How did we get here

This must be my longest blog absence ever, even worse than last month, forgive me. It’s been January, it’s been cold, we’ve had named storms that have battered us on the top floor and nothing worth talking about has happened.  By the end of the week we will say goodbye to January, I’ve already spotted snowdrops and crocus in flower, it will be better and I will try harder.

We’ve made no progress at all with the Italian planning violation.  Only last week MrFF again chased our geometra who he’d instructed before Christmas to forget about preparing a price for his work which he’d regularly been promising to do since last August and just get the job done.  So said geometry’s wrote back again telling what needs to be done without suggesting he might ever get round to doing it. 

We have no news of our cat Grigio.  Mario asked if he should continue topping up the automatic feeder, of course he must. It’s heart breaking not knowing what has happened, we’ve asked Mario twice to check if she’s down the hillside with a neighbour who feeds several cats, he hasn’t.  

I have started doing my 6 mile walk again, gets me out, fresh air and exercise so gradually I am undoing the damage caused by so many mince pies.

I have knitting in the go, a little cotton gansey for my youngest grand niece, a round neck cabled slipover for me which I think is on the small side so might get pulled out and of course socks are always the go to for evening tv watching.  Suddenly lighting seems to be a problem or more likely failing vision, so something I can knit without regularly referring to the pattern or checking what I’ve done is ideal and pleasingly productive.  I find the purple yarn particularly hard to see under artificial light.

I was starting to feel my age after Christmas, worrying Italian matters and shortage of daylight were probably making me sluggish but as the days lengthen I am much better, more positive and determined not to become elderly even if in years I am.  I will try to be a better blogger, thanks for sticking with me. 

This is sad

Before we left our house in Italy in November MrFF installed a security camera.  Giovanni advised us to take action as the house above us beyond his property was broken into early last year, he was right as there were a couple of burglaries in the village more recently.

We don’t look at the camera that much, apart from a badger and a fox sniffing round there was nothing at all to see but just before Christmas MrFF spotted that Mario hadn’t been to replenish the automatic feeder for 10 days.  We didn’t want him thinking we were spying on him, I suppose we were, so we wrote about the lack of progress on the planning violation and casually asked how Grigio was.  The next morning Mario was at the house and for the next few days he was there looking round and calling her.   Then he wrote to say he hadn’t seen Grigio for 5 days, normally she appears when she hears his car.  He said the food was being eaten, of course it is because there are other cats and animals around, I told him that before we left and showed him we’d provided a lot of bags of food for them all.

It’s so upsetting. I imagine when the food ran out Grigio had to go elsewhere.  I asked a neighbour to look for her when she was out walking but she said she wasn’t well.  We asked Giovanni who was at his house for new year but he said he hadn’t seen any cats at all.  I mentioned it to friends down in the valley and they kindly offered to drive to our house with food but Mario was there next morning so it wasn’t necessary.

We asked Mario if Grigio might have gone to Elizabetta’s house down below us, she has several cats, but we haven’t heard anything about that. I feel like flying out to look for Grigio but we’d just have to leave her again if we found her.

What a hopeless situation, I suppose we won’t know anything until we go out in a few months which seems such a long time to wait.

I often get comments about bringing Grigio back to Yorkshire.  We cannot do that, we live on the third floor of an apartment building that does not allow pets. Even if that was not the case Grigio at her age wouldn’t adapt to being a indoor cat, and the medical checks would be practically impossible because of the lack of vets and her terror of going into the cat carrier.  She’s friendly enough with us but even we cannot carry her about.  We even tried a sedative once to get her to the vet for a teeth check, that didn’t work, she’d never survive the journey to the UK, neither would we. 

So we’ve done our best over the years to provide for her in a stress free way, it’s awful that now she’s been let down and a miserable start to the new year.