Is dread too strong a word?

 

Is dread too strong a word?

We joke that Bank holidays are the times that Jellicoe likes to test us. He usually waits until the evening, but it was mid-morning today when he jangled our nerves. It was time for elevenses, and while Herschel and the dogs were alert and keen, Jellicoe was nowhere to be seen.

He had been sitting on the bridge over the pond, earlier. It’s his favourite place in the garden, where he can keep an eye ‘over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth,’ as Genesis tells us. Flying things, too, are another interest of his, though he doesn’t usually bother with butterflies and dragonflies.

I called, ‘Cats, cats, cats,’ which usually brings him running, but that failed. I then tried shaking the treats tin, full of tasty dried liver (!), which normally causes him to race towards me. Nothing!

Barry went out to look for him and found him lying on the ground, miaouing to be picked up. He brought him indoors and set him down, but he was lethargic and rather uncoordinated, staggering a little. We decided it was time to try the honey remedy. A fingerful of orange blossom honey was rubbed around his gums and mouth, and within a couple of minutes he had revived sufficiently to eat his food, although he didn’t finish it. However, he wanted to investigate Herschel’s bowl, as usual! It's a variation of the grass always being greener on the other side.

We put him and the remains of his food in the conservatory and shut him in there for peace. We applied some more honey, and he ate a little more of his food. I conducted a fifteen-second breath count, and it was within limits, so we left him. When I went to check on him twenty minutes later, it was hot in the conservatory and he was breathing rapidly, so I opened the door and sat with him for a while.

After the air had cooled, Jellicoe’s breathing was at the higher end of the normal range, but slower. The mid-afternoon feed will tell us more, perhaps, but I have a feeling our bank holiday weekend is going to follow a familiar pattern with Jellicoe visiting his friends at the vet.

We are beginning to dread bank holidays!

Later: the three o’clock feed went well. Jellicoe came bouncing into the sitting room when the Alexa alarm sounded. He seemed to want to eat in the conservatory, so I gave him Herschel’s food and Herschel had Jellicoe’s.

There is just one more meal for the cats today, at 7:00 pm, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed until that one has been completed, hopefully successfully.