Category Archives: Domestica

Oh the irony.

Sammy – who is very old and has a chronic illness – has taken awful sick. For the last two weeks or so he’s been extremely lethargic and has hardly been able to keep any food down. I took him to the vet last week. She gave him some medication but it hasn’t helped.

He hasn’t moved from his mat in the corner of the living room for three days, and has basically given up eating & drinking.

I’m taking him to the vet again tomorrow, for the last time.

It’s funny. Quite a number of people who he doesn’t even know will miss him. I wish I could tell him about his blog-derived fanbase. I’m sure it would make him happy.

He was always very guarded and self-contained, and many mistook this for indifference. But he loved people. Other dogs, he could take or leave; I suspect this made him kind of lonely, but it’s one of the qualities I’ve always admired about him. Dogs are such whores, generally. He was a trouper and always carried himself with quiet dignity. (Except when he was being a goon.)

Bye bye Sammy.

UPDATE (Monday 3rd) – He’s rallied! I woke up to find his bed empty, and followed a long, telltale trail of liquid shit through the kitchen to the garden, where he was up and walking around.

Not sure what to do now. I guess we’ll give him a day or two, see what happens.

My sister left some potplants on the front porch for a few hours whilst in the process of moving out, and they were stolen. She was most aggrieved. Coincidentally, my own potplants (the pointsettia and the torture victim) have vanished in the kerfuffle without a trace

Stung by allegations of monstrousness and impressed by its dogged refusal to die, I have decided to try encouraging the plant.

I stripped its dead leaves and I’ve been watering it and giving it a few hours by the window each day.

I’m not sure whether it’s grateful or whether it’s turned hostile. Its bare branches seem a bit menacing at times.

But it surely knows that if I go down, we go together.

I’m not too worried.

I’ve had this plant all year. It’s been doing pretty badly lately, having lost its favoured window position to my new poinsettia.

It almost died in the new year heatwave. I thought that it had died.

But I watered it experimentally yesterday, and it perked right up.

I think I’m deriving sadistic pleasure from sustaining it on the brink of death.

The poinsettia is doing well.