Good News for Juliet

Her heart murmur is much less pronounced than at our last vets visit three weeks ago. This means they reckon they'll be able to safely neuter her in a couple of months time; apparently they use a different type of anaesthetic with a fast induction and fast recovery on kittens with her type of condition, and they were very upbeat about minimal risk, etc. This is a huge relief to hear, as it was going to be highly impractical to keep Juliet housebound, and we were scared to death of having to face a traumatic choice between a high risk neutering or a miserable housebound kitten and constant stress about her escaping and becoming pregnant.

The vet. nurse managed to put the needle right through Juliet's scruff and out the other side, so I think most of her second FV vaccination went over my hand, but another piece of good news this morning was that Juliet's found her miaow. I can't remember if I'd said on here or not, but we thought she couldn't miaow - we'd never heard her do it, but had seen her lots of times trying to, but no sound coming out. Well, when the nurse had to seperate her from my arms to take her down to the vet (appts had been mixed up and I'd been booked in only with the nurse not the vet) she found her voice and started miaowing like mad. Aaaah. Meanwhile, Romeo started miaowing loudly too, and he didn't pause for breath through the whole ten minutes Juliet was gone. As soon as the vet brought her back in, he stopped. Bless. They've been snuggled up together ever since we got back.

Planned nature walk has been cancelled as Emily's cold has worsened again. We had planned a day out in York tomorrow, but whether that gets cancelled as well will depend on whether health is restored to reasonable levels or not!

Emily's taking it easy today and just playing. Late yesterday evening she wrote a double page of A4 literally in about five minutes flat - a very well thought out episode of five children and it, where the lamb is playing at being a train, and panther wishes he *was* a train so she wouldn't have to put up with him. The children then visit the psammead but he won't let them have another wish that day, so they visit the phoenix instead, who sends them off to the worst witch school, where they meet Mildred Hubble and she helps them work out the reversal spell to turn the lamb back to his normal self again. Phew! Apparently this was inspired as she was idly watching Thomas the Tank Engine on Noggin. Think that's English covered, then.

Piccie of the kit-bits in their now favourite sleeping place, up on Emily's bed with heads hanging through the slats!