What's new, pussycat?

Another busy month has almost past.

At the beginning of the month, Ed's small choir from Montbron sang at a wedding, their last "performance" of the season. Practices will start again in September, but they are, for the second time, facing the loss of their conductor. Practices for his big choir also start again in September.

Friends from the Netherlands camped in the area again and came for dinner. Just as the chicken finished cooking on the barbecue, it started raining. We quickly moved to the smaller table under the pergola to enjoy our dinner.

One of our tourist activities was a torchlight tour of medieval Montbron. Unfortunately most of the old buildings have largely been destroyed with only bits remaining. Ed is standing at a healing spring where pilgrims (Montbron is on one of the secondary routes for St Jacques de Compestella) washed. They went down to the steps into the water on one side and out on the other. 

We discovered that a largish chapel that we pass frequently was part of a 12C lepers' colony. The graveyard was discovered when the silos for a nearby cooperative were built.

We've been to several concerts, in Limoges and in Montbron. And Mazerolles had its annual fête patronale, complete with dinner and fireworks. 

Ed's busy repainting all the shutters and rebuilding part of one that was rotten.

The real focus of the month, however, has been animals. At the end of July, Oscar had a biopsy on an innocuous appearing lump in his right ear that had started growing quickly. After two weeks with a cone, he got the stitches out and we got the results. He had a mastocytoma, well-differentiated so it's not likely that it has spread, and they recommended immediate surgery to remove the ear. (This isn't your regular-white-cat-with-sunburned-ears cancer, so we still have to watch for that on his remaining ear.)  For the ear surgery, Oscar had no stitches; the incision was glued together. Still, it will take 4-6 week to heal. For the first weeks with the cone, he would walk up to an object and freeze for minutes before moving on. After that poor start, he's now getting very adept with the cone and has even caught at least one mouse.

During the same period when we were waiting for Oscar's biopsy results, we noticed that Sophie was feeling very poorly. We made an appointment for her when we picked Oscar up after his surgery. Seems she had a bladder infection and had to take 10 days of pills. 

Oscar's still wearing his cone, but both cats seem to be feeling well now. Pogo's fine too, just getting older (aren't we all?). He seems to be fairly deaf now, and it can be quite hard to get is attention. 

Two days ago, while working outside, Ed heard a periodic squawking that he thought might be a baby bird fallen from a nest. After a few hours of this, we made a search. And found a baby hedgehog.

Here is a little video of her being fed. Turn down the sound and put your left ear on your shoulder. (If this video doesn't work here, the same video is available on Facebook.)

We are busy with feeding her every four hours, trying to get her up to 600g before it's time for winter hibernation. If she doesn't grow that big, we'll have an interesting house pet through the winter.

The potager has been kind of a flop this year. We were starting to get some tomatoes, then were discouraged when they started shriveling up until we noticed that all our neighbors' tomatoes are doing the same. We suspect it's the strange summer weather we've been having. The zucchini plant we bought gave us several nice, spiny cucumbers before giving up. We still have an eggplant and a cayenne plant producing, but that's about it.

The first of August was pretty wet. Since then there's been only a bit of rain, but temperatures remain cool for the year.