Major drama

It's been exciting around here. Last Sunday (the 26th of April, not the one just past), Zhukov suddenly attacked Ayesha. This all looked rather more serious than a play-fight, so we separated the combatants, calmed them down and reintroduced them. Same result. A few calls to Vetline confirmed our suspicions: Ayesha was on heat. There was nothing for it but to ring the vet and see if we couldn't arrange for them to have the surgery earlier than planned, and otherwise to try and keep them in separate rooms (a difficult task when you have two active cats who are used to having the run of the house). On Monday we were able to ring the vet and book them in for the following day thanks to a cancellation.

So that Zhukov could sit on the sofa with us as he likes to do in the evenings, we took to shutting him in his cage and putting it on the sofa with us. Zhukov was happy enough; Ayesha initially avoided him, but by Monday night she'd figured out that he was immobilised, and took to walking up to his cage, hissing at him, going away and repeating the whole performance, which we didn't think was very nice of her, and told her so. Alan managed to catch some of this on video-- it's too dark and was audibly filmed during The Daily Show, but it gives you the idea:

We got them back from the vet on Tuesday afternoon. The vet actually complained about Ayesha's behaviour, though wouldn't go into details (beyond that Ayesha evidently gave her a good scratch at some point)-- evidently she made her displeasure at the situation felt. Here are both cats just back from the vet and somewhat groggy:

So, poor Ayesha's now got to wear a subwoofer for the duration. She had trouble manoevering in it at first:

But soon found it had advantages in terms of keeping her brother away from her food while she was eating:

And before long was getting around pretty well:

And she's now nearly all healed up and best friends with her brother again:




More subwoofer pics later, plus some nice pics/videos of Zhukov in the garden before The Incident, which I haven't had a chance to post due to the drama.