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Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Sometimes in life, you're hit by a coincidence so happy, so unlikely, and so perfectly timed, that it makes you think Richard Dawkins could be wrong after all.

I discovered this morning that back in the early nineties, twenty years before our fat stray cat squatted down at the side of the sofa, wiggled her pelvis, and squeezed out a few babies, a band called The Kaisers accurately prophesied the event with a song called 'Hip Shake Shimmy Kitten'. Which is handy, as I needed a backing track for this video...


I'll be honest: my heart stopped at 1:15 when Shimmy grabbed that kitten by the jugular and went into a death roll. But apparently it's normal behaviour. I'm tempted to try it with Amelie. She might be more inclined to do what I say if she thinks I'm genuinely trying to kill her.

What I like about that video is that it encapsulates the whole experience of parenthood in less than four minutes. You've got two kids stuffing their faces, one who just wants a cuddle, and a mother who starts off contented and relaxed, reaches the point where she could happily kill 'em all, and then realises she needs some time on her own before she goes mental.

Anyhoo, if you're wondering why the kittens were lounging on the living room floor instead of camping out behind the TV in a princess tent, it's because I was performing major eye surgery on them last night. I spoke to Lisa's Mum about her cataract op at the weekend, so it gave me the confidence to try out a few techniques. Although I'm not sure how accurate her information was. When I asked her who performed the operation, she told me she didn't know, because she had a bag over her head. Which is a technique I thought they only used on budgies.

But that aside, we noticed on Monday that one of the kittens still had one eye closed. At the time I assumed it was winking at us knowingly, but when Lisa examined them yesterday morning, she found that one of its litter-mates, who had previously been bright-eyed and bushy tailed, now had one eye stuck shut. She did a bit of research on the internet, and discovered that it's quite a common problem, so having verified that there wasn't a nasty infection present, I headed to Boots after work yesterday for some sterile cotton gauze.

A bit of gentle dabbing later, and the vision of cuteness was soon restored...


Percy Shaw would be proud of me.

1 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

Well done!  You should be a vet (and earn a fortune!)  Getting a good video was your reward.