Lots Of Animals And One Husband Behaving Strangely

It's been a while since my last post.  Life has been busy on Spring Rock with lambing, bottle raising eight lambs, sowing crops and general farm stuff.  The menagerie has been misbehaving from time to time, but nothing really out of the usual to let you know about.

Billy is slowing down with old age.  He's slow to get started in the morning but still manages to sneak out of the house yard every day and come home with a huge collection of Bathurst burr decorations on his coat.  Bathurst burr is both sticky and very, very prickly.  Pulling it out by hand is fraught with sore fingers and hours spent with a sharp needle digging out the prickles.  Combing them out upsets Billy as they tend to pull rather drastically, so I've been shaving them out of him when they are really stuck.  Billy now has a decidedly moth eaten appearance with little holes throughout his beautiful winter coat and no no fur on his tail at all.  Every day there are a few new hole in his coat as Billy continues his tiptoeing through the Bathurst Burr.

The new hens have settled in and one of  them has proved to be a true Spring Rock menagerie member.  When the girls first arrived they were traumatised by the wide open spaces of the chook yard and clustered together in the rather small laying box.  The laying box is built for one hen at a time with the possibility of a second hen squeezing in should the first hen in their take too long to lay her egg.  Fitting six panicky hens in there at the one time was just ridiculous.  Graeme and I would pull each hen out and send her clucking and fussing about her business only to have her return before all six were evicted.  In the end we reluctantly barricaded the laying box off so no-one could get in.  This meant that I had to perform an Easter egg type hunt for the eggs every day until the new girls adapted to the wide expanse of chook yard.  While I was doing my daily chook yard wander I noticed I always had one brown hen accompanying me.  After a couple of days when I stopped to inspect a likely egg spot she would come right up to me and peck near my shoes.  Of course I started chatting to her on our daily wanders and she chatted back when the mood took her.  It wasn't long before I was bending down giving her a scratch on the neck.  We became firm friends.

When the time came to open up the laying box again I thought my days of bonding with the little brown hen were over, but she had other ideas.  As soon as I walked through the gate she'd come running from wherever she was, often almost running right into me in her haste to say hello.  I sat down on the shed beam the better to have our chat and one day picked her up and sat her on my knee so I didn't have to bend over.  I introduced her to Hedwig the Galaha's favourite thing, being scratched under the wing, and we haven't looked back.  Every day I have to sit, wait for her to come up to me, lift her on my lap and and scratch her under her wing.  When she's had enough she hops down and goes and eats the scrap treats I usually bring with me.  I worry that she's missing the best ones while we bond, but she's happy to visit, so I'm happy to provide the scratches and chat.

When I told my grandsons about the hen via email, they wanted a photo.  I had to bring the hen inside so Graeme could take the photo.  I'm in my lamb feeding clothes with all the kitchen mess behind me, but the boys loved the photo and the hen enjoyed her extra wing scratch while admiring the new chook pen she hadn't seen before.

Sadly, I can't I can't tell her apart from the rest of the hens.  My granddaughter Hannah named her Patsy because she likes pats, so here is the photo of Patsy and me.

Now for the really surprising news here on Spring Rock.  As those who have been reading this blog for a while will know, Graeme is totally anti-ferret.  We even have a Graeme/Ferret Treaty in place that states that the ferrets are not allowed inside (except in their inside cage) when Graeme is inside.  You see the ferrets have always found Graeme's toes irresistible.  Every ferret I've ever owned and the ones who have visited here with my daughter or some friends have all agreed that the most tasty thing in the world is Graeme's toes.  Graeme is of the opinion that they should resist, but ferrets don't know the word resist and make a beeline for his toes as soon as they hit the ground.  Consequently I go to great lengths to keep the ferrets and Graeme's toes in separate places.

Now that winter is here the ferrets spend wet days and every night in their inside cage snuggled in their sleeping bag.  Yesterday, after I changed the litter it seems that I accidentally undid one of the catches that holds the back of the cage down.  Jocie and Cecilia both investigate the back of the cage every time they are put in it to see if they can find a weak spot and get out so they can play with me while I try to catch them or better still, quest for those delicious toes.  I hadn't realised the catch was up so after dropping the ferrets in the cage I went outside for a while to let the chooks out for a run in the yard.  I  have to supervise their run for a couple of reasons - they tend to prefer digging up my plants rather than just roaming the grass areas, and Billy finds the soft fluffy feather feel in his mouth irresistible (much like the ferrets and Graeme's toes I suppose).  Billy knows if I'm out there I won't allow any chook harassing so he sits near me and dreams of carrying fluffy feathered creatures in his mouth.  That's where he and the ferrets differ.  The ferrets don't care that they aren't allowed to nibble Graeme's toes.  The danger of getting into trouble just adds to the whole toe dining experience.

Graeme came in from the paddocks while I was babysitting the chooks and went inside to make himself a well earned cup of tea.  He was only in there a few minutes when I heard, "There's a ferret loose!"  I pointed out that I couldn't come inside immediately because Billy would take the opportunity to pick up a chook while I wasn't there.  I asked if he could come outside and wait until I got the chooks back in their yard, or come out and watch Billy while I hunted the escaped ferret.  Much to my surprise he called out that the ferret was back in the cage.  Now the only way it would bet back in the cage was for Graeme to actually pick it up and put it there.  This is an unheard of act.  Graeme just doesn't interact with the ferrets in any way including touching them.  Knowing if a ferret had got out once then two were likely to keep getting out until their exit spot was closed up, I put the chooks back in their pen so I could go inside and retrieve said ferrets.  Billy wanted to help so it took longer than usual, but finally they were all in their yard ready to settle down for the night.  I went inside expecting to see a battle between Graeme and a couple of ferrets.  I was stunned at the sight that met my eyes.  Graeme had to broom in his hand and was sweeping Jocie around the kitchen floor.  At first I thought he was fending her off.  That might be the way it started, but they were playing with each other.  Graeme was playing with a ferret!!! He had actually picked up a ferret and now he was playing with one!!  He was laughing at her antics and she was having a wonderful time challenging him to battles and being slid over the floor.  I really didn't want to break it up, but as soon as I came inside Graeme reverted to his anti-ferret stance and left her to me to put away.

It seems that the first time he put her back in the cage Byron took the opportunity to escape and he took some catching.  Of course while he was catching Byron, Jocie made her exit from the cage again.  Realising he was on the wrong end of a losing battle Graeme put Byron away (yes he'd actually touched TWO ferrets!) and protected his toes with the broom.  Ferrets are fun loving (no matter what Graeme mumbles about vicious little biters) and Jocie was quick to see that Graeme has started a great game.  Graeme found he wasn't proof against Jocie's antics and his initial defence of his toes did indeed become a game.  I don't think Graeme was aware just how lucky he is that Cecilia has put on some winter weight and couldn't fit out of the little gap in the back of the cage.  If he'd been trying to fend off two ferrets working in tandem his toes wouldn't have a chance.

Of course now, that Graeme has been caught playing with a ferret I'm not going to let him live it down.  Jocie won't either.

Horton

Miette & Horton in Horton's younger days.

My gorgeous Horton died a week ago.  His death was very peaceful thankfully.  He was very old and just wound down.  As time went on Horton just got slower and slower, slept a lot more and enjoyed more and more cuddles.  He finally passed away in his sleep one night.

Ferrets are very difficult to photograph so sadly I have very few photos of Horton where you can actually see what he looks like.  Most are a blur of white or close up of noses.

Miette's is the nose in question here, but you get the idea.

Horton came to me with his best friend Ebony when Albus died of old age and his best friend Miette was pining for him.  Miette was old too and lost interest in life without her friend.  She gave up eating and things looked grim. 

I contacted the Ferret Welfare Society of NSW and asked if they had any ferrets available for adoption.  I prefer to buy my ferrets from the FWSNSW because these are rescued ferrets in need of a good home and are already desexed and socialised when you buy them.  The lady to whom I spoke said she only had one pair in need of a home at the moment but they hadn’t been there long and their socialisation training wasn’t complete.  She understood my plight and said as I’d had ferrets before and socialised some as well I could have these two if I liked. The FWSNSW have a full refund policy if you aren't happy with the ferrets you buy but we all know that is of no use to me.  No way could I give an animal back after it's moved into the menagerie.

My daughter Bec picked them up the next day and she, along with her family made a four hour mercy dash to Spring Rock to deliver them the day after that.  Miette was hanging by a thread, with no interest in going on.  Of course Miette did have the reputation of being a drama queen but I didn’t want to take a chance that she wasn’t overreacting this time.  She lay limply in the inside cage, refusing all nourishment and attempts to cheer her up were flatly ignored.  The change is my little old ferret when she was introduced to her new friends was amazing.  She was up and bossing them around in no time flat.

Horton and Ebony arrived with the names Shadow and Fetish.  I already had Shadow the Silky type terrier, so he needed a name change; and I wasn’t going to burden a sweet little girl ferret with the name Fetish for the rest of her life, so they became Horton and Ebony. I think Ebony may have been badly mistreated in her old home because she was terrified of humans.  She played nicely with other ferrets but tended to panic if held by a human.  It took a long time and lots of nipped body parts (mine, not Ebony's) but eventually Ebony learned to love me and trust humans in general. Horton was always the laid back boy.  He and Miette hit it off straight away.  All her plans to rule the ferret world, and I believe, ultimately the whole world, returned as soon as the new ferrets arrived and Miette settled in to ferret domination in no time.  Ebony cow-towed straight away, showing submission and doing whatever Miette told her to do. Horton showed a similar disposition to Albus and simply rolled over and went to sleep if Miette got rambunctious.  Unlike Albus he didn’t roll over on top of Miette so Miette saw that as a definite plus.  A strong friendship was born. 

Horton had a great sense of fun and as soon as he was released in the house to play each day, danced about doing the ferret thing and looking for mischief to get into.  Mischief was always available.  He refused to play with Ambrosia the Bengal cat though.  While the other ferrets joyously waged war with Ambrosia, enjoying their skirmishes with gusto and fluffy tails, Horton would just go to ground if Ambrosia pounced on him.  He’d lie there on his tummy biding his time until the cat lost interest in him and then resume his never ending search for shoes to climb into, cupboards to hide things under and sewing items to steal and stash.

His other favourite indoor activity was to challenge me to ferret duels.  This began by him bouncing up to me, all four legs stiff and his mouth wide open.  If I ignored him he’d move a distance away and begin the challenge all over again.  Well, let me tell you, two ferret duel challenges are just too hard to resist.  I’d bend down and try to catch him and the duel was on in earnest.  Horton would race for cover, usually under the sideboard, and pop out from different ends trying to catch me while avoiding being caught himself.  If you can imagine a real life game of whack a mole played horizontally instead of vertically you’ll get some idea of Horton’s duelling technique.  I don’t think I ever won a duel - most likely the reason Horton loved them so much. Ferret duels became a thing of the past recently when Horton felt just too old and tired to challenge me.  He spent his time sitting on my lap and reminiscing about the good old days when he was more than a match for me.

Horton won a special place in my grandson Ethan’s heart.  You see Horton gave the best ferret kisses in the world.  While the newer ferrets, Jocie, Byron and Cecilia were inclined to nip little fingers or noses if held by little boys, Horton would just give gentle, wiskery kisses.  Of course wiskery ferret kisses tickle a lot so Ethan always had his face screwed up like he was being tortured.  Thus no photos are available to commemorate the friendship.  Ethan and Horton had lots of fun and games together and Ethan misses his good friend now.

Goodbye Horton.  Thank you for all the fun, love and cuddles – not to mention those tickly ferret kisses.  You are greatly missed.

Meet Eros & Helios

One night a few weeks ago disaster struck at Spring Rock.   A  fox attacked the chooks and ended up killing all but three of the hens.  Adonis, the rooster, but up a great fight by the looks of things and the fox finally left him alone for easier prey, but Adonis didn't survive the mauling.  I moved the three survivors into the aviary much to Hedwig, Hermes and Nova's disgust until Graeme could find time to do some major repairs and fox proofing of the chook pen.  


I can't say that harmony reigned in the aviary but everyone was safe from attack fro foxes and that was the main thing.  Hedwig assumed a permanent scowl on her little Galah face and settled in to a bad mood for the ensuing weeks.  Hermes ignored them but didn't approve and Nova, who is really a pigeon of peace, just tried to get along with everyone.  The chooks weren't impressed with the cramped accommodation after living in their spacious chook pen for all their lives but they soon saw the advantages of previously unscratched ground and had a great time tearing up the aviary floor in an effort to find every bug present.


On Monday, at our craft group meeting, I mentioned my intention of getting some black Australorp hens in then next few weeks and that I'd try and buy a rooster at the same time.  My neighbour told me that a friend of ours, a fellow craft group member, had two large black roosters she was trying to find a home for because they were driving her mad chasing her bantam hens.  Our friend is up to her neck in clearing out all her recently deceased husband's stuff and works non-stop all day.  The rooster problem was just adding to her stress.  She is like me and wouldn't do anything to harm the roosters.  They were thrown over her fence when they were younger and have lived there ever since.

Helios

I rang our friend on Wednesday and arranged to pick them up so they could come and live here with full size hens (all three of the survivors from the fox attack). She thanked me and said I'd taken a load off her mind.  Poor Graeme wasn't thrilled with me taking both roosters, but when he saw how grateful our friend was not to have to worry about them any more he didn't say a word about both coming to live with us, sweetie that he is.  The boys are beautiful.  Our friend believes they are show poultry rejects because of their size and general good looks.  I've searched the Internet and think they are Orpingtons.  If you have a better suggestion as to their breed I'd love to hear from you.  They are outside crowing at the dawn and showing off to the girls as I type.

 Eros

 
I named the two roosters Eros (the Greek god of love) and Helios (the Greek sun god before Apollo took over), and they are settling in nicely.  Our friend assured me they were very gentle roosters and would get on well together despite competing for the girls.  They'd never had a cross word with each other while living with her and they tried to compete for the bantam girls whenever the opportunity presented itself. 

The three surviving hens' opinions are divided on the benefits of the boys moving in.  I'd just moved the girls back into their heavily reinforced chook pen from their stint in protective custody in the aviary, hours before the boys arrived and the girls were having fun running around and being basically free range again when these two huge and bossy males arrived.  The boys immediately set about trying to mate with the girls.  No polite introductions or getting to know you drinks or dinners, just straight into it.  The ancient brown hen was really put off by the whole sordid incident and has adopted the attitude that if she ignores them they may just go away.  She has taken to keeping herself at the opposite end of the chook pen to wherever the boys may be roaming at the time.  She's not impressed with the morning crowing competition either.  I went out yesterday to give them some scraps and check on the state of the nation chook-pen-wise and the two boys were in full voice.  The old brown girl was sitting up the other end of the chook yard and every time one of the boys crowed she closed her eyes, almost achieving a pained expression on her little chooky face.  I could almost hear her saying, "Yeah, yeah, you're both big strong males and you make the sun rise every morning.  It's been up for hours now.  Enough already!!"  

The Old Brown Hen.  Note the closed eyes.  The roosters were crowing hello to me as I took the photos

When the three girls were ensconced in the aviary one of the girls started to make very un-hen like crowing sounds. I have read that sometimes when a rooster dies and only hens are left the dominant hen will take on attributes of the rooster.  I imagine if that was what was happening it would have been the old brown hen, so maybe she's just ticked off that her moment to be really top of the heap has been taken away from her.  There's no chance she will be able to lord it over these two giants of the chook pen, even if they are gentle roosters. 

The younger brown hen seems ambivalent towards the boys.  She doesn't keep her distance, but she doesn't court their attention either.  They are just two new inhabitants of the chook pen and there's room for everyone to roam about and plenty of juicy bugs and interesting things so everyone gets a chance to catch the worms whether they are early or not.  Unlike the old brown girl, the younger brown hen is still of child bearing years so the roosters mating activities don't really offend her.

       The Young Brown Hen looking for a tasty bug.

Mum The Marran, named by three year old grandson Liam (his second choice of names when he was told Dad wasn't an appropriate name for a girl chook), sees them as God's gift to put upon young hens.  The older two girls had spent the entire time in the aviary showing Mum The Marran that she is at the very bottom of the pecking order.  They implied that it's a pity there are only the three of them because she would rate even lower than third in the pecking order if that was possible.  The thing about the pecking order is that it involves just that - pecking.  Poor little Mum The Marran spent her days in the cramped aviary trying to find a spot the other two hens would let her have.  Wherever she moved they pecked her and moved her on.  Now, with two huge black body guards she is in seventh heaven.  Wherever Eros and Helios can be found there she is with them, peeking out from behind them metaphorically poking her tongue out at the other two hens.  She is enduring the crowing competitions in the knowledge that a slight headache is better than being pecked constantly, and while she sticks close to the boys no-one is trying to peck her back into her place in the pecking order.

 

Mum The Marran 

 

  

Mum The Marran hiding behind Eros

 So the state of the nation chook-pen-wise is that things are looking very good (unless you are an ancient brown hen).  Peace reigns supreme, if rather noisily and a more democratic reign has been installed where young Marrans can live free and scratch and peck with the best of them, unmolested and safe from bossy hen domination (well, not pecked anyway, I imagine there's a bit of rooster style molesting going on with Mum The Marran but she doesn't seem to mind).

A happy, serene chook pen (if you discount all the crowing).  Note the Old Brown Hen is nowhere to be seen in this photo.

The Very First Time I Dyed and Broke the Four Minute Mile.

I’ve been reading a great new blog http://fibrefanatic.wordpress.com and promised Nadie that I’d send her this story.  After I sent it I thought the rest of you might like to read it too. 

This instalment contains no animals (unless you count the passing mention of my Aasta, my Old English Sheepdog from years ago and my comeback sheep, Tiffany who produced the wool).  So here is the animal free zone story of how I learned to dye and break the one minute mile in the process.

About 35 years ago I bought an Old English Sheepdog.  She needed something to herd (she tried magpies but they kept flying off) so we bought a sheep from a backyard in Penrith when we were out on a drive one day.  Every year Tiffany needed to be shorn and her wool started to accumulate.  With no thoughts of stockpiling it and becoming wool barons, I learned to spin – basically in self defence.  Tiffany produced kilos of wool every year and we lived in a very small house. 

Learning to spin was fraught with dangers not previously considered.  Of course, like everyone else the first thing I did was closely examine the spinning wheel for the sharp object that pricked Sleeping Beauty’s finger and put her to sleep for 100 years.  While there were times in my life with a twelve month old baby girl that a long sleep was very tempting the thoughts of what she’d accomplish left unsupervised was a nightmare all by itself.  Just for the record, I’ve never met a spinning wheel with a finger pricking sharp piece attached to it.  I can only assume that Sleeping Beauty was a real klutz. 

Anyway, back to my spinning lessons.  I lived on an acre at the bottom of a deserted street miles from the little village of Hill Top in the Southern Highlands and couldn’t drive so if I wanted to learn anything I had to borrow books from the library when Graeme drove me to Bowral each week and teach myself.  Bec, added another hurdle to learning to spin because she thought the spinning wheel just perfect for poking pudgy fingers in to see what happened.  I ended up, book on my lap, safely enclosed in Bec’s playpen while she free ranged around the loungeroom with her toys, perfecting my spinning.

Once I could produce a reasonable skein of yarn I taught Graeme's Aunt Rae to spin (and then she took herself off to TAFE and is now a master spinner and master weaver!)  Rae lived up at Eungai (far north coast of NSW) and we used to visit for a couple of weeks each year.  During our visits Rae and I would usually try out new crafts together (believe it or not, Rae never wanted to try quilting!).

The holiday where I taught Rae to spin she took to it like a duck to water.  Rae took full advantage of my spinning wheel being in residence and we even took in on picnics with us so we could keep spinning while Graeme, his Uncle Robert and our kids (we had two by now) could enjoy themselves in the canoe.  With quite a few skeins produced, we decided to have a go at natural dying the skeins and some fleece.  Of course I had a few books on the subject and we set about getting all our supplies together.  We needed a range of mordants to experiment with the various colours they would produce with the gum leaves, barks, lichens etc that we’d gathered, so we headed off to Macksville (nearest largish town to Eungai) to get the equipment and mordants we needed.

Rae went to the co-op for the equipment and I was put on chemist detail.  I was a bit of a hippy in my youth, flowered jeans, long hair, head band around the forehead, flowing cheesecloth tops etc.  (I don't know if this had anything to do with the next part of my story, but it may have contributed.)  I asked the girl behind the counter to sell me some chemicals (I can't remember the actual chemicals now, but I asked for each by name).  The girl gave me a long look and asked what I wanted these chemicals for.  Without thinking it through (see I was just as scatterbrained in my youth) I said in my most confident artisan's voice, "Dying".

She then gave me a scared look, put her hands up as if to calm a wild animal and said, "Just wait here, I'll get the chemist."  She then disappeared out the back, where I could hear a whispered conversation taking place.  The chemist came out, the girl pointed to me and he headed in my direction.  He gave me a professionally concerned look and asked what I wanted these chemicals for.

Once again I said, "Dying" (the penny still hadn't dropped with me).  The look on the chemist's face finally penetrated my little brain that was overflowing with artistic plans and I quickly said, "Dying wool not me!!!).  The chemist looked sceptical at first but I managed to convince him that I really had a load of wool at home and wanted to boiled it up with leaves and lichen and needed the chemicals to help set the colours.  He agreed to sell me the chemicals, but I couldn't get him to sell me the quantities I actually wanted.  He rationed them out very sparingly.  I thanked him in a chastened voice and slunk out of the shop.

Rae and I decided not to push our luck by sending Rae in to get some more.  We'd just use what we were given.  We returned to the farm and set up our dying workshop in the kitchen.  The kitchen took on the appearance of a very dedicated witch’s kitchen with leaves, lichens, ferns and flowers scatted in piles on the table and benches.  The chemicals were kept over on a separate counter and treated with a very large amount of respect.  We were quite twitchy by now about using these mordants.  To add to the witch’s kitchen look, Rae had a fuel stove and used it whenever possible because it also heated the house's hot water.  Rae put the pot on the stove and carefully added the mordant while I stood well back in case it jumped off the measuring spoon and attacked. 

All was quiet as the water heated on the stove.  A few seconds later a very loud POP! sound  erupted  from the stove.  Without even looking at each other, Rae and I hightailed it out of the house, banging the screen door closed as we passed and dived off the back veranda and stood out in the garden almost hugging each other in fright.  We left that kitchen  so quickly I’m sure we must have broken the sound barrier.  Graeme, Robert, Bec and Josh sat out there where they’d been quietly chatting about farming and life in general, but now staring at us with puzzled expressions on their face.  The pop hadn’t even been loud enough for them to hear it on the back porch.  It suddenly occurred to me that these chemicals were poisonous, not explosive.  I relayed my epiphany to Rae who nodded her head and we both laughed nervously in relief.

Even with this comforting knowledge, we were reluctant to go back to the kitchen, but we gathered our courage (what little there was left of it) and bravely (???) re-entered the kitchen.  The popping sound had been made by a little bit of water boiling between the base of the pot and the top of the stove and having no where to escape.  Thankfully all such water had evaporated by the time we ventured back into the kitchen.

We spent the rest of the day creating beautiful muted colours in skeins and fleece and decided that while natural dying could be a very scary experience it was worth it.  I should have taken the wool back to the chemist to show 1. I was still alive and 2. I’d been telling the truth, but it never occurred to me at the time.

Happy Christmas

Ambrosia

Nefertiti

Jocie

                                                                                 

Horton

Tristan

Billy

                                                              

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas filled with love, family (both the two and four legged styles) and lots and lots of presents.

From,
Rosemary & The Menagerie

Billy's Advice

I've had a few friends feeling under the weather lately.  Billy likes to send them a get well message and this advice.  So for anyone out there feeling less than 100% here is Billy's message for you.

Ears Are Highly Overrated Anyway.

I was chatting with a friend a few days ago and somehow the conversation turned towards my cat Sapphire.  I can't remember how we got there, but it wasn't a surprise.  A lot of my conversations with people end up with me telling them something strange about one or more of my pets.  There's just so much material from which to choose!  Anyway, after telling her all about Sapphire's adventures all those years ago I thought I'd share it with all of you too.

I first met Sapphire in 1973 when a sneaky friend of mine presented her to me as a wedding present.  My friend was a Mothers' Helper as they were called back then (I don't know what the term is today), and looked after three children and did various jobs to help the working mum cope.  The working mum had come across this batch of dumped kittens and brought them back to her flat.  Once the kittens began to grow she realised her decision hadn't been the best one she could have made and handed the job of finding homes for them over to my friend, with the addendum that any kittens left over at the end of the week would be "disposed of".  That's all it took for me to accept my wedding present - the term "disposed of" sends chills up my spine.  Graeme was a little less than thrilled.  Realisation of his future hadn't quite hit him in the face at this time, but he was starting to suspect that I had a unique ability to acquire pets without actively trying to do so and he was worried.

While I was knee deep in wedding preparations I had sent Graeme out to find rental accommodation we could afford and that allowed me to keep a cat. He found such a flat and handed over the deposit and signed the lease. When I sent Graeme on this mission I had one cat that was coming to live with us (Topaz).  The rest of my menagerie were rather ancient and I didn't want to disturb their retirement with a big move.  They would live out the rest of their lives at my mother's house where they had always been.  I told Graeme that an extra cat wouldn't make much difference and everything was fine.  In the end we moved in with three kittens, Topaz the tortoiseshell, Sapphire the white cat with a few dabs of grey fur, and Ophelia a neurotic black and white cat.

We lived in the flat for two years with me acquiring more pets along the way.  You can read about all my extra pets  here  The cats lived in the flat nearly all the time venturing outside only occasionally.  We then moved to an acre near Mittagong and the cats learned to go outside more often and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.  Unfortunately for Sapphire sunshine wasn't a good idea.  Every summer her white ears and pink nose would get sunburned and after a few years of this she ended up with some skin damage.  We took her to the vet and he said it was either a case of keeping her inside at all times or tattooing her ears and nose with a dark ink to proved protection from the sun.  We chose the tattooing option so Sapphire could continue to enjoy her new outdoor access.  We left her there overnight and made arrangements to pick her up the next day.

The vet rang before we headed off the next day to say that Sapphire had had a bad reaction to the dye and her face had swollen up drastically.  He had her on a drip and needed to keep her in until the swelling went down.  I agreed and went into worry mode - a common mode for me with the menagerie and later my children.  We visited Sapphire that afternoon and she was a sorry sight with her dark, scabby ears and nose on a face so swelled up she looked grotesque. It was hard to believe we'd always considered Sapphire the beauty of the family.  The swelling was so bad she could barely open her mouth to complain about the treatment she was receiving and the fact that she was now tattooed and didnt' get to choose the design.

After a few days the swelling went down, Sapphire was able to voice her disapproval of the whole incident again in loud meows.  She came home and told her troubles to the three other cats, settled down for a good sleep and continued healing.  The scabs on her ears and nose where still there but the vet said this was normal and the scabs would drop off in a few days.  He was right.  The only thing he didn't mention was that her ears and a small part of her nose would drop off too! 

We came home from a day out to find Sapphire with one ear missing and the other tip hanging at a drunken angle over her eye.  I rang the vet to seek advice on the catastrophe (excuse the pun - I couldn't resist).  He was less than impressed with the phone call.  He told me that he'd spent the day performing Cesarean operations on a herd of small heifers where a huge bull had got into their paddock nine moths previously and he wasn't in the mood for jokes.  I asked him why I would possibly think it was funny to ring him and tell him my cat's ear had fallen off.  I was serious.  The vet heaved a sigh and told us to bring Sapphire in straight away.  I think he thought maybe the scab had come off and we were confused or something.

We arrived at the vet's carrying a ticked off cat and presented her for his inspection.  There it was in all it's glory - an earlessearless on both sides.  He apologised profusely and said he'd never seen anything like this before. He continued to play with the ear tip while he talked to us, running it through his fingers, giving it a little flip and catching it.  I had to concentrate on what he was saying because I found his absent minded treatment of Sapphires ear very off putting in a ghoulish sort of way.  I pointed out that the blood coming from Sapphire's ear where he'd pulled the ear off was a thick, gunky blue.  He had a closer look and agreed.  Sapphire once again spent the night at the vet's while he tried to figure out what to do next.  In the end she came home the next day in perfect health but without ears and a small part of her nose.

Later when I examined Sapphire closely I saw that her skin had turned blue under her white fur.  She was darkest blue on her face with the colour fading the further down her body you moved.  She now had what looked like Kohl pencil eyes with the skin around them no longer the normal, cat approved pink, but now a dark indigo - very exotic looking.   The dye ink had got into her blood stream and stained her skin along the way.  How she survived with that much ink in her blood we'll never know but survive she did.

Years went buy and Sapphire lived a long and happy life.  She remained blue (and of course earless) and just a few years later, while still a young cat, went blind.  Whether the dye had anything to do with that I don't know, but I suspect it did.  That was when I gave up rearranging furniture in the house.  I used to rearrange the furniture every few months just for a different look.  The first time I did that after blindness struck our Sapphire she kept ricocheting off the furniture.  She expected everything to be just where she'd left it the day before and when it wasn't she bumped into it. She was often found in a corner of the room meowing plaintively that she didn't know where she was anymore - everything was strange.  Rather than have Sapphire resemble a ball bearing in a  pinball machine for ever more, I gave up on my decorating pretensions and stopped moving things about.  

Sapphire lived until the ripe old age of 18. She remained the boss of the cats and most of the dogs even after losing her sight, and led a happy normal life.  She did attract a lot of notice when visitors met the blue skinned, earless cat for the first time.  They'd ask what happened and I'd tell Sapphire's story once again. One time the question was asked Graeme's brother piped in quickly answering the new visitor's question of what happened to Sapphire's ears with "They were delicious!"  The visitor took a few horrified steps back and I quickly intervened with the true story.

One unexpected outcome from Sapphires brush with tattoo ink was that the vet never charged us full price for anything again.  He came out to help with my horse Christie one time when she had colic.  After hours of working on her and getting her back to normal, he was packing up his gear.  Sapphire spotted him and wandered over to say, "No hard feelings," and pass the time of day with her medical practitioner.  She rubbed up against him preparatory to opening the conversation and the vet looked down, shuddered and said, "That cat still haunts me."  He proceeded to charge just for the medications used, not his time or travelling.  I explained that we didn't blame him for Sapphire's new look, but he refused to take a cent more. For a few years there we had the  cheapest vet bills we'd ever had.  Sapphire smiled a smug smile when I mentioned this to Graeme and I could almost see her saying, "You're welcome."