Chivvies comes home...

We were so ecstatic to have Chivers back home that we had forgotten just how difficult it is to keep a cat confined and happy so we were both exhausted this morning after little to no sleep.  The main problem is that he really really really wants to go outside for the toilet so he wails and wails at the door before finally giving up and using the litter tray.  We have shut the bedroom area off for him so he has the run of the rooms and his bed, litter tray and food are in with him.  The three other cats who are excluded whinge to come in and he whinges to go out!!  John decided he would sleep in the spare room with him and within a short period of time Chivers had burst one of the two staples in his wound and it had started to bleed - I was up doing my Florence Nightingale bit but the suture stuff we had wouldn't stick and we are concerned about him getting an infection so in the end we bathed the open area with a saline solution and put on a quick smear of barrier cream and hoped he wouldn't bleed everywhere.  He did not settle all night and half way through John and I swapped so that I kept Chivers company.  No sooner had I got him settled than he would hear something and start getting restless and then crying at the door - it was a long night!

We checked the wound first thing so that we could make a decision as to whether he needed to return to the vets to have the gap closed.  Another clean with saline and another smear of the Dermagel barrier cream and it looked to have calmed down - the one remaining staple was hanging on in there and the original stitches looked fine.  Although the scar itself is relatively short the vet said that whatever had caused it had gone in a long way and down into his thigh so the internal injuries were much worse than we would have realised and he was bruised from his chest all the way down poor thing.  This injury was also a couple of days old but he gave us no indication that he was in any pain - had he not been licking the wound and his side was all wet we might not have noticed it for some time - particularly as we had a visitor in the house and Chivers would have kept a low profile.

We had a delivery of fresh eggs today from Savvas the Tyreman's wife Eleni - they keep a whole range of birds, ducks, chickens, guinea fowl so the eggs are all different sizes and colours.  Savvas must have got a whiff of the fact that I had a puncture yesterday and the man in Paphos said that the tyres on Kenny are all due a change!!!  These will end up being very expensive 'free' eggs once I have paid for four new tyres!!!  Anyway it was very kind of her and John and I sampled two for brunch.  I am not sure if he had the lovely pale blue duck egg or I did but whatever I had was lovely.

I had made an appointment this afternoon to take Mum to a tax consultant to deal with her income tax.  The changes in her circumstances and the strange way HMRC taxed her initially plus the fact that there are alternatives to her taxation here and I am not entirely sure which will be most beneficial coupled with the fact that I hastily did a return for her last year meant that I really needed some help making sure it was done correctly.  We had been recommended a woman in Kissonerga and so that was where we were going.  I had trawled through all mum's files and picked out as much information as I could find but despite HMRC saying that they would send confirmation of Mum's right to be taxed over here twice we had still not received it.

John had come with me and was doing some jobs around Mum's house.  Firstly he wanted to complete the outstanding job of getting a network cable into the sunroom so that mum's TV box could run directly from the router rather than via wi-fi.  We had got an electrician in to do the job but he let us down time and time again and then we realised he had taken on a job that he didn't want or know how to complete.  John did it - he said with the help of a YouTube video he got it sorted.

Mum has also be troubled by ants getting into her kitchen although we are not entirely sure where they get in so John sealed the sunroom externally with some new silicon and now if they continue to get in they must be getting in from somewhere underneath.

The visit to the tax specialist was successful and I handed over responsibility for mum's tax returns happily knowing that in the future the returns will be correct and she will be paying the right amount and at just over 100 euros a year for someone else to do it Mum and I are more than happy!!!

We returned home to find that Chivers hadn't moved from our bed and was bright eyed and happy which was good and then later on Mum text to say she thought the TV was perfect so that was good too.