Daddy Duffy

Its kitten time again. Jaime has been hand rearing four, two week old kittens who's mother died. Hand Rearing, means that they need feeding ever couple of hours... EVERY couple of hours, day and night. Jaime has been doing the honors and is very tired but has been doing a great job of feeding and the less pleasent bottom stimulation which the mother cat would do to encourage the little ones to... what could be considered completing the digestive process.

As usual Duffy was paying particular attention to the fluffy critters brought in to the house. Jaime allowed Duffy to gradually get closer to the kittens over a day or two. Eventually he graduated to sniffing and licking them and from there he seemed to develop a paternal nature we had not seen before. He was pleased each time he saw them and was very happy to help "complete the digestive process" and settle beside them.

The Wet Weekend

This weekend we took a trip to Sheffield to visit friends and take a walk around the gardens of Chatsworth House. We had a run of bad luck but it was a good weekend non the less.

Only about 45 minutes from home we discovered the exhaust on the car was starting to blow and make noises like a boy racer had spent a few hundred pounds to give it a throaty roar. We considered turning around for about 30 seconds and then decided we could handle the noise and cranked up the radio to complete the "Charver" effect.

Our drive was through torrential rain which added to our journey time, but we were fortunate that as we approached Chatsworth House the rain started to lighten. The combination of stotting rain and the loud radio had us all but forgetting the exhaust noise, until we stopped at the parking ticket booth and rolled down the window to an attendant who had to shout over our din and give us a slightly disapproving glance.

Having set impressions high with our subtle arrival, we followed this with a brief fountain diving incident in the court yard by the car park. As we walked up to the centre of the court yard, Duffy eyed up the stone wall which formed the edge of the fountain and before Jaime could react, jumped to perform one of his favorite tricks of walking on raised walls. Unfortunately the rim was somewhat thinner than he had expected and in he went under the watchful eyes of the all in the court yard.

The gardens of Chatsworth are very impressive and filled with water features and sculptures as well as an amazing array of flowers and trees. We managed to enjoy a good walk around without any further incidents and only getting mildly wet from the drizzle.

Saturday evening the dogs were shattered and they were asleep by about 6pm and could not even be tempted to chew on some raw hide. Jaime and I went out for some food and drink with our friends Phil and Mandy to a local pub and had a great evening.