed to be joined in a conspiracy of silence. 

But perhaps things were about to change.  In the afternoon, I spotted the mother going into my neighbour’s orchard.  ‘Aha’, I thought, ‘she’s taken it away somewhere else’.  I followed, but she’d disappeared.  Having looked around, I decided to go into the next orchard, but to do that I had to retrace my steps and enter from a different direction.  Still no sign of her.  At the bottom of this orchard there were some old pigsties, dilapidated and almost completely overgrown.  No doubt a cat could have got in, but I certainly couldn’t and there was no way I was even going to try.  I began to make my way back home, but suddenly spotted something moving alongside one of the buildings and to my astonishment there sat two more kittens, smaller than the others and completely black.  Surely there couldn’t be two mothers around.  Well, how could I know?  There was certainly no sign of another one.  I picked them up and decided to put them in the cage with the others.  If they got on together, fine; if not they might or might not survive, but what else could I do.  If there was another mother, no doubt she would come looking.  So now I had four, but No. 3 was still missing.  Suddenly the mother was at my feet once more.  I wondered what her reaction might be to the two new babies, but I needn’t have worried.  She was fine.

Rain was forecast for the coming night, so as darkness approached, we decided to put the cage under cover near the woodpile and cover it with a plastic sheet.  It didn’t seem right to leave the four kittens alone all night and so just before bedtime the mother was put in with them and they all settled down cosily together. 

Friday was D-day as far as transferring them to the new carer was concerned.  We had arranged to meet her at the vets at lunchtime and were hoping that there would be a total of six in the cage by that time.    I woke early and dashed out to check that they had all survived the night.  It had rained, but the cage was dry and all seemed quiet.  I gently lifted the plastic sheet away and there, huddled to the outside of the cage, was the third identical black and white kitten.  What a relief.  The wanderer had returned and allowed me to pick it up and put it in with the others who were all quite alive and well.

The journey to the vet’s was uneventful, though rather smelly.  They had of course been in the cage for some time by then, but there was no way we could risk letting them out again at this late stage.  The vet seemed generally happy with their condition, despite the numerous ticks that were plucked from them, and their new custodian seemed responsible and caring.   We were asked if we would have the mother back once the kittens had been weaned and she had been spayed, but the response from Mick was so immediate that I knew there was no point in discussing it. 

Whether the kittens were all from the same mother, I don’t suppose we will ever know, but as we returned home, our neighbour met us.  “I don’t want to worry you,” he said, “but I’ve just seen another black cat in my garden.”

©  Elizabeth Reeve   

21.9.11

To Blog or Not to Blog - That is the Question

“Why don’t you start a Blog?”  This is Sheila speaking, an artist friend and fellow member of the Don Gorge Community Group committee.  “It’s much better than a website and you can update it really quickly and easily.”  I’m not convinced.  It had taken me the best part of a week to pay the annual registration fee for the website, which I was told would be cut off if I hadn’t paid it by the due date  and that was the last thing I wanted as it had taken me weeks to set that up.  The problem was, every time I tried it wouldn’t let me access the checkout for some reason.  In the end, the only way through the mire was to agree to set up a continuous credit which I did, though reluctantly, to save the site.  How easy would it be to cancel this if I decided to start a blog and found the website was unnecessary after all?  Who knows?  Certainly not me.

Well, I’ve got one,”  this is Sheila again and she means a Blog, “and it’s brilliant.”  I hesitate and splutter a bit.  I just wish some fairy Blog-spotter would take all this off my hands and do it for me.  I think I’m fairly computer literate, but some things confound me.  I don’t know what some of the jargon means and so I don’t always understand the instructions or warnings.  It produces a sense of utter confusion and futility which makes me want to just back off.  But she won’t give up yet.

“It’s not difficult and you’ll soon get used to it.  Honestly.”  I begin to show signs of weakness, which she jumps on.  “I’ll show you how to start if you like.”  How can I refuse?  She’s so enthusiastic – and she’s older than me!  Anything she can do, I can do at least as well, can’t I?  Well, no, not really.  I can’t paint for toffee, can I?  But maybe I should at least have a go, if only to show her I’m not a total dim-wit.

I turn on my Notebook and we sit side by side in front of it.  “It’s a bit small isn’t it?  Haven’t you got anything with a bigger screen?  The Blog will look much better on a bigger screen.  I don’t know how you can see it on there.”  She has a really up-to-date Apple Mac with a screen like the local cinema.  We do have a laptop and a desktop, but the laptop is very slow and the desktop is upstairs.  Mick usually uses that and is so untidy that it’s not worth the effort for me to go there unless I’m really desperate.  I just use my Notebook downstairs.  The screen is small, but at least nobody else is allowed to interfere with it, so it’s OK.

“Now, go to Google and search for ‘Blogger’.”  I do as I’m told and a message immediately appears telling me I can’t do it and to click ‘learn more’.  This is the same message I was receiving when I tried to pay my bill a few weeks earlier.  I know in my bones this isn’t going to be as easy as Sheila has made out.  “Oh, I know what it is,” she says.  “The website was created through a Google Apps account.  What you need is an ordinary Google account and when you’ve done that, you should be able to get into Blogger and go on from there to create the Blog.  It’s really easy, just follow the instructions.”  She leaves me to it.

So, how do I get myself another Google account?  I guess I have to create a new email and so click all the labels available and somehow – I don’t remember how – find a page that invites me to register by choosing a new email address and password.  Now, I already have a personal email, a Don Gorge email called lizreeve@dongorgecommunitygroup.com and don’t want to confuse these with a new one so I have to find a name format that fits into the same mould but is sufficiently different that I will remember which is which.  Nor do I want anyone else to actually use this new email as the original one has already been publicised.  I rack my brain and settle on lizreeve.dgcg@googlemail.com, choose a different password and, thankfully, find this is acceptable to the invisible computer brain that judges the efficacy of such things.

I search for Google Blogger.  A new page comes up with a variety of websites to choose from and I pick ‘Create your free Blog’ hoping it will take me to the right place and it does.  ‘Dashboard’ appears with a variety of headings, including ‘design’ which I click on and choose ‘simple’.  You can change this later, it tells me, but I’ve now forgotten how!  This then invites me to design how I want the page to look.  There are boxes of various sizes dotted around the screen with little messages inside saying ‘Navbar’, ‘About me’, ‘Followers’, ‘Pages’, ‘Blog Posts’, ‘Attribution’ ‘Stats’ and ‘Add a Gadget’ and the word ‘edit’ in each.  After a quick look round these, I decide to check out Sheila’s Blog to get an idea of how hers looks, and then do some editing of my own, before creating a ‘post’ by cutting and pasting a few things from elsewhere to see what happens.  Inevitably, it doesn’t look totally as it should and editing is necessary.  The ‘edit post’ heading on the dashboard seems to fit the bill, so I click it and don’t know what to do.  I try a few things, but nothing works.  There’s obviously more to this than meets the eye.  I decide I need another consultation with the oracle and make an appointment with Sheila.  At the appointed hour, I take my Notebook with me so that we can compare things as we go along.  I turn it on and only then realise I need a wireless connection.  Amazingly, after looking for available networks, I find one that works and off we go.

“Are you there yet?”  Sheila again.  She is biting at the bit.  She doesn’t realise that my little ‘Mini’ doesn’t go as fast as her ‘Masserati’.  No matter, we get there eventually.

“I don’t know how you can see that,” she says, “It’s so small.”  We’ve been through this before, so I keep quiet and then change the subject.  “What are gadgets?” I ask.  “How do you get them all in a line down the side?”  “Why do some headings come out at the bottom of my blog instead of down the side?”  She demonstrates, but her screen is slightly different to mine – well it’s Apple isn’t it and min is Windows.  What can you expect?  She eventually gets through to me some of the finer points of layout.

“What you really need are ‘static pages’,” she says.  I agree that one of the documents I’ve copied in would be ideal for one of these as I didn’t need it to change on a regular basis, and she shows me how to create such a page which I will try when I get home.  I would also like to know how many people look at the site – ‘stats’.  I have asked it to provide these, and find that 35 hits have been received so far – but they’re all mine!  “You don’t want that.” She says.  “You’ll have to change the setting.  If you go to ‘help’ at the top there, someone will have asked the question before and you’ll find an answer.”  Thanks a lot Sheila.

I return home to tackle my still unanswered questions and hope ‘help’ will come up trumps.  It does to a degree.  I just don’t understand the jargon until one correspondent says “these are my favourite stats sites’.  I pick ‘StatCounter’ at random and hope for the best.  At least it’s free.  “Copy the Code below,’ it says, “and paste it into the relevant box.”  I do and it works, except that it is still counting my own hits.  I return to the StatCounter site, saving it in my Favourites for future use  – I now have so many ‘important’ pages and sites saved in my Favourites list that it’s off the page, but I worry if I don’t save them I won’t remember their names and will never find them again.   It takes some time, but I eventually find the necessary item to tick – it’s called a ‘blocking cookie’.  Having done that, I turn the counter back to zero, ready to start again. 

I also think I’ve created a ‘static page’, but I’m not really sure and it keeps changing the size of the font.  I don’t understand why, but decide to add some gadgets anyway – photos this time – and it works.  I insert our logo and another, bigger picture to make a heading and it’s looking quite good.  I’m steaming ahead now.

I email everyone in my Don Gorge email list in the hope that current friends and supporters will check it out.  Two days later, I have two Followers and 35 hits.  Wow.  I can hardly believe it.  No-one’s left a comment yet, but, hey, it’s early days.  Sheila has emailed a ‘Well done” so that’s something isn’t it?  There’s still a lot to learn, I’m sure, and lots more people to invite along for the ride, but so far I agree it is easier than the website.

The address is http://dongorgecommunitygroup.blogspot.com.  Why don’t you look us up?  Maybe become a Follower?  Maybe leave a comment?  It’d be good to hear from you.

© Liz Reeve
24.10.11

 

This was written for my writing group at Tickhill in South Yorkshire following my first attempt at a Blog.  As you can see, I am now attempting one for myself, so thought this was a good place to start.