Selborne and Our Cat "Ruby"

On Saturday we stayed at home working with Our Daughter to help her put together a board for her ESB Presentation Exam on Thursday of this week. She has to give a short Presentation and has to have a board to point things out - I think that the board is to help the children during their presentations if their mind goes blank during their talk. There was a lot of double sticky back tape - it was a bit like something from Blue Peter with a lot of frustration thrown in when the sellotape got tangled up!

Anyhow, with the board finished on Saturday and with the weather man forecasting rain on Sunday I thought that it would be a rained off weekend and that there would be nothing for us to go out and enjoy. I therefore thought that I would do a blog about "Our Cats" - unfortunately , they must have got wind of the fact that the mad woman with the camera was on the loose as when I went to look there was only one of them still in the house - Our Dear Little "RUBY".

I know that you're not supposed to have favourites but she is pretty special to us. She suffers with some form of epilepsy and if you have never seen a cat having a fit it is quite scary. She dashes around like a thing possessed, frothing at the mouth, before collapsing and shaking violently - during these times we re-assure her and after a few minutes she comes round but will be completely disorientated for a good half hour - her eyes will be as big as saucers and she will walk around the room looking as if she has no idea where she is.

I have put more photos of her at the bottom of this post. In the meantime I will show you some photos from Selborne which we visited on Sunday as it did not rain as the weatherman said!

This mirror was on a wall to assist the home-owner to reverse onto this quite treacherous road. Although the Village is small it is a bit of a rat run and the road is quite narrow.

There are some beautiful cottages in the Village.

It is a pretty place.

Although the Village is small it has two delightful shops selling vintage furniture, lovely jewellery, etc.

One shop is called "Dandelion Wood" and the other is called "Poppy Charlotte."

Did I buy anything? I bought a big bar of Italian soap which smells divine from Dandelion Wood.

I bought one of my mums Christmas presents in Poppy Charlotte last year - a big felt flower corsage with a matching handbag. Due to the dreadful weather in December she had to wait until February to receive them. She said that it was worth the wait - so I guess she was pleased.

Doesn't this cottage look fabulous. When I say things like this to the Other Half he always says "We couldn't live there, the cats would be killed." I then say "And we couldn't afford it anyway, but I can dream!"

There is a green with these delightful cottages and just out of shot to the left is the Church which I will put on a later post. There we have it our trip around the Village of Selborne. There is a lovely walk just beyond the Church but the area was quite muddy and so it is one to return to when the ground is hard underfoot and not too squelchy!

Back to Ruby. She is very easy to get into a posing mood. All I have to do is ask Our Daughter to get a ribbon or a piece of string and she is enthralled and poses beautifully. The other cats well ... they just scarper ...

I mentioned earlier what the Other Half says about lovely houses which are near to a road - that they are often fatal to a cat. We should know that this is true as we have lost three cats in the last 15 years to the main road. The cats love being outdoors though so it's always difficult to say that you will have cats and keep them indoors.

On Saturday the Other Half was talking to our neighbour whose cat we hadn't seen for a few days. He was a lovely cat - an RAF sort of blue colour - hence he was called "Biggles."

They had been away and their son had taken the cat to their home to look after - he had run out into the road and been killed. A terrible shame.

A few posts ago I told you that I hadn't travelled beyond Europe apart from a visit to my friend in Japan when I was 21 years old. She is still out there,  married with two children. I understand that she is O.K. as according to my mum someone had heard her talking about the disaster on a local welsh radio station.

The disaster certainly puts life into perspective. The Japanese are a very resilient nation. Although there is disaster surrounding them everywhere they go about in a dignified silence. Seeing the sea looking like sludge travelling very rapidly and smashing everything in its path was just so shocking. I can't imagine for one minute what it would be like to loose everything. There was a man in the paper yesterday who had been rescued from the roof of his house which was the only part of the house that remained, it had floated 10 miles out to sea - he had apparently witnessed his wife being carried off by the tsunami to her death - unimaginable horror.

Hard to believe that the earth can cause so much carnage in such a short space of time.

A time to reflect and appreciate what we have ...

Until next time.

June.