Animals of October

We are decamped at a friend's house to look after her cats while she's away. This is an annual occurrence. There is a dog in this mix who is uncontrollable when it comes to firework season, so our friends take her away somewhere remote in the hope of avoiding the bangs and booms. Mostyn is one of two cats at this abode and just look at him: as regal and as glorious as they come. He's a friendly fella with a wild streak and a show-off attitude. He is quite used to Hannah and I as his occasional carers because we are a key node in a network of pals who feed each other's pets at times of holidaying. Arrangements are made, keys are exchanged, bags of treats are left on kitchen counters alongside complex instructions about medicines that need to be administered or specific foods for specific creatures. Curiously, at times, it feels like we see more of each other's animals than we do of each other.   All of this is currently allowed according to COVID rules, but will not ...

Sometimes I wonder if animals were invented to save us from the Internet. Or, more gloomily, to entice us to stay on the Internet. Because, whatever else this trickster demon of world wide interconnectivity brings us, we'll always have cute pics and vids of creatures to ease the pains. My Twitter feed is a doomscroll of angry political opinions, desperate good-hearted folks raging against various dying lights, men being absolute dicks to women, natural and unnatural disasters, and lots and lots of talented people publishing amazing books while my own effort languishes somewhere in an ambiguous void. But, like jewels, out pop various wholesome images of adorable animals doing adorable things. I added one such to Instagram this morning, catching Marble and Finch in a pleasingly photogenic pose . And on the whole this is amazing and lovely and wonderful, and rarely fails to raise a smile. But sometimes I wonder. What is this abundance of animal cutesyness doing to our psyche in relati...

We lost a guinea pig yesterday. The lovely Daphne, with her flowing white locks and her haughty vibe, like a Greek Goddess. She actually appeared on this blog a few days ago, on the picture for the post about Zoom meetings . She lived here, in my study, alongside the aforementioned Chuzzlewit and his partner Princess Peach. She was not best mates with these two by any means, but she was a good neighbour. She was also one of our more confident guinea pigs who didn't mind being handled or being stroked on the head or cheek.  She'd had a couple of quiet days where she'd nibbled at her food and resisted the arthritis medication that she usually loves, so we took her to the vet who advised us that her time had come. RIP queen Daphne. We've had a large collection of guinea pigs for the best part of a decade now, so we've grown quite used to their deaths. It's never pleasant, of course, but it happens, and we can comfort ourselves with the lives we provide for them and...

Quick content warning: there's discussion of pet death in the latter half of this post. Not too heavy, but if that's a difficulty for you, maybe skip this post.  This handsome chap is Merlin. He lives at the back-opposite house to ours and spends significant amounts of his time as a sort of feline sentinel for the ginnel between our streets. He stands on the fence, or lies Sphinx-like on the flat top of the shed, and watches the comings and goings of the alleyway. He's not particularly friendly, at least not with me, but I always say hello. He glares at me as if to say; I'm on duty here, I'm a complete professional , and that's fair enough I suppose. We hear him miaow occasionally when his shift is done and he wants to head back inside. It is a loud and proud howling voice very much befitting his stature.  He's a rescue cat from the Manchester & Salford RSPCA and we know this because Hannah did his home visit. This is one of her volunteering roles (durin...

In what has now become a trilogy of posts , I'm here again to write about the RSPCA Badly Drawn Pets fundraiser because last night it was my turn to get sketchy. The fundraiser has done really well, sailing past its 3K target, but that has meant there is a backlog of pets to be badly drawn and the pool of 'artists' has had to be extended. I am now within that pool, bathing in the inks and paints. Well, its more like colouring pencils and felt tips, but you get what I mean. My subject was a black rabbit called Inara (Hittite goddess of wild animals - cool name!) who stands proudly in her picture sticking her ridiculous cartoonish tongue out. I've not posted the full drawing here because I thought it better for the owner-donators to see it first, but this detail shows the aforementioned tongue. It was a fun exercise, taking me back to those heady days of GSCE art where I would gamely reproduce various Still Lives and be awarded Cs for attainment and Bs for effort. But I...

Content warning: a brief mention of pet death in here, as well as talk of various slightly yucky bodily medical things. This is Chuzzlewit. I suppose his first name must be Martin, but we never call him that. To us, he’s more often known as Chuzz, or Old Man, but we’ve been calling him the latter for about three years so he can’t have been particularly old when he first got that moniker. The wiry hair and the cigarette toned colours give him an old man vibe. Also, periodically, once every six weeks or so, Chuzz and I have a few words about ear wax. He’s one of our twelve rescue guinea pigs and he lives with his partner Princess Peach, and neighbour Daphne (after Du Maurier), in his lovely open-top cage here in my study. These three are collectively known as ‘the study pigs’ while the rest of our piggie gangs live in the second bedroom, just around the corner. We’ve had fuzzy Chuzz for a number of years and he’s a generally jolly little chap who never seems to want much out of life exce...