Feijoas

A few days ago I had picked up a dozen or so feijoas from under the tree and decided on a Nadia Lim muffin recipe. Before I began baking today, I checked below the tree to see if any more had dropped – and (expecting only two or three) filled my jersey hem with 33 of them. The ones I already had, plus two from a friend’s tree, were enough for the muffins. The recipe has more ingredients than the muffin recipes I usually make, but included fresh ginger and yoghurt which sounded good. The mixture is very wet, but the skewer came out clean after just over 20 minutes in the oven.

Taste test: The texture is lovely and soft, the white chocolate adds interest in bite rather than in flavour, the overall taste is a bit overwhelmed by the mashed banana so it’s not easy to detect the feijoa, but there’s a nice tingle of ginger. I think I would leave out the banana next time and substitute it with more feijoas.

There are 33 feijoas left over. What to do with them? Smoothies? Perhaps I will eat one or two every day, scooping each one out with a teaspoon.

Why did the chickens cross the room?

To get away from Felix who was chewing their feathers.

Felix needs to be entertained today to distract him from his vandalising, which includes chewing blind cords – not just chickens. I saw him looking with intent at the blind cords in the vet’s clinic last week. Here’s one he’s chewed twice recently. I try to remember to wind them up out of his way.

The string drawer keeps him entertained for a while, then he lies back to look out of the window at the places he can’t go until his paw is better.

Sore paw

Felix is hopping along on three legs. His sore paw does not seem to be improving despite antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and painkillers. He is confined to the house and spends some time looking for a way out. After his meds at breakfast time, however, he spends a long time sleeping. He uses his litter tray once a day. Such control! I’m worried about his paw. What is going on in there that we can’t see? He uses his left paw (the sore one) to play, but not so much for walking. Why is it not getting better? Will he end up three-legged?

Left paw is sore
but is still the choice for playing

Repairs

The handrail at our front steps rotted, making 97-year old Mum’s descent potentially perilous from the front door to the path. I’m fortunate to have two DIY brothers: one provided a handrail left over from renovations, and the other sanded it down, painted and installed it. I was able to supply tools and did the finishing undercoating and topcoats of paint.

The rotted handrail
Adjusting the brackets
An audience of ants turned up
Notches needed to be chiselled out to fit the brackets
Felix helped with the final topcoat
The finished handrail

Felix is back under repair too. His limp worsened and the vet determined that there is still an infection inside his metacarpal paw. Consequently, he is under house arrest for another week, with more anti-flammatories and antibiotics.

Origami rose

I saw this stem of roses among the hydrangeas and picked it for the kitchen window sill. Later, I noticed how unusual the star-shaped flowers are – reminding me of origami. I think the petals will open further, as others I have picked have been round in shape as you expect a rose to be.

It was one of the prizes in our Friday raffle at work years ago and I found a small space for it in the garden. Since then, it has been crowded by other plants and has climbed upward – like a climbing rose rather than the carpet rose which it is meant to be. Fortunately, its bright colour draws attention so it doesn’t get overlooked.

Family time

Mum met wee Georgia, her third great-grandchild, when my niece and her family came up from Dunedin for the long weekend.

Yesterday, they called in at our house along with other family. I counted eight adults (including us), two small boys, the baby, and a puppy in our little house on the warm, sunny autumn morning. (Felix had found a sunny spot on the neighbour’s garden shed.) The funniest sight was Scout the puppy heading out the door with one of Mum’s woolly slippers!

Scout, the little rascal

This morning I have the little boys’ artwork, spread out to dry, to remember them by. I will add these pieces to the archive of children’s artwork I have kept.

Here is a glimpse of the archive. – including work by the little boys’ mother. She loves that they enjoy drawing as she and her cousins did when they came to my house as children.

On the windowsill (right) are Kinder Surprise toys from back then. They used to have great ‘surprises’ inside the Kinder chocolate eggs when my nieces and nephews were little.

The artist of this oversize birthday card would later graduate with a fine arts degree.

Free at last

Felix was taking ridiculous risks as he tried to find ways out of the house this afternoon, so I let him out. He stayed close, nibbling on his cat mint and sitting on the compost bin where the mice hang out, while I was gardening, and then he went to visit my neighbours across the street. I let them know that he was about – they had seen him – and to explain his limp. Since he jumped out of the window yesterday, his limp has worsened and he sits holding his paw off the ground. The wound to his paw has healed over, so I wonder if he strained (dare I say damaged?) his paw when he defenestrated himself. There’s a lot of responsibility involved in having a cat. As I write, I can see him curled up in a favourite spot in the garden.

Escape!

I am very relieved that Felix has just come home after being AWOL for about two hours. He must have squeezed out of this gap (8cm) and jumped down. His limp is now a little more pronounced after the drop onto the concrete drive – and whatever else he’s been doing since then.

Incarceration – with tantalising view

The good news from the vet is that Felix doesn’t need a stitch in his metacarpal pad – so no anaesthetic. His wound is healing well from the inside. However, he can’t risk damaging it any more, so has to remain inside for another week, probably. This is frustrating for him as he watches goings-on from the windows and sometimes cries to be let out. Here he is, taking it out on his ‘knitten’ this morning.

One sound paw (top) and one healing paw
Let me out, or he’s for the drop

Confined

I had else been perfect, Whole as the marble, founded as the rock, As broad and general as the casing air: But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears. (Macbeth)

Here’s poor Felix, rejecting the ‘cone of shame’ beside him, and pining for the outdoors.

I noticed he was limping on Sunday and inspected his paw to find the dew claw damaged and the metacarpal pad split. I know these terms because I looked up a diagram of a cat’s paw and learnt that cats have paws a bit like our hands. I drew a copy.

As you can see, a trip to the vet ensued. Felix was thoroughly examined for any other damage and the wound washed out. He was given anti-inflammatory and anti-biotic injections and sent home with a sunshine coloured collar to prevent him from licking the wound on his paw. The collar is not a success and after chasing him around the house I gave up on it. I haven’t seen him licking the paw.

Here he is in his fireside chair, looking relaxed and, probably, very relieved having just deigned to use the cat litter tray after a lot of complaining and trying to get out his locked cat door. A close up shows the split in his metacarpal pad. He is scheduled for another cat visit (ouch for both of us) on Thursday to see if it needs a stitch which will be under anaesthetic.

The cause of the injury is not certain. He had some marks on his nose which I had put down to a mouse fighting back. After chewing on some cat mint on Saturday he made a clumsy ascent of the back fence via the trellis and may have cut his paw on the edge of the corrugated iron. Or he may have been in a cat fight. It may be wise to keep him inside at night from now on, an idea I had already discussed with the vet when Felix had his annual vaccination at the end of March. She said that night seems to be when most injuries to cats occur. This episode could be a practice run. As the nights get colder he may be happy enough to be inside.