Bank holidays!
Jellicoe and Gilbert after a busy Easter Sunday
Bank holidays are days when banks, specifically, and many other businesses, are closed. They are days of celebration or commemoration of religious or historical events.
There will be eight bank (public) holidays in England and Wales in 2025. Scotland’s holidays are slightly different – they have nine, and Northern Ireland has ten. Scotland recognises St Andrew’s Day, that saint being their patron saint. Ireland’s patron saint, St Patrick, is celebrated with a bank holiday too, while neither England’s St George nor St David of Wales qualify for a special holiday.
If a bank holiday occurs at a weekend, another day is substituted. This is normally the following Monday.
We’ve just had two bank holidays, Good Friday and Easter Monday, making a pleasant long weekend for those who were able to take the time off.
There is always a slight sense of relief for us when the bank holidays draw to a close and normal service is resumed, and maybe that is true for everyone. It there is to be an emergency, we’d rather it occurred during ‘office hours,’ as it were.
Last evening, at ten o’clock, Barry discovered Jellicoe lying on the kitchen floor under a chair. This is not normal behaviour for him. He spends all his time with us. He had been fine at seven, when he had his final meal of the day, but now he was fairly unresponsive, and breathing quite rapidly.
Barry brought him back into the sitting room and we stroked and watched him, and then decided we could not risk leaving him until the morning. By midnight, he was in the veterinary hospital a few miles from our house. His glucose levels were exceptionally low, and the conclusion was that he had an infection of some sort.
At present, some fifteen hours later, the opinion seems to be that he probably has pancreatitis, which he has suffered in the past. At some point in the near future, he will need to be referred to specialists, as a scan showed potential problems with his heart and lungs.
We’re told he is stable and ‘a lovely cat.’ He is a particularly good patient, keeping his teeth and claws to himself and enjoying human attention.
Now, it’s a waiting game.
Meanwhile, Herschel is pacing the house, looking rather lost, wondering where his sparring partner has gone. Though he gives the impression of liking the idea of being an only cat, he misses his brother. He is enjoying having the dogs to himself, though.
We didn’t get to bed until two a.m.
I thought we might have a little respite from the morning alarm of miaous, always emitted by Jellicoe. It was not to be. Herschel took it upon himself to yowl and walk all over my hair. There’s no peace for the wicked. We must be very wicked!
