Category Archives: Pets

Lucy – the Hyperthyroid Cat

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I like to write non-book posts every now and then. I posted a photo of Lucy on my last Wordless Wednesday post and today I thought I’d write a post specifically about her.

Lucy has always been a small cat and at first we weren’t worried when she started to lose weight because she is 15 and older cats do lose weight and she was still very active. But when she got so thin that I could feel each vertebra and she was always wanting food, but not eating it we took her to the vet. She has hyperthyroidism, which is apparently common in older cats causing high energy, as well as weight loss. She has also become much more vocal than ever before.

We have to give her one tablet a day and she seems to be responding well and has put on a bit of weight, but the drawback is that she’ll have to take them every day for the rest of her life. It is not easy giving them to her! She is very strong and determined that she does not want them. It’s a struggle just to get her to open her mouth. The vet has given us a pill popper, which does make it a bit easier.

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Here are some more photos.

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She was a tiny, tiny kitten who fitted easily into the palm of my hand - a bundle of energy who climbed up my legs, using her claws like crampons.

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Here she is in the garden demonstrating the perfect cat stretch! I wish I could do Pose of a Cat like that!

In the next photo I’m not sure what you call this jump – maybe “Let Me Out”. She was actually on her way down and had reached the handle, maybe she was trying to look out of the window! She is, like other cats, fearless of heights. Somewhere I have a photo of her walking on the scaffolding when we had an extension built on the house and whilst she was still a very tiny kitten she jumped out of an upstairs bedroom window.

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This is a good Scratching Post:

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And this is her favourite tree – on the lookout for birds:

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Pets Please – Post No. 200

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I thought I’d write something different for this, my 200th post. I’ve been looking through some photos for pictures of our pets. These are just a few I found, bringing back lots of memories.

Suki was the first cat D and I had. D took this photo in the garden of our first house. We had another cat, Candy, soon after but at the moment I can’t find a photo of her, although I know there are some.

We had a series of cats later on and eventually we got a dog. This was a big thing for me as I had always been frightened of dogs as a child and was still very unsure about them. We got Zoe, a beautiful golden retriever, the softest dog you could ever imagine.

Then we got another dog, Ben a border collie/labrador cross. He was so small when we got him that he could run underneath Zoe’s legs. Here he is fully grown, still a small dog. He had lots of health problems and died of diabetes. I had to give him an insulin injection every morning. Another amazing thing I never thought I’d do. He never complained.

Here they both are chasing a stick. They loved running.


After the dogs died we weren’t going to have any more pets, but we soon decided we couldn’t live without an animal in the house. So we got Lucy. Here she is as a kitten.


Stretching in the garden.

Then we added George, who had been D’s dad’s cat.

Finally, here is Lucy in the garden. She’s 14 this month and still behaves like a kitten most of the time.