Django, (our cat,) has been spending a lot of time outdoors lately due to the prolonged spell of warm weather. We've provided him with a little 'cat house', or shelter, beneath a bush in the garden where he can get some shade and rest from the sun. At night time though, he usually comes in our house and sleeps on the end of the bed with us, (often waking me at five thirty am to be fed and let outside again. But he's seemed a little 'off colour' the last couple of nights, hasn't been eating much and stayed out in his cat house, and not wanting to leave it much. Yesterday morning he definitely seemed quite poorly and I made an appointment to take him to the vet. We'd noticed that there was a kind of scab or wound on the top of his head.
The vet cleared the fur from the area revealing a very sore looking puncture. He said that it looked like Django had been fighting and had been bitten on the top of his head..."you can see where the tooth's gone in" he said. Some new neighbours recently moved in next door and they have four cats. It seems that Django had been involved in a fight with them over his territorial rights and got the worst of it. The wound on his head had become infected and he was running a high temperature.
The vet gave him an antibiotic injection and another type of injection and made an appointment for us to take him back on Monday for the vet to administer a further injection. So we took Django home and he went to sleep upstairs on our bed whilst Emi and I drove to Wakefield to help my mother with her weekly shopping.
We came home a little earlier than usual as I was concerned about Django's condition and didn't want to leave him alone too long. As it happened, he seemed much better and had something to eat so the injections seemed to have helped. Hopefully, he's going to be ok but we'll see what the vet thinks when we take him for tomorrow's injection.
Meanwhile, the hot, uncomfortable weather continues and it's proving to be difficult to sleep at night. I suppose we shouldn't complain as it's been the longest hot spell for some years, a proper British summer like the ones I remember from my childhood in the 1950s. The school summer holidays seemed to stretch on forever back then and each day I'd play outside with the neighbourhood kids beneath a clear blue sunny sky.
My main pal in those long ago days was a girl called Bronwyn Jackson who lived with her parents in the flat above ours on Conistone Crescent which was in a nice area of Eastmoor Estate. It wasn't a block of flats, just a two-story semi with a flat at ground level and one above. This arrangement was mirrored at the other side of the semi. (See the attached picture I took of the old place a few years ago.)
The back garden was where we played together, sometimes making an improvised tent from an old wooden clothes horse laid on its side with a blanket draped over it. Bronwyn and I would crawl inside and eat sandwiches that our mothers had made for us. Bronwyn was a couple of years older than me and a real tomboy. We were great chums and rode our bikes together around Conistone Crescent where we lived. Something of a cliche, I know, but as they say...'Happy Days.'
The flat on Conistone Crescent, Eastmoor Estate, referred to in this journal entry. I lived with my parents at No 28 which is the lower right hand side flat. Bronwyn Jackson lived in the flat above accessed by the exterior stairs at the side of the building. This photo was taken in 2004 and the original art-deco window frames and doors had unfortunately been replaced.
In the back garden of No 28 Conistone Crescent. Left to right: Bronwyn Jackson, my younger brother Ian and myself, (with ball.) The houses at the back of the photo'were on a different street but our back garden ran down to the end of their back gardens,
Photo taken in the 1950s by my mother or father.