Coming up to an anniversary..

We are just over three weeks away from the second anniversary of the big quake.  Nearly two years!  But we aren't doing too badly - our house has even been fixed.

Every time I walk down to the park, I spare a thought for the residents of this house:

That pipe was put in just after the earthquake. It runs from a shallow hole/puddle in their lawn, out into the gutter. Presumably there is either a newly-formed spring, or a burst water pipe that is churning out water.

It runs at full stream all day and all night, seven days a week, and has been doing so for nearly two years.  Boo uses it as her fresh water drinking spot when we are on our way home from our walk.

Their whole section is wet and has a faint odour of mould. The grass grows lush and green and swampy. They have an old weatherboard house which sits above this swamp, which must be so incredibly damp, and cold.

No doubt the pipe was put in as a 'temporary' solution. And no doubt they are pretty pissed that it is still there.

Dog saves cat - blurry iPhone photos prove it.

Boo has donated blood a few times. She's a good donor - the right size, healthy, and she sits lovely a still while we take the blood. Usually we are using her blood to help save a dog with some sort of severe anemia - either from blood loss, or blood destruction (auto-immune).

On Friday, she was called in to donate again, and did so willingly (she gets a tin of cat food immediately afterwards, which she thinks is amaze-balls).

But this time, she didn't give her blood to a poor doggy with an anemia......she gave it to..........A CAT!!

Here is a shitty photo of said cat, hooked up to a bag of Boo's life-saving blood (seen at centre top of photo).
 

Poor kitty-cat was bleeding internally, and we needed to urgently take her to surgery. There was no time to find a suitable cat donor (it's hard enough to find a cat donor at all, then very difficult to collect the blood as cats aren't great at sitting still, and then even harder to get the right type which doesn't cause immediate anaphylaxis and death), so Boo stepped in.

It worked perfectly, the cat didn't react, and we increased her red cell count enough to make it safe to anesthetise her for surgery. 

Postscript: when we had poor kitty-cat in surgery, we found she had some serious shit going on, and unfortunately we had to euthanase her.

Productive..

It has taken me over 12 months, but I finally finished a quilt for my wee man.  Made from recycled sheets, shirts and a few of his papa's old boxer shorts...

First swim of summer (for me)

It was a beautiful sunny day today, so we headed over to Rapaki Bay for a splash.

We were actually totally surrounded by other people with the same idea, but I managed to take some photos that made it look like we were the only ones..

Photo dump

We just got back from a holiday down south... I can't be bothered writing about it, but it was good.

Here's a bunch of photos instead: