I find Willow hilarious when she’s groggy in the mornings, so I took this little video of her stumbling bedhead. HEE!

She’s also very keen on picking flowers (pronounced more like “frerhs”) at the moment. She’s denuded most of the plants in our garden, and when we went for a walk with Mum today we had to stop at every patch of dandelions or daisies or soldiers by the side of the road and pick one. Combined with a few extra bits from our front yard she ended up with a sweet little wild bouquet by the time we got home again, which I put in a baby food jar to decorate the table for the day.

Otto had to go to the vet this afternoon. He’s been sniffling and sneezing for several days, with runny eyes and a poor scratched nose where he’s been batting at himself. We were fairly certain it was just a cold but you know, you’d never forgive yourself if your cat was seriously ill and they said “if only you’d come in sooner”… so I packed him up and had him checked out. Sure enough, he has cat flu, and it should clear up on its own, though we have a list of symptoms that will need further attention to keep an eye out for. Vets are expensive, but worth the reassurance. We do love our soft ginger giga-pudding!

The patient, weepy eyes (actually not looking too bad in this photo, perhaps he’s on the mend already) and scuffed nose and all.

Monty has also had a hard time of it. Yesterday evening he followed Willow and I across the road and down the street to the reserve when we went to play ball, and was trotting across the grass towards us when he was swooped upon by an enormous, angry magpie. I don’t think it made contact, but it was very close, and the magpie was not much smaller than the skinny slinky Mon-man. He ran into the undergrowth where the grassed area turns into bush (i.e. thick forest, for non-NZers!) and meowed at me pitifully. I tried to get to him but he was too spooked, especially after the bird attacked him again, and he would not come out!

I didn’t want to leave him there because magpies are vicious and he is quite stupid, but after half an hour of calling and coaxing it was getting dark and Willow was antsy, so I started to walk her home to drop her off with JSR and go back for Monty. As we got about halfway back he suddenly rocketed out of the reserve after us and ran straight for our house, then proceeded to be a big scaredy-cat for the rest of the night – and with good reason. Poor little guy.

So, that election, huh? I don’t want to come over all political in the space I use to talk about yarn and kitty cats, but I’ve been more invested in this election than any other. As a Green Party supporter I was very pleased to see them gain an additional four MPs, hooray! But on the whole, I think the National Party has a lot of policies that will cause hardship and hurt New Zealand in the long term. It’s disappointing that so many people voted for that, and makes me feel disconnected from my country. I can only hope the other parties manage to reign National in, and that we get a different result in 2014.