The best bit of news from the holiday...

Photos may even be up later this evening...

Last Thursday, we were making our way to the Brough of Deerness, when I spotted a cat in the carpark. Not unusual as there are quite a few farm cats who wander around. Then I saw a kitten. In fact, in the corner of the carpark was cardboard box, and as well as the cat, there were *four* kittens. A group of American tourists, who had been fussing them, blithely infomed us that they were feral cats and survived on scraps from the tourists in the carpark. The mother was very thin, and two of the kittens looked as if they had cat flu’ – one kitten quite badly. How people can fuss over ‘cute’ animals and stroke them and not notice the condition they’re in I’m not sure, but the Americans didn’t seem to think that there was anthing wrong with a nursing mother and four sick kittens living in a cardboard box in a carpark. Heigh ho.

The problem with not knowing an area at all, is not knowing where to take the animals to, but when we got back to the cottage, I found the Scottish SPCA's phone number and gave them a call, trying to explain their location to someone else who didn't know Orkney at all with the aid of an OS map. She's said they'd send someone out, and that was that.

I had been thinking about them this week, so looked up the local SSPCA's number in Orkney and left a message. Have just got back from riding to find a message from the inspector to say that the kittens were collected last Thursday evening and put on a ferry to the Caithness centre, where they're all doing well.

Might give the centre a ring over the weekend to ask how they're doing and enquire about sending a donation.

Hurrah for rescued kittens!

There and back again...

Still working on sorting the photos out, but I've made really cool Maes Howe dragon button for 'forward/back'- hurrah!

I appear to have eleventy billion photos, and deciding which to put up and writing a commentary to go with them is proving a Rather Big Thing.

Birmingham, gentle reader, is nowhere near as nice a place as Orkney, and I'm not altogether pleased to be back. It's great to see the cats again, particularly My Boy, but this city holds very little joy for me these days.

It's always a bit of an anti-climax to come home, which was shame seeing as it was lupercal's birthday on Tuesday. We did very little other than order pizza, lacking the inclination to do anything else, and then he had an NWO writy writy meeting to go to.

Am considering whether after finishing the photos, my next project should be to fashion a vest out of a disused monitor and Tippex 'NWO Games Discussion Forum' on the front of it, to see if I get any more attention that way. I do feel rather like a LARP widow this summer, and sooner or later need to face the fact that I really should have some interests of my own.

lupercal's off to see what presents his parents have got him today - a trip which I cunningly got out of due to having a riding lesson - possibly my last for a while, as the new term looms along with a new - and yet undecided - timetable.

I really, *really* don't want to go back to work.