At home with cats

It’s just over a week since we arrived back from our inter-railing trip and I’m away from home again, staying with my family in the north west. While we were in Europe, my Mum fell and broke her hip and is in hospital following a partial hip joint replacement two weeks ago and we (my youngest son and I) are here to visit her.  

I had already agreed to pick up my son and some of his “stuff” from University this weekend and so it’s been possible to put together a short road trip taking in visits to a number of family members. I drove up to the Midlands at the weekend and spent the day and evening with my daughter and her partner, staying the night there before driving up the M1 to pick up my son and “stuff.” We then drove over to the north west to see Mum. She looks amazing for someone of her age who had a major operation only 2 weeks ago and she is really benefitting from the physiotherapy. In fact, we are delighted that she is well enough to return home this week, a much shorter recovery time than we’d first thought.

Meanwhile, I am intending to pull together some of the stats and highlights of our trip to share in a later post over the next few days.  All I will say here is that during our four weeks of making extensive use of rail services across the 8 European countries we visited, our experiences were totally positive - comfortable and clean trains, running on time and most offering refreshment facilities at reasonable prices. This warm and fluffy feeling was stretched to the limit when we walked into Gatwick railway station on Bank Holiday Sunday around 8pm, reaching home, a distance of approximately 50 miles, 3 hours, 2 trains, a bus, with someone threatening to throw up on board, later! Quite a contrast with what we’d become accustomed to. 

One very positive note has been the fantastic weather that we brought with us from our trip. It’s been wonderful to be able to spend time out in the garden, pegging out the washing and getting it dry within a day. There’s only been one fly in the ointment (or rather 2 cats)!  

Two cats in the yard

Yes, we have not only one cat visiting each day, but two, and the black and white nameless one, Cat X, is not a gentle pussycat and not averse to showing his claws. A couple of times I have been hanging out the washing and on turning round found my way into the house barred by these fiends. The consequence is that, rather than trying to get into the house, I have embarked on some weeding, waiting for Cat X to give up and go away. This can take up to 30 minutes or so, and I’m not too sure how this is going to work once the weather changes! However, the garden is looking a bit tidier!