General Musings for the week April 17th 2011

Sunday evening and Monday morning saw me at the vets with the cat.

I had arrived home Sunday afternoon after a delightful trip to the local airfield for a drink and a sit outside in the sun watching the aircraft (I know, it's all go in my life), to find my cat lying listlessly outside the back door in the sun. Opening the door to him I realised he wasn't his usual, ebullient self and he moped inside and snuck away to sit under the bed in the back bedroom. A few moments later I went up to see him and realised he had been in a fight with something that had left him cut at a couple of points on his body. I left him under the bed for a while to see whether he would recover a little. An hour later he hadn't moved and I noticed that his right front knee/elbow had swollen up quite considerably so I called the vet to see if she could look at him that afternoon. It was now about 20 minutes before the close of surgery hours so I grabbed the cat carrier and went to pick the cat up.

Being the intelligent cat that he is, he worked out what I was doing and crawled right under the bed, laying in the most invonvenient place he could. I ended up crawling under the bed on my back, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and dragging him out from under there. He didn't like that at all.

Five minutes later we were in the vets. The weekend vet took one look at him and proclaimed "Not another cat in a fight. That's all I've had this weekend!" She cried out again a few moments later when she checked the history: It was exactly one year ago that day when I had taken him in to see her after his last fight.

My poor cat was severely distressed at this point. His fur was shedding copiously, they shaved his leg in two places, took an anal temperature reading and gave him three different injections. Not a happy cat. The vet recommended either leaving him there that evening or bringing him back in the morning to have the wound lanced and flushed. I elected to take him home, knowing that he would be very distressed to stay in the vets overnight.

The following morning we had another game of hide-and-seek as he saw me bring the cat carrier out again. This time I cornered him in the bathroom and slipped him into the box. Down at the vets they took all his details and told me to leave him there, coming back at 2.30 to pick him up. I had checked the swelling on his leg and noticed that it was much smaller than the night before so I asked the vet to take a look at it to see if he really needed to have it lanced and flushed.

After a few moments of examination (plus another anal temperature reading and injection) the vet announced that he could probably go home and if the problem recurred I could come back in to have it dealt with.

Total cost for both vet visits: £102.65. Potential costs for staying overnight and having sedation, lancing and flushing: £500+

Good call, I thought.

In other news: Thanks to everyone who watched and commented on 27 Arbour Street, the Sci Fi London 48 Hour Film Competition entry I posted about last week. Unfortunately we didn't make the final 10 shortlist, but I think we did fantastically anyway.

If you're going to make a reality television show you want something that has the potential to have conflict, excitement, danger. That's why programs such as Trawler Wars and Ice road truckers are so compelling. So why would Sky premiere a new reality tv show called 'Hunks' about self-obsessed, vain male model types? Where's the danger in that? I can foresee another program where selective editing and VoiceOver build fake suspense to try and make the program more interesting.  Not that I'll be watching, of course.

Video of the week this week is a must for all movie fans out there. Peter Jackson - director of Lord Of The Rings and King Kong - has started filming on the Rings prequel "The Hobbitt". Being  a big fan of the internet - and being determined to avoid any unauthorised spoilers coming from the production - he has elected to create a regular series of videoas about the shoot. The first one has just been released. Enjoy!