All Change

I was only away for a week, but when I returned the World had Changed. Well, this little bit of the world, anyway. The sun is shining, the temperature is toastily way above freezing, birds upon birds are singing, the snowdrops are snowdropping, and Spring has arrived. It’s like I looked away for a moment, and when I turned back round, someone has switched the year on. And suddenly Everything is Easy.

There is no nightly fight to evict warmy and snuggly cats into the cold, dark outside. There is no morning fire-lighting ritual, to melt the blood and defrost the fingers before the day’s work can begin. There is no mixing up of hot maize porridge to deliver to house-bound chickens. There is no trudging through the slippy snow to endlessly break ice on water-buckets. There is no struggle to stay upright on the ice in the face of hungry pigs barging the food bucket. There is no urgent need to hump bales of hay to weather-worn, grazeless llamas. And, best of all there is no getting up in the black, cold earliness to take the desperate puppies out for a wee.

Not only did Winter decamp while I was away. It seems that our small-bladdered, fluff-emitting, hyper-bouncy puppies pulled out with it, leaving two really-quite-nice young dogs in their place. Nice young dogs, who wait until past 7.00am, when the light of early day is seeping in through the bleary-eyed windows, before gently suggesting that they might quite appreciate a little wander outside, if that would be ok with us, please. Sleepy young dogs who snooze on the sun-painted floor until invited to join us for a walk, and slumber at our feet while we watch evening tv, without rushing to the door every time one of us breathes slightly differently or shifts in our seat. Big young dogs, with proper silky staying-put fur, and invisible signs dangling between their rear legs that say ‘Neuter Me’.

Yes, the Time Has Come – for them to put away childish things, but NOT to get out the adult things. The time has come for another huge financial investment into the local vet economy. Two dogs and one Tom for the chop and four more female felines to be spayed. Simon is up in Le Montet at this very moment making the appointments, and trying to remember the French words for “Is there a discount for bulk-booking?”