Still Here Still Breathing

25th September 2012 Tuesday

Didn’t blog last night  - spent most of it on the sofa with the pussy cat. I thought it might have been his last night.  I went down to feed him about 11pm and found he’d been sick and his breathing was weird - raspy and clicky and he was very still. I sat with him on the kitchen floor for a long time then carried him into the sitting room and made a bed for him on the sofa and one for me on the other end with blankets and cushions.  In the early hours he woke me once with dry wretching but he wasn’t sick and his breathing wasn’t so weird so I went back upstairs to our bed.

This morning he was just his usual quiet, big-eyed, skinny self. He drank a lot from the dripping tap in the bath, got his tail soaking wet, lay in a wide patch of sunlight on the carpet in our bedroom and later ate a big bowl of horrible Felix cat food. Now he’s curled up behind the futon chair in my study making that wierd clicky breathing sound again and occasional coughing snuffling noises.  But he’s still here.

Yesterday my husband and I went foraging for blackberries down by the estuary accompanied by the sound of a huge flock of Canada geese in the water meadows beyong the bramble hedges. We got scratched and stung by nettles and even though the blackberries were unsatisfyingly small and sour we came home with purple stained fingers and a big plastic boxful - enough to make jam and crumble.

We stopped off at B & Q to buy paint samples for the bedroom - I’m thinking about  Dulux Jade White for the walls - and seeing a shelf of light bulbs I asked my husband if we needed any as he is the one who always replaces them when they blow.

What are light bulbs? he asks.

He doesn't see the light bulbs that I'm looking at so my question comes at him left field, a curve ball stunning him. They could be anything unless I point to them or explain.

I’m supposed to be getting used it now but it pierces me every time.....like a little electric shock in my solar plexus..