Mum is still in hospital, althoguh she should be coming out today. My DB stayed with my Dad for a week, and did lots of maintenance niggley things. He replaced 15 lightbulbs, and Dad can now "see" the remote control; he did some stuff to the door to reduce the draught; he vacuumed and vacuumed the carpet; he cleaned the bathroom; changed the sheets for my Dad, and did several loads of washing.
He's going back today to (hopefully) collect Mum and finish off some jobs, including putting a dogflap in one of the internal doors.
Mum and Dad want to sell their humungous jigsaw puzzle collection. They aren't able to do jigsaws now, and they need the space. The cash will come in handy too.
We've started preparation, and I am looking forward ot getting started,
I was hoping to go with my brother, so that I could focus on the jigsaws, but I'm still 'under the weather'. I just can't risk it.
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The chap who is helping us with our garden came on Saturday. He and DH focussed on cutting dead branches out 2 of the apple trees. This has allowed an amazing amount of light into that part of the garden! The chicken run has more light in one corner, we may get grass growing in Spring, and the Quince tree might do better now! The logs will be cut ready to store for burning next year.
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We were looking out of the kitchen window yesterday, talking about the trees. We saw tha Shekby was on DH's workshop roof. And then she was on NextDoor's shed. And then she was back on the fence, walking along. We realised she was going to try and get to the front of the house.
DH kept an eye on her from the kitchen, and I went to the hallway. I saw her appear, and she walked along the fence and then got on to the front gates. She couldn't get down, so she turned around and walked back.
DH saw her reappear. And then she turned round, and tried again.
This time, when she got to the gates, she jumped off them on to the drive. I was out of the front door immediately, and DH joined me. This was our chance to teach her what to do if she foudn herself on the "wrong" side of the gate,
We coaxed her out from under the car, and we taught her to use the front cat flap to get home.
The front catflap is physically locked to prevent exit, but (in theory) allows our cats to come in.
Except.
Except the front cat flap didn't recognise her. DH twiddled, and it still didn't work. I kept her amused with cuddles and treats, and DH went back in the house to take the physical lock off. Shelby went through no problem.
We had a spare cat flap tag, so we registered it, and then tested it. It was recognised by the garden flap, but not the front one. Luckily, we had another, identical, cat flap in the loft. It used to be our garden flap, but we replaced it with a bigger "pet door" when we had the doors replaced recently. Keep up!)
The old cat flap was retrieved and tested, and then we replaced the faulty one.
We tried new batteries on the faulty one, and we tried a factory reset. Neither seemed to work. DH deregistered it, and reregistered it, and it came back to life. Too late now, it's relegated to being the "spare flap".
I realise that she's going to be out the front more often now, so we'll need to keep an eye out. We need to do the training again I think.
