Monday

Another day and yet another trip to Toulouse. Thankfully the delivery came before our morning meetings. It’s my new garden shredder which is pretty exciting. Looking forward to playing with this. Hopefully it’s a bit more robust than our London one which has now given up the ghost.

Quick meeting with the Health Innovation Network to share our progress and priorities for the next 12 months. Once that’s done we jump in the car and we’re off. Since I have a lot of work on I took the opportunity to get some of it done while Matt was driving, might as well make the most of the time available.

We were running a bit early for our meeting at the prefecture so dropped into Leroy Merlin to see if there was anything great but most of it was a bit more expensive than Matt has found online. Once we got to the offices we found the tightest, tiny car park round the corner. Thank heavens Matt was driving as there wasn’t a hope in hell that I could fit it into that space. Wish I’d taken a photo as he had to climb over to my side and then squeeze out the door with just mm to spare. My appointment was at 20 past and we arrived with 1 minute to spare. Straight in, through the scanners, and just as we walked though both our numbers came up. Quick chat to confirm our address etc and then they took our fingerprints and that was it, all over and done in about 5 minutes. Our Carte de Sejours (residency permits) will be sent to us in the post in the next 1-2 months!

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Once we got home we went to have a look at the tulip magnolia.

Grumpy cat was about and didn’t think a lot of it initially. But it turns out that she is definitely not a male cat!

As we were going past the mound of grass clippings we noticed that the nest was even deeper than last time. Lo and behold, there were 5 teeny tiny kittens in it. They can’t be more than a few hours old.

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That rather put pay to us getting straight back to work. Matt figured that she must be hungry so went to get some food. She was very skittish but she eventually ate it. We spent the next couple of hours watching grumpy cat to see if she would go back to them. After an hour and a half and with the sun gone behind the mountains it was getting cold and no sign of whether or not she would go back to them (or if they were indeed hers). A quick bit of research and Matt was off to Intermarche to see what cat stuff he could muster up in case we had to take them in. While he did that I had a quick run round a few of the closest neighbours to see if the cat might belong to any of them and let them know what was happening. Unfortunately no joy, she is most likely a stray or belongs to a neighbour that I haven’t managed to get hold off. As I get back here’s Matt with some cat milk, whole milk, evaporated milk and even a hot water bottle. He’s a good daddy cat!

Another half hour of watching and she has finally gone back to them. Thank heavens for that, we certainly weren’t looking forward to feeding them every two hours I can tell you. While it’s due to drop to 0deg tonight they are better off with their mother. Hopefully she’ll be left alone and be able to look after them.

Just as we were about to put the shutters down we saw a black and white cat in the garden so went to check if it was grumpy. Very quickly established it was in fact meow. One little meow and she raced over to us. Quick belly rub – yep, definitely not her kittens! She followed us back to the house so we let her in for a bit, not least so she’d leave grumpy and the kits alone. Eventually however it was dinner time so she had to go out but she certainly seemed to like the heater, and my feet!

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Later on Matt apparently heard two cats fighting outside the house so we went to look. Nothing obvious to see. Finally found a good head torch so we could try to see from the other side of the fence if grumpy was in the nest. Not an easy thing to see from 20m away but we’re pretty confident she was there. Not much we can do. Seems we also managed to startle Meow who had decided that the cat nest box we made was put there for her – it’s currently just at the backdoor but tomorrow we will try to find a good location for it to see if grumpy thinks it’s better than her current spot.

[22 March 2021]