This morning we took Emmanuel down to the Sheerwater with us as he was heading off on the later boat. Steve Dev O was heading off today and happy to take him as far south as Perth where Steve lives so that worked perfectly. Emmanuel was planning a day in Edinburgh tomorrow before heading back to France on the Eurostar over the weekend. He was a nice enough lad but not much cop as a WWOOFer really. He left a nice comment in our WWOOFing book though. We may have another French WWOOFer arriving at the weekend.
Coming off the boat were our two newest Croft 3 creatures, a pair of cats. 2 boys, brothers. One ginger and one black and white. I advertised in our local newsletter for a cat last year and Ann, the editor got in touch to tell me about the ginger one who she had rehomed but had never settled with her. She was debating whether or not to keep the black and white one and then decided she would. The ginger one is very scared and I didn’t really think that was the right cat for us here. She got back in touch a couple of weeks ago to say she still wanted to rehome him and actually, would let the black and white one go too. After much debate (as in the kids and I really wanted them, Ady really didn’t) we agreed they could come and she sent them over today on the boat with her son.
We popped them in the car with all the windows and boot open  to recover from their journey and headed off on the Sheerwater. It was a gorgeous day, I even got a bit sunburned. The water was super calm with excellent visibility and on the way over to Soay we saw porpoises and lots of seabirds, on the way back we saw a minke whale 🙂 So lovely to see one again after such a crappy start to the wildlife year. Let’s hope it heralds the beginning of some good spots for the coming weeks, probably only about 6 or 7 left I guess.
Back to Rum and we said goodbye to Emmanuel, dropped Trudi in the village and popped to the shop for some catfood, then brought the cats home. Ann has been calling the ginger one Ginger anyway, which was the name Scarlett was determined a ginger cat should have. The black and white one will be called Comfrey which is the name we chose for our hypothetical cat while we were WWOOFing and planning the list of animals we would have. Ann called him Bertie but I don’t think he’ll mind the name change too much.
I have fixed together two large dog crates for them to be in, inside our really good chicken shed. They are scared and edgy and it will take quite some time to win them round but I am fairly sure we can do it. Comfrey will be fine and would probably even already be a lap cat so I will work with him first and build Ginger’s confidence by spending lots of time in with them. I can take a chair and sit in the shed talking to them and reading or just being there so they get used to me. It will definitely be quite a project but I love cats so much and have really missed having them around all these last few years since we lost Candle. These two are used to living with a dog so they should be fine with Bonnie although she will take some getting used to them. The idea is that they are mostly outside cats anyway although I secretly plan to have them on my lap of an evening, putting them out before I go to bed. We’ll see how long that takes to pan out…
It was really midgey this afternoon so my planned weeding didn’t happen but Ady and I fed the animals together and I made a really nice dinner with sausages and roasted root veg. The forecast rain for the next 24 hours has already started so tomorrow may well be mostly sitting in the cat shed reading and knitting I suspect.