I like Saturdays in Spring, how about you?

Spring has sprung
and the garden is waking up. I'd make this into a beautiful "Tia and her girls spend a brisk spring day doing wholesome type things in their garden" post except that we didn't, and the truth will out. We might have done, except for the fact that the cats appear to have abandoned the shady flowerbed under one of our flowering currants in favour of the lawn, which is as a result covered in cat poo, in various stages of disintegration. On a plus side, the flowerbeds are looking great! But until I can bring myself to somehow gather all the piles of poo and post them somewhere (I'm thinking the compost bin wouldn't be too happy to have them?), we won't be spending a lot of time sitting in the back garden.

So, we did what girls do in times of crisis. We went shopping. We had three things on our list. One hour in, we had acheived this:She's pleased with them.
Little Fish on the other hand is less easily impressed. She was measured, she was given a few pairs to choose from. I then vetoed half the pairs due to allergies (how can a child be allergic to shoes, ridiculous), at which point she decided she didn't want any new ones at all. My bank balance thanks her.

Or it would, if she hadn't then decided we needed "dinner shop, pleeeeeese Mummy?"

Since by this point we also needed to do the cathing thing again, it seemed like a reasonable suggestion. We found a cafe with a perfect "have to cath a small child" cubicle, did the business and had a nice lunch. And as we left the cafe, Little Fish picked a tiny bit of leftover from her knee and popped it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed, and then turned to me and said "that was a lovely dinner, Mummy, thank you very much." Sometimes it's nice having a verbal child.

No luck with the rest of our shopping (side note: where do you buy big girl pants for little girls when Woollies and Adams have closed down, and the only other shop in town only stocks frilly knickers for babies and cropped ones for six year olds?), so we hit Waitrose where LF was delighted to bump into Grannie and Great Grannie and Grandad. Mog meanwhile declined to show off her new shoes and indicated her disdain for mere food shopping instead.

Home again, and back to chaos. Home to two cats, who are both seriously disgusted with me. Comeback has been placed on a renal diet, to complement his kidney and thyroid medications. He is not impressed with this, licks small amounts of gravy and then stands in the middle of the room, crying loudly. Goway is fascinated by the ludicrously expensive renal diet dried food and insists on emptying the bowl, refusing to have his own high-protein food. Little Fish sees me standing in the middle of the room coaxing them both to eat their own food and talking about how delicious it is, and decides to try it out for herself.
And then it is bedtime, and I separate Little Fish from the cat food and parcel her into bed. She is not impressed with this and tells me "Wee Wee in your Mouth Mumma". Now there's a curse. Mog is even less impressed, and switches from quiet but happy to full of spasm and scream and outrage before I have even closed the sides to her bed. We had four hours of this last night, so rather than wrestle through it again I fish her out and put her into her armchair. Where the roars settle to whimpers, but the problem is not solved. I clip her collar back around her and she relaxes. This is not great; she can't wear it twenty four hours a day, we don't have enough socks to keep changing the covers, she will get such a sore chin from it.

So I have a cat who won't eat his prescription food, a cat who won't stop eating the other cat's prescription food, a girl who won't stop eating and one who won't stop crying except to demonstrate her beautiful stridor. I'm considering rethinking my position as functional adult in this household, any takers?

Tia