Luis kindly barked me to wakefulness at 04:55 in response to some external pussy misunderstanding. The mother of the kittens is less than friendly towards them however she usually only hisses at them and eats her food separately on top of the freezer. There are now some ginger interlopers, also kittens, who are quite aggressive. They are trying to stake their claim in the food bowl even though I try to put only enough down for the immediate needs of ‘my’ animals.
The Early Walk was warmer than the previous couple of days and virtually still. This has the disadvantage of mosquitoes rather than wind. I prefer wind, I think. At the end of the walk, I let all of the dogs go except for Obi. IZO hung around, racing about with Skinny and Oskar, then disappeared. The remainder followed me over the rocks and back to the normal collection point where they were reattached before walking back to the camping. On our return, I fed the cats, to avoid any disruption, then got ready to run with Skinny. IZO was nowhere to be seen so Skinny and I left for Kountoura.
Trotting towards us on our return to the camping, I could see IZO’s red collar in the distance. Then it dawned on me that he’d ‘lost’ his red collar on Friday when he went AWOL. On Saturday and Sunday, he was not allowed off the lead. When it came to the Evening Amble on Friday it became apparent that he required a collar so I replaced the missing red collar with a new, black one. The mystery is, how did the new, black collar get replaced by the ‘lost’ red one from last Friday? Someone must have kept the red collar, he went to them and they replaced the black with the red and released him. The plot thickens…
The traumas of pet ownership
Other pussy drama is that the kitten which has adopted Erica and Janne has hurt his rear paw so is hobbling. They are concerned that he won’t be able to make it through the open window of the storeroom to get his food. They wanted to know what brand of food I give them so they could feed him separately. To save trouble, I simply gave them the remainder of the bag of food: I’m going to be feeding him anyway, whether it’s me putting down the food or Erica, it really makes no difference. Naturally, to put your mind at rest, I have another new bag of cat food as I bought two on my expedition to the shops with Sascha last week.
The day has been warm and sunny with just a little gentle breeze in the past hour or so. The high is 28.7℃ and the low 18.4℃ so I needed both fleecy blankets in the night. It was warm enough when I got up though. Tomorrow talks about a little rain in the evening. A bit of a nuisance but we could do with some water from the sky rather than from the tap.
I chatted earlier to the new German neighbours with the motorhome to the north of me. They were entertaining the kittens and being entertained by the various cat antics going on around them. They tell me they have one more week on Crete, a week in the Peloponnese and then back to Germany. I suggested they might like to come back to Grammeno in winter. Certainly warmer than most of Germany.
Eliza has arrived and we’ve had a chat. She tells me she’ll be eating at the camping restaurant this evening. She’s had a long day so I didn’t keep her long. She’s settling into her cabin and was unpacking when I left her.
Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it!
The news today brings the story of one of the oldest travel companies folding leaving up to 150,000 UK holidaymakers stranded at their destinations. Another 500,000 German and Scandinavians are also affected. In anticipation, there have been preparations for one of the largest peacetime repatriations. Thomas Cook ceased trading at 02:00 today despite attempts to find a £200 million loan. The repatriation exercise will include holiday and flight-only customers with the bill of some £600 million going to the taxpayer.
“Some observers pointed out the irony that RBS, which is 62 per cent owned by the taxpayer, was forcing the Civil Aviation Authority, which is overseen by the Department for Transport, to foot an estimated £600 million bill for repatriating passengers, compensating those who had lost their bookings and paying the money owed to the hotels it worked with over the summer.”
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