Urgent Photos of Ambrose wing injury

Lump the size of half a grape, appears to have split in half, black  material inside (not liquid) . Blood around area

Ambrose is poorly -poop sample

Hopefully you have eaten breakfast :0)

Something Changed

First chance I have had for a few days, to get my little paws on the mac.  To say Mum has been "of low mood" would be playing things down.  I have been putting all my energy into keeping her going by reminding her that

1. We love her, even when she loathes herself
2. We need her, even though she is convinced she has nothing to offer
3. This will pass, she always says this to us when things are bleak
4. She is the only person on the planet that sleeps the same amount of hours as Piggy so her continued presence = Piggy's continued well being

I heard Mum talking to Granddad yesterday (note ii) and she was talking a great deal about her best friend, Birdie .  Mum and Birdie have been best friends for at least 15 years, and Birdie's family includes us, the Harris family, as part of their family. Every year we all go on a huge family picnic and we have the best time (Moon gets a bit overwhelmed with all the different people, and when I start entertaining, Mum ticks me off for being a "show-off").
When Mum and Birdie used to work together, they used to talk all the time about how one day, they would both be married and have children and a dog and would walk down the seafront together with the little one in the buggies and the dogs on the leads alongside.   A few years down the road, and I guess things don't always pan out how we imagine. Birdie and her husband have 2 little children and a big black labrador.  But for one reason or another, Mum and Dad just have me and Moonpig ( cats don't count enough). Mum and Birdie always talked up how things would never change in spite of this, and its no one's fault, but things have.  Birdie has a hectic life with the 2 little ones, and Mum feels invalid as she has no insight in to this lifestyle.  The other day we met up with Birdie and the kids in the park, Birdie introduced Mum to a couple of her other friends that also had children and it was quite difficult for Mum . A bit like a club that you can never be a member of.  I looked at Mum trying way too hard to join in the chat, and she reminded me of someone pressing their nose against a shop window, but with no money.
I think this makes Mum feel lonely, and is compounding her depression somedays. And this is one area that me and Piggy are limited in the help we can offer.  I will do almost anything for Mum, but I draw the line at wearing a romper suit. And I wouldn't even discuss this with Piggy because I know damn well that he would jump at the chance to get his little brown body in a papoose so he was carried by Mum all day long.

Of course one day, Birdie's kids will be all grown up, and her and Mum will pick up where they left off. But not for a fair few years, and in the meantime I wish that having 2 sausage dogs could be enough to get Mum into the "Mum's club".  And I intend to keep showing her that our family is just as valid, but a little more unconventional.   That's what keeps me upbeat when Mum insists on putting our sweaters on when we have the first frost..... But I draw the line at a romper suit. And I also know in my heart of hearts that Mum was right on this one... Something Changed.

Note ii
Granddad is the main man. He visits us every week and always brings us some treats, either from Waitrose or M & S.  He calls me "alpha-male" and I agree.  He says Piggy needs to go to a boot camp to be toughened up and I agree.
He also talks serious finance with Lord V, this is plainly a waste of time as I have never seen Lord Velvet open his wallet.  It's also quite boring, but as long as Granddad keeps bringing the luxury beef jerky strips,  he can talk about what he likes.

Come On Silver Lady....

Today is Irma's 17th Birthday ! In honour of such an auspicious occasion, I felt a few words on the old grey gibbon were in order ( and believe me, it won't take too many ).  Irma was named after a character in Picnic At Hanging Rock (one of Mum's once-a-year reads).  She is a purple-grey colour with stripey leggings and very very furry. So furry in fact, that once a week, she deposits a Henry-Moore -sculpture-type hairball (similar size too).  Mum really enjoys sorting that out as Irma always vomits it up in her own bed.    Last year the situation got so bad in the summer that Mum gave Irma a military type haircut.

More red mist than purple-haze...

   On a good day Irma is known for her fairly unfriendly 1000 yard stare.  The haircut didn't really result in a good day.... What it did do was give Irma the motivation she needed to start leaving the hairballs on the pale beige carpet on the stairs and landing. Mum lost that battle and this year the scissors have never been seen in the same room at the same time as Irma.
What more to say ? Well that's the thing, not much more.  You see Irma is a classic example of style over substance.  She looks good, high end luxury in fact , but under that purple perm, there is very little going on.  She keeps me at a distance with her permanently employed anaconda-eyed death stare.  Her eyes have all the warmth and empathy of those of a Great White Shark.  It doesn't deter Moonpig though. He dolls out the kisses, happily wagging his tail as the snake-eyes dishes out punch after punch to his eyes, her claws fully out.
She is very possessive of our Dad (the spinster thinks he is her husband), and if I thought there was anything at all going on in her brain, it would be likely be her practicing a visualisation :  Of Mum hung up by her thumbs, Mum shut outside on the windowsill in the snow, Mum being tipped down the stairs.
A couple of times I have actually seen her try and take Mum down , when Mum is dishing up her food of all things. Crazy fool...
But Mum still says she is a pretty little kitten ( I must say, she does not look anywhere near 17). Mum gives her lots of nicknames ( we all get this nonsense) - Irma-de-Purma, Perm, Gray-bee, Busy-Bee, Li-ul-Ki-en, Leggings, you get the idea.  Dad just calls her Spinster. I call her a wad, and whilst Piggy thinks she is as pretty as Monica Vitti in her heyday, I can't really print what Lord Velvet says about her.

Portrait of Dorian"Grey".

  But, she is part of our family, and the words of the late great Richard Burton - "We love that chinese ol' lady" (Yes I know she is not really Chinese but it was the most romantic quote I could find about being old ). I'd like to think she will warm to me a shade after this, but since I know she won't, I'll put in one of my very favourite photos of her.. it takes a lot to pull off this look, many have tried, but far fewer have actually authentically  made themselves look like a golf-ball on a golf-tee.

Tears dry on their own..

• Difficult choice for me today :- The swimming hat or the rain hat ? Why either you might ask ? Well, it's Mum and her crying to be quite truthful.  My head is wet, smoothed to my tiny bird-skull with salty wet tears. Any specific reason ? Just taking in oxygen seems to be enough of a trigger today.  In no particular order, the following things have got Mum's tears flowing with reckless abandon. ...
•  The pigeon with the deformed beak, stretching up to reach nuts on the feeder  .
• The scenes of the riots across England.
• The wildlife on the Garden of Heligan tv programme last night.
• Lord Velvet scuffing cat -litter everywhere like confetti (see note I)
• The chapter on Jean Harlow where she died ( mind you, The Baby was a total honey and at 26 ! We were robbed).
• The article she read about Amy Winehouse ( I heard Mum say it was awful that Amy died alone).
• Her hair, which is breaking and coming out all over the shop ( We think its stress).
• The burn on her arm from the baking tin.
• The fledgling great-tits that were eating off the suet cake this morning.
• The swifts training their babies to hunt on the wing when we went for our walk to Goose Green yesterday.

I could go on, but you have things to do and I have lunch due soon and a wet head !

Its all  bit strange here though because for the past 8 years Mum was on antidepressants that seem to muffle her moods a fair bit.  Crying was out of the norm.  This week I do a double take if Mum has not got tears streaming down her face.  She is terribly depressed for sure, but is she depressed because she is depressed ? ( Oliver Saks must be quaking in his boots at my psychoanalysis here)  or depressed because she has no medication in her now  ? Its a right old mess here. And without wishing to sound selfish, Mum's depression has rendered her incapable of being "on the ball". To the extent that Piggy stole my piece of buttered soldier dipped in boiled egg, after having eaten his own piece! Normally that would have meant a stern talking too, but today Piggy got off Scott-free. I was fuming, alright I got another piece of soldier , and a larger piece at that, but the point is, the boiled egg was all gone by then so there was no dipping for my soldier. Mum goes on and on about how simple and vulnerable Moonpig is. I glance across and I see him smiling to himself , rubbing his fat little hands with glee at what he gets away with.

High on the autistic-spectrum, but keeping my spirits up by stealing my brother's eggy-bread soldier

So, as I was saying... the swimming hat or the rain hat ?
Note I
Lord Velvet is a bit of a tool when it comes to using the litter tray.  He tends to stand in the area he just peed in, and then a large clump of the litter stick to his foot (usually back left) which he then distributes all around the room.  It is is super-fine litter, white in colour and I see Mum's knuckles go white sometimes when she goes in and for the eighth time in a row, sweeps it all up. But to be fair, the old fella is one month shy of his 20th birthday, and his assertion of being around for the 2012 Olympics, once seemed like a pipe-dream, now, more like a terrifyingly accurate prediction of the future.  I am in awe of him, although the amount of time it takes him to eat a meal is frankly ludicrous. And as for Irma ? Well she may be 17 but what excuse is that for trying to get in the house through a closed window ? Total berk !    

David's Last Summer

Holy Moly , it's been a right difficult couple of days here at Harris Towers.  Mum has been completely drug-free since Tuesday, and it started off well enough.  In hindsight, it started of a little too well, as by Wednesday lunchtime Mum was like a whirling dervish, Dad was like a flea on a griddle, Piggy was like a narcoleptic and I was like the man who mistook a hat for his wife.  There was a terrible explosion from Ma at midday, when the ladder fell on her head in the shed.. Her language / pitch / volume ensured that everyone in the PO1 post code area got the measurements on how close to the edge she was.  I heard Dad mutter that he had never seen a wooden shed wobble like a bouncy castle before.  When she burst out, it was like a very tiny angry wasp that had been in a tumbler all day. I lay as flat as I could on the couch, and Dad looked liked he had height-envy where Me and Moonpig were concerned.  I think Piggy woke up when Mum was sobbing on the lawn , but that was because Lord Velvet had nudged him into action regarding the overdue lunch situation, and Moon will do anything V.V. tells him too ....
After the "blow-out" there was an air of calm that settled on us all, and not just because lunch was finally served.
It has ticked along nicely until today, when Mum has been on a see-saw of emotions... joyful when she used her insect-pat-slide to rescue a bumble bee ( its an invention that needs its own blog entry to be honest).  Then she turned into a sort of dark creature that could only have been created by Gerald Scarfe when she couldn't find the scrubbing brush.  Dad looked like he wished he was the "brick in the wall"...

Then while she cooked dinner she played the c.d. His N Hers by Pulp, a great album but I knew it could only end in tears as it took her down "Memory Lane". ( How come me and Piggy never get taken for a walk down Memory Lane if it is so popular ? I hear so much about this road it has taken on Atlantis -type mythology for me  ) . And as I had predicted earlier when I challenged Moonpig to a sportsman's bet ( Piggy doesn't carry money, he can't count very fast and his hands are too fat to open a wallet), Mum started welling up.  I think some of the songs made her recall things a little more rosy than they were. Things couldn't have been that great since neither I nor Piggy-moon even existed back then.   She kept playing one song called David's Last Summer, a nice enough tune but blimey Mum, move on.  She was going on that it captured a time when she was young, and interesting and had hope and had a fling with some guy called David and that he is now married with children et etc etc. Meanwhile I'm thinking crikey Mum, you got us,  we are just as lovely as children, although I draw the line at wearing a romper suit.  When I looked to see how dad was taking this emotive wallowing of Ma's, I noticed he was smiling !! .. Then I realised he had his headphones on, what ever Dad was listening to, it wasn't Mum, and it wasn't David's Last summer either.  

There Goes The Fear....

Last week, Ma finally had her appointment with the psychiatrist.  She said he was a lovely doctor, and even though the assessment was meant to be an hour, it ran into almost 2 hours, so I guess he was a patient chap.  From what I gather, Ma has two diagnosis and she said they overlap ... Borderline  Personality Disorder and Bi Polar Affective Disorder Type II.  Dr Ostler has devised a plan to wean Mum off her Sertraline and Mirtazapine and then she has to be drug free for 3 months before he decides what mood stabiliser to prescribe.  She has 2 weeks on a half  dose and then stops. I think she is a bit frightened as she has been on them for 8 years, and I know Dr Parkin said it was a high dose for her tiny frame... Tomorrow is the first week of the half dose and Dad keeps telling Mum how well she is doing.. But Mum has doubts ( she carrys them in a little sack with her ).   I notice her looking out the window , and I don't know what makes her  face look so sad  and lost, as I follow her gaze and all I can see is the wood pigeons fighting over the seed that we put out every day?  But I am keeping a very close eye on her for Dad as he wants this  "transitional period " to go as smoothly as possible.   She is fretting about how much she perspires  at the moment, and keeps washing and overloading her deodorant.  Mind you, Piggy is viewing this weaning as a  blessing in disguise, because Mum is sleeping for England right now, and there's not much Piggy enjoys more than a sleep.  The food-dish is always half full for Piggy .  Meanwhile I am going to find out as much as I can about Mum's diagnoses so I can be alert.