I went to London today because my aunt was giving a lunchtime concert. I felt a slight pang because it was forecast to be the only dry day for the rest of the week, but that couldn't be helped, as today was when the concert was. In the end it's all swings and roundabouts, since the last time I met a friend in town we turned out to have chosen the only wet day. She solicitously asked me whether I wanted to change the date, but spending a rainy day at lunch and then in the British Museum suited me fine. Still, fanatical as I am about gardening, even I have grasped that a life built on only bothering to see your friends and relations if it's wet is not tenable, not if you want to keep your friends and for your relations to be speaking to you.
After the concert we went to catch up on the family news over a cup of tea. My aunt and uncle are currently up to eight cats. Three are only kittens, a few weeks old and still at the pointy tailed stage, but the other five are permanent residents, two breeding females, a male stud imported all the way from America, and two neutered toms. I had forgotten that some time ago I warned my aunt that once you have five cats you are in borderline mad cat lady territory, but apparently I did. It remains my view now that we are down to two, and my aunt admitted she had to agree with me.
The cats are Korats. I'd never heard of the breed, being more of an Essex mog afficionado apart from our one foray into the world of the Maine Coon. They are very pretty, neat, chatty little cats with short, dense, smoke dark fur. Some time ago I agreed that if anything were to happen to both my uncle and aunt, the Systems Administrator and I would agree to be the Korats' guardians. The agreement still stands, though I think I was imagining two or three cats rather than eight.
According to their association website they are generally of a gentle disposition, intelligent and enjoy company. Certainly the last time I met any of them they were delightful, but apparently they have recently been getting on each other's nerves. One of the breeding females has taken to beating up the neutered males, who in turn hate the stud. The stud can have only limited access to the house, otherwise my uncle and aunt would be knee deep in unplanned kittens, so has his own cat house in the back garden, only it got too hot in the summer and now it is getting too cold. When he was living in his cat house one of the neutered toms used to sit in my aunt's music room at the back of the house, glaring at him out of the window. Now he is living in the music room the neutered tom lurks on the other side of the door, waiting for his chance to strike.
Meanwhile, my uncle and aunt have found themselves signed up with a hyper-vigilant vet, who diagnosed a heart murmur in one of the neutered toms, then a couple of kittens, and now the American stud. Since he'd only just arrived from the States with a clean bill of health, and I imagine at vast expense, my uncle and aunt were not best pleased about this, and insisted on a referral to the best feline cardiologist in England. She fortunately practices in Enfield. Miles away, said my uncle crossly. Not as far as Manchester, said I. The feline cardiologist did an ECG on the stud, and said it looked entirely normal. So did the cat have a heart murmur, my aunt demanded to know. Impossible to say, said the cardiologist. Heart murmurs in cats are funny things. They can be there one day, worse the next, gone the day after that.
My advice was to find a new vet, one that wasn't over sensitive to the possibility of finding feline heart defects, and not to allow the three kittens anywhere near the existing one, even if he did owe them £132 morally speaking for the ECG. If he raises the possibility that the kittens could have heart murmurs that will make them difficult to sell, and before they know where they are my uncle and aunt really will have eight cats. Plus future kittens, planned or unplanned. I wouldn't bet on anybody being able to get through a whole winter with an entire tom on one side of the music room door and two calling females on the other.
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