Swift half news - 10th May 2010

• Malu had another visit to the vets today, and as he has responded so well to the first two days of his steroids etc... (he's bench pressing 200 kilos as I write this), we are hopeful that the uveitus was caused by a trauma and nothing more serious. He'll finish the course of drugs and then we must just hope...
• Hen blackbird still on eggs (Malu hasn't got her yet).
• Still no swift egg but it is still pretty parky here, with our north-easterly breeze stuck in a rut.

Swift half news - 9th May 2010

• Bad news regarding our male 9 month-old kitten, "Malu". I noticed a haze to his left eye on friday gone and Anna and I took him to the vets on saturday. He has an internal inflammation of the eye -not caused by an external source (bee sting, stick in eye etc...). This probably is anterior uveitis and in extreme cases can lead to blindness in the eye or even loss of the eye. Very often this ocular inflammation is caused by a more serious internal problem in the cat - feline leukaemia, feline immuno-deficiency problems, cancer or something more mundane like toxoplasmosis. The real trouble is that in about 75% of cases of anterior uveitis, the underlying cause is never diagnosed. Not good news then I'm afraid to say. His eye does seem to be responding well to three sets of drugs though, but I am well aware that we could be just treating the symptoms with these drugs, rather than the cause. Fingers, toes and everything else well and truly crossed.
• First (two) strawberry flowers out this weekend (so I planted four more strawberry plants and re-furrowed all 21 potato plants (even though only 11 are showing at present) to errr... celebrate).
• Both swifts seem to be spending longer and longer in the roof, at least in the morning.