CADBURY'S GONADS: Saturday: Here today, gone tomorrow, our little precious tabby celestial kitty had a hysterectomy at the hands of a big bad vet doc.

Be all that as it may, meanwhile:

'In other news…'

23^rd May 2010

Sunday: Oh what a momentous day for one member of our household, a heaven sent stray grey tabby kitten now known as 'Cadbury', who appeared starving and thin, wailing on our carport, in early March.

Missus Inkletter and I set off, with Cadbury in a box on my good wife's lap, for the Cat Haven in Shenton Park, this being her first ever ride in a car – Cadbury that is. I did the dirty work of checking her in for her hysterectomy – Cadbury that is – and by the time I left, the poor little wretch was silent and still with fear and dread, amid the strange smells of a million other cats, operating theatre odours, you name it.

It was with burdened hearts that we drove off, knowing that the little abandoned cat that recently came into our lives was going to go under the knife, and have her ability to breed forever removed.

I then dropped the crafty crabchick off at the Craft & Quilt Fair in full swing at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre, where she spent 3 hours in an orgy of craft absorption, but alas, little spending. I meanwhile, had driven up the hill and into the bowels of Kings Park (yas, no apostrophe!), where I read more of 'The Gathering', by Anne Enright, and then went for my first bush walk in this park for about 25 years: it was delightful, with rain near at hand, and I hardly saw a soul. A thousand acres of bushland a stone throw from the city centre is one great asset. Unfortunately, it occasionally ends up as the burial site for murder victims, in this city of 1.7 million people.

I picked Missus Inkletter up at 1, with the sheen of a ten thousand dollar Husqvarna Designer Diamond sewing machine still smouldering in her dewy eyes, and we returned to Kings Park for some refreshments, before heading off to the beach past Perry Lakes' way to gaze at the ocean and into each other's lovestruck eyes.

We then returned, with fear and trembling, to the Cat Haven, to pick up poor little Cadbury. It was again my job to enter the depths of the torture chamber to retrieve Cadbury, the dainty dilettante waiting like a pussy in the car. And it broke my heart to see Cadbury shaking, and she tried to put her little furry head under the towel lining the box as I carried her out. Even in the car on the way home she tried to hide her head.

Well, some hours later, that night, we had a trapeze artist back on our hands, with Cadbury tearing around the house as though she'd never had an operation, flinging herself around like a pussy possessed. Billy Connolly might well like to see a two hundred pound snatch, but we had a five pound pussy going berserk, and worrying us into the grave that she would do herself a lethal injury.

The post operative notes from the Cat Haven stressed the need to keep the cat patient indoors for a week, and to discourage it from wild athletics. Well, great aspirational advice, but we were totally at a loss as to how to stop the little dynamo from running amuck, and each day for the next week she wound up her spring. By the third day or so she was dangling one armed from the ironing board table, leaping up onto four feet high surfaces, pouncing on our legs as we walked by, you name it.

I was convinced she was going to do herself in, at least internally, where she had unseen stitches. As I write this 8 days later, she is thriving, her external wound is looking very good, despite the fact that she seems to have ripped the stitches out with her teeth, and nothing will stop her. We plan to take her back by day 14 to have her stitches 'out', but she appears to have beaten the veterinarian boffins to it.

What a ride it's been!

+paytontedwithlove+