Tilda has been getting perkier and perkier. I'm not counting my chickens (pun intended), because I've seen this before - an apparent rally before dying. But she really is getting bolshy.
When one of us (by which, 6 out of 7 days is DH) comes down in the morning to feed the cats and make the morning drinks, she's not just out of her bedroom: she now marches into the middle of the kitchen when she sees us, and demands her breakfast, please!
When she's wolfed down her mealworms (ever regret starting something?!), she demands her yoghurt. Washburn (ginger cat) knows what yoghurt is and he can hear the sound of the tub being opened even if he's in the garden, so he comes rushing in or a spoonful as well.
And then Tilda is pacing up and down to be taken out.
This morning, she jumped out of the door herself. Granted, she didn't go anywhere once she got outside. I put her in her run, let the other girls out and came back in to make tea, have shower etc.
By the time I got back downstairs, there was a terrible racket coming from the garden. It was like the scene in the Italian Job, where they are all in the big house getting ready to go, and then all of the Boys started whingeing (Me in the back with my migraines?). Anyway. I went outside and they were all at it. Not just Lotti and Poppy, all of them. And then I saw that Tilda was also whingeing loudly. Actually it wasn't loudly, because I had to get quite close before I could hear her, but I could see from her body that she was whingeing as loudly as she could.
So, I opened the gate to her run, and let her get in with the others. Then I came back into the house, opened the kitchen door, and the bedroom windows, so that we could hear if there was any trouble.
I should probably add that I put Tilda in with the big girls a couple of days ago..at least, I put her down on the ground as I needed two hands to do something else. This was the day after they'd let her sit under the Pampass bush without (as far as I could tell) molesting her. However, Custard appeared from nowhere and attacked her. That's why I'm a little nervous.
So, she's been in there for a couple of hours.
I've briefly allowed myself the fantasy that we might be able to reintegrate her with the flock... but I don't really believe that. And I really don't like to count my chickens.
