Between blotch and blok

The Little Cat. It's getting a tad stir crazy, it is. But it's purring. More importantly, after this morning's bad experience with a long claw caught in the bedclothes, it's allowed me to give it a pedicure and even permitted the claws on its baldy paw to be trimmed. This also gave me the chance to check how many stitches have been removed--and the answer is, only the one. Good cat.

Our joint fashion tip: the toy poodle shave is definitely best left to the toy poodle.

And there's progress, tho' too slow. We have no rubble out the front and salvaged bricks out the back. There is a partition roughly halfway across the living room (with a door giving access to the wreck at the front), which is keeping the noise down and the dirt out. There are down pipes from the gutters outside. The cleaners come on Wednesday. Which is when two lots of builders are coming to do quotes (the ones I already regard as my favourites are coming tomorrow and have already rung up asking preparatory questions), and when Little goes back to the vet for stitch removal.

Nice things: Looby Loo came home with a certificate for listening especially well; I've acquired a £5 Amazon voucher; I got my Michel Houellebecq on H P Lovecraft book today; and smelly stuff courtesy of BPAL and eBay: Pink Moon (may go to LL), Honey Moon (Mmmm, Bzzzz, spice?), and testers of Mata Hari (nice) and R'lyeh (neat). I'm wearing both Mata Hari and R'lyeh, which is more of a plot idea than a recommended scent combination.

Annoying things: builders (whom I don't want to get the contract for the rest of the work, tho' they clearly expect to); encountering the word "intercity" in one of the Bletchley in WWII sections of Cryptonomicon where it jarred as too modern a term (tho' I must check this out) for the setting. It's broken the magic, and I was enjoying the book greatly, and I'm not sure if I'll carry on. It took a good twelve months to make myself forgive Alastair Reynolds for the misuse of "crescendo" on the first page of whichever of his books it was I've read--Revelation Space?--and actually buy it. It was still necessary to take a deep breath and hold it through the first page before being able to enjoy the rest of the read.

Little's back home. She's had an eventful day. M left her at the vets who were already worried by the fact that the wound on her foot hadn't healed. She was headed for an X-ray to see what was what inside the paw.

The 'phone call came with the bad news that she has two broken digits, uneven fractures, which along with the open wound meant that splinting was not an option. Putting pins down the fractured bones was. It took an hour (no, I'm trying really hard not to think about the bill: the X-ray was a hundred quid for a start). We went to the surgery at six and Little made her wobbly way to the door of the cage and then meowed: I've not had a meow since Tuesday evening. She tottered a bit while we looked at the X-rays. Then we got her to walk into her carrier and took her home. I think she's high on pain killers, but she's perky, limping less than before the op, drinking and taking a slight interest in food--and she's escaped from the front bedroom once already.

Looby Loo, who is fascinated by the vets, saw the hospital upstairs from the surgery and was fine, but now will not go into see Little. The leg, bald and stitched, is really putting her off. Understandable, I suppose.

So there's only Biggle not here now. Soon. The place isn't right without the two of them.

Bizarrely (this is my overused word of the week), there's a school's sponsored walk happening today right along our road.

Yup. As the windows come down, there are gaggles of teenagers wandering past.

• phrenologist's head
• one of a pair of globular glass lamps
• the pin box I made for my mother when I was three
• and since I've not seen them since just after the event which shall be named crash, the socks I'd nearly finished knittingEDIT: found the socks

Miss Manners says: "Do not use strangers' front rooms as an impromptu garage".

So, fortunately, we went to bed early. Otherwise I'd've been sitting on the settee in the, now ex-, bay window. We went to sleep only to be woken at 1.00 a.m. by a loud bang (only one, I recall, except there must've been three at least). It sounded as if it came from the back of the house and was loud enough to set off car alarms. Nothing out back; voices from the front. Went downstairs to peep out of front window, saw the car peeping through the hole in the front wall and decided to phone the police. Put on dressing gown and went out to see our car crushed into the front of next door's bay window, another car backed through our bay window and front wall, no driver, lots of neighbours, and chaos. Not carnage, tho'.

I got dressed, panicked until I found the cats, safe and hidden. Our cats, what with Big being deaf, never, ever go outside. So finding them was a worry. Looby Loo slept peacefully until I invaded her bedroom, at the back, put the light on and started looking for Little. Hung around outside, took photos, checked on location of cats again and shut one in the front bedroom.

We waited while the police, fire brigade, ambulance (not needed), man from the council, engineers, car removers arrived. We were a crowd. We probably only needed a live band and caterers for a really good night on the tiles, or at least, bricks.

Looby Loo woke up and was a little perturbed. Since we were going to have get all of us out of the house whilst the unwanted visitor was extracted, I got her up and dressed and she joined the merry throng in the fortunately balmy night. I made some jokes.

It was about then I noticed the footprints, bloody footprints, leading from under the settee in the living room up the stairs, in the bathroom, the front bedroom, and ending under Looby Loo's cabin bed. Little had moved. I got her out, examined the front left paw, cut, bleeding, profusely, but not arterially, and worried about glass. Called emergency vet who reassured me and I risked letting her be after an attempt at washing the paw. She hid. Eventually we winkled both cats out, put them in the cat carriers and moved them two doors down, where Looby Loo was drawing and colouring with G, who's only a little older than her.

Tidying the footpath proceeded apace. Our car was removed, so our next door neighbour could see the damage (less dramatic, but not trivial) to the front of her property. Then we got out of the way and watched while the Nova was hauled from the front of our house. Props were put in an hour or so later and some pro tem boarding put up. Not cat proof: I had to confine Big for the night. With help from the council engineer, our next-door-but-one neighbour, much debris was removed from inside.

At four-ish, I sat down and started to make a list:

1. Make list.
2. Cats to vet.
3. Cats to somewhere safe and quiet.
4. Looby Loo to school.
5. etc

Eventually, at around five, we went to bed.

At seven, the bins were emptied. At seven ten, Looby Loo came in a snuggled up with M, Big and me (Little was under the futon and popped her head out). I did wonder if we all went back to sleep it would all go away. Then I got impatient, 'cos we couldn't do much until eight or eight thirty.

Rang D to ask for cat favours, i.e. lift to vet, housing for animals for a couple of days, lift to school for Looby Loo. Rang school and left message saying LL would be late in due to an emergency (school got the story later).

The vet went OK-ish. Little has couple of cuts on the paw and possibly a puncture wound under and into the central pad. So no bandages, but a lot of cleaning up, and a pain killing shot and antibiotics. It was only after the clean up we noticed the horrendous bruising on the front of the paw and leg. We think she may have been hit by flying masonry. There seems to be no signs of internal injury tho'. Fortunately, whilst she was still not right, a limp heap with no fight in her, her eyes had started reacting again. There's a possibility of fracture and of problems with the soft tissues healing.

We've chased the insurance company--car bit good, home bit not so--and seen the loss adjuster. If we ignore the musical instruments, we're more than covered. We're waiting for a structural engineer to come and I can't switch on the stove (cooking, water, heating) without getting the gas checked. Ought to get the wiring checked too.

So we're in limbo.

The culprit, who initially ran off, gave himself up. He was drunk, apparently.

And, yes, it was only whilst wandering around Tesco looking for lunch that I noticed my jumper is covered in cat blood.

A wise old proverb says: "A car in the lounge is not worth two on the road."

Thanks for the kinds comments, folk. We'll be fine. And the temptation to blog from the roadside in the middle of the night was, as you saw, irresistible.