Tigger & Barney

I mentioned in my last post that we had two new additions to the family: meet Tigger & Barney.

They are just coming up to 10 weeks old and are absolutely adorable. They are either chasing around like mad, and kicking hell out of each other, or fast asleep. There’s no inbetween.

They are proving to be very affectionate and love to be cuddled. So far, they’ve not ventured out of the house very much – little do they know what a wonderful world awaits them!

Sam & Ben have been really good with them. We have had cats before, so they are used to them. The kittens were raised in a house with a dog, so that helps as well. It didn’t take long for a little bit of bonding to take place

The only slight fly in the ointment is Cosmo. We’ve been quite worried about him over the last few months. He is finding it more and more difficult to get up, as his back legs are starting to fail him. When he has been up and about he’s fallen over a couple of times and not been able to get back up. The last time this happened he was down at the edge of the lake. Normally, he lets us help him up, but this time he must have been in some pain as he started to snap at Eddie when he tried to lift his back legs up. We ended up calling the vet out. He put a muzzle round his nose and mouth and we were able to help get him back up the bank. The vet gave him a couple of injections and didn’t seem too concerned. He saw him again the next day and said he was fine. Our biggest fear is that he might be suffering, and we might leave it too late to make the decision that we think is not too far off. The vet assured us he was fine – just suffering from old age.

What is clear is that we can’t run the risk of letting him wander around by himself at night, or let him out from the confines of the garden when we’re not there. This means he can no longer do his nightly patrols of the farm – something I’m sure bothers him as he will lie in the chai and bark after we have gone to bed, but we just can’t bear the thought of him falling over in the middle of the night and lying somewhere helpless for hours, or worse, being stuck in the heat of the sun if were away from the farm during the day.

One thing’s for sure – he can bloody well move alright when he sees the kittens. We’ve had one near miss (I’m sure he’d kill them if he got hold of them) so we are keeping them well apart. This isn’t too difficult as Cosmo now spends almost all of his time in the chai (the barn attached to the house) where it is cool, only getting up when he needs to go to the loo, so we can shut the chai doors when the kittens go into the garden. We just need to make sure they don’t slip past us when we go out from the house into the chai. Sadly, I don’t think it’s a problem we’re going to have for too much longer. Cosmo’s health isn’t going to improve and to be honest we’d be surprised if he manages to see out the summer. We love him to bits and he’s going to leave a huge hole in our lives when he’s gone. I just hope, after the way he was left alone so much before we bought the farm, that in his time with us we’ve given him the life he deserved.