big jim

coast to coast and s**t on everybody

for some bizarre reason everytime i scroll past this picture i see a cat version of ronnie barker!

my old 12ft x 6ft layout shed is about to be changed into a cattery for ‘complete’ males and ferals we get through the doors as we currently have to shut them in the dining room away from other cats when they stay until they are safe to be with other cats. were planning on making 2 or 3 pens inside with storage space below for crates and food etc, and i was thinking of making the trellis area i had built to hide the shed into an outdoor area too, would be simple enough to do, add mesh to the existing trellis panels and fit a mesh door to the rose arch and a roof the beauty of the shed is as its my old layout room its fully insulated and has electricity to it (that needs reconnecting), it would only be used in extreme cases but a handy addition when its done we had a big crate for mike the maine and he’d happily sit in it all day chirping at the birds, however if you let him out he wouldnt try and escape the confines of the garden, most of the time he would happily go outside and go straight to the crate! we did let him out at the caravan once and he made a beeline for the small but thickly wooded area behind the van and wouldnt come out, dominic was beside himself with worry, we were all frantically searching back and forth for hours, covered every inch of it then eventually after about 4 hours mike just sauntered out of the woods along the path behind the van totally ignoring us as if we werent there, i think he was having too much fun to come home, we grabbed him and bought him in though! the same woods last week lola and fae went in together which was unusual as normally they dont get along, lola is a cantankerous old sod, she went in, fae followed, lola came out 5 mins later but no sign of fae, again, missing for over an hour, we could faintly hear a cat but not see her despite covering the whole area, eventually she came back too but one of her claws was twisted, all we can put it down to was lola had purposely chased her up a tree and she got stuck, lola emerging from the trees as if butter wouldnt melt

Some from last night waiting at landor st xc HST 66849 heading to bescot with 66503 in lawley st and my train arriving with an avanti Pendolino passing overhead last night of it tonight thank god!

not heard about that, what’s it all about

@iL Dottore we have had a cat through our doors who was raised vegan from a kitten, sickly little thing, weaned onto meat and now a picture of health drugs: clooney on the first page the one who was all matted belonged to a druggie, before being abandoned by him who thought it funny to inject him with heroin, thankfully he’s all alright now and living the life of a lord but early on in his foster we did actually consider having him put to sleep as he was so pitiful and for want of a better word ‘damaged’ And we thought it best for all concerned then lockdown happened and he was stuck with us and he just turned a corner and recovered, learned to use a litter tray and started to clean himself properly

agreed but you do have to bite your tongue sometimes when a perfectly healthy cat comes to stay because the owner got bored, is moving away, Step daughter doesn’t like her, we’ve heard them all another annoyance is an old cat, suddenly needing medical attention is surrendered to the charity, gets the attention it needs then the owner expects to get the cat back afterwards, of course there are all sorts of contracts signed up before the cat is surrendered meaning they can’t get it back and it will be rehired but you’d be surprised the number of people who think the charity is basically a free vet service, all the work carried out by the vets on the rescues is paid for by the charity, they certainly don’t do it for free

https://newsthump.com/2020/08/13/cyclist-repeatedly-fails-captcha-test-after-failing-to-identify-images-with-traffic-lights/

they seem to know, or play us for fools at least! this was Lola literally 5 minutes after being let out of her carrier when she came to be a foster after that we couldn’t let her go, similarly fae, there was just something about her that made her feel like one of the family straight away as for hank, the people who found him said he was hissing and scratchy when they caught him, he had been abandoned in morrisons car park, when my wife went to collect him he just got out of the crate and snuggled up to her, when he got to our house he just plonked himself on the sofa with fae who just looks bemused at any cat smaller than her and went to sleep, the vet last week said he was all claws and teeth when she was examining him but once he came back to me he was good as gold again! the sad thing with hank is he’s not feral, as soon as he came to the house he used the litter tray without encouragement so had obviously been litter trained at some point, but he wasn’t microchipped and an appeal in social media etc didn’t bring forward an owner, this of course happened at the end of lockdown which is what we feared, people who needed companionship at the start got bored quickly, thankfully we have only had a couple of cats from that scenario come through our doors recently some of the sadder cases are older cats who’s owners have found a new partner and they don’t like the animal so we get requests to come and collect them, “or I’ll just set her free in the countryside” it’s heart breaking to see the cat get upset and pine for weeks not knowing what it’s done wrong my wife’s job is to do home checks on potential new owners and match cats up with new homes, she has had a 99% success rate so far, all of the older cats she’s refined have gone on to have a better life than before

he was on mileage

buy a BMW mini then! Saltley depot the other week

I’m sure no one will mind me putting this in here as the other thread is locked the 2 railwaymen who tragically died yesterday in Stonehaven have been named may all your signals be green gentlemen https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeenshire/2405491/train-driver-and-conductor-killed-in-stonehaven-derailment-named-as-investigation-into-tragedy-begins/amp/

Groundhog day last night was some of the worst rain I’ve ever driven through, so bad between penkridge and crewe I could barely see Beyond the windscreen with the wiper on full speed, quite unnerving especially with the incident in Scotland yesterday, I actually slowed down past the site of a recent land slip near whitmore just incase it had given way again, thankfully it hadn’t, weirdest thing was once I reached Madeley 8 mile south of crewe I’d passed through what can only be described as they eye of the storm only to be greeted by clear skies and all the lightning behind me, it followed me a little bit toward Manchester but we only got a few showers there same job again tonight!

Forgot to put the couple of pics from yesterday up, 66753 in oxford rd, stopped at a red which was lucky as I grabbed a cold drink while I was waiting, the fan end of the loco was unbearable in the weather we had yesterday and the air Con was struggling to keep up, basically if you open a side window it sucks the hot air in from the fans! and this morning in nuneaton same job tonight, a bit cooler and the air con is better but some serious rain between Wolverhampton and crewe

my wife calls our 3 her black cat army!

Just flicking through the news channels and ended up at aljazeera who were reporting on the rebuild (or not) of Beirut spotted this in the background, BMW Z1, and an old Opel Astra Passing by

No words... Thoughts going out to all involved EDIT: had a think about it and I’ve removed the link to the pic on Twitter, if you want to see it log in there

well he is off to college to train to be a craft butcher so I suppose we can enjoy some of his other animals soon!

@eastglosmog those Maine’s are beautiful! sadly ours, Mike, who died also had cancer and cat flu but he got over them only to die of a heart attack 5 years down the line, he was bought by his previous owner as a status symbol but he never bothered to get him vaccinated or microchipped and basically abused him, even his name was very derogatory based on his breed name (he was called, let’s say, N-word to be safe) as soon as we had him to rehabilitate he became the alpha male of the house within days, we didn’t have any male cats of our own so he took the crown, Lola just let him get on with it, after a while when we had fosters come and stay we would see him go into the room they were in and investigate and start chirping at them in that unique Maine c00n way, which seemed to put the other cat at ease, only one other cat tried to fight him for dominance and that ended with mike simply pinning his head down to the floor with his massive paw while chirping at him loudly! we first noticed something was up when he jumped off the bed and came a cropper, his legs went from underneath him and he started panting, straight to the vet who had said he had multiple heart attacks that day, we could have got some pills to keep him with us but he wouldn’t have had any form of life so we very reluctantly decided to let him go, we all really miss him but look at it as he got an extra year of quality life with us that he wouldn’t have got had he stayed with his previous owner, he will never be replaceable especially when it came to caring for the fosters that come and go, although we have noticed that even at a few months old hank is displaying some of his traits with them after he died we commissioned an artist to do a pencil drawing of him which we gave to Dominic for Christmas (2 weeks after he died) as you can see it was an emotional moment when he opened it up

My wife has lots of bast figures strategically placed around the house and none if the cats will go anywhere near them!

Looks like he’s been on the steroids!! as for bengals, we’ve had a couple of those stay through the rescue, a very vocal cat, one of them was with us as she was given as a gift to someone who didn’t want her!

My wife helps manage a cat rescue so we get loads of cats through our door on a weekly and monthly basis, we have kept 2 of them and it looks like we will be keeping the latest one too as he has made us his home we have Lola.... and fae..... and now hank..... up until December we also had mike, a Maine c00n who unfortunately had a heart attack and had to be put to sleep Some if the other rescues we have had recently range from a family of kittens to an old boy who was found living in a clothes donation skip, he had mouth issues so wasn’t cleaning himself and became matted, he came to us freshly shaved and stayed until he was able to be re homed which with a non litter trained 13 year old cat was a challenge but we did it, he now lives in a huge Manor House in Cheshire! this is clooney and the Windsor’s, a whole family abandoned with their mother, luckily she wasn’t particularly maternal or the kittens close so it wasn’t a problem splitting them up for new homes so expect lots of pics from me in this thread!

I think your getting a little worked up of that ad personally, it says any car not just an MG, no different than a BMW mini dealer offering a similar scheme and putting a pic of a classic mini up as a collector/enthusiast the ‘scrap’ car Picture has caught your eye and done exactly what they want the ad to do, draw you in, ok your not supposed to get annoyed with it but you have shared it with a wider audience for free, heck having seen it if I had the money I’d be tempted to scrap the convertible mini for an electric MG SUV! MG probably have that older customer base who have been brand loyal for years and have a low mileage (rover) MG sat on the drive that they may fancy upgrading, and as you say it’s not a government scrappage scheme so a savvy salesman would give bottom dollar for it then put it up for sale in the classics mags or autotrader for a profit and here is the info to say it’s national https://mg.co.uk/offers-finance/swappage/ the electric SUV is £27995 for the top of the range one after government grants, another 7k off that makes it a quite attractive price, now where is that delivery mileage MG ZT-T I’ve got parked up that I can trade in

Some from the weekend and yesterday Went to seascale on Sunday, spot the 156s! gethin was commenting how nice and warm the sea was there, didn’t tell him he was 1 mile down the coast from sellafield (not that you would know!) Silloth sunset then back to it, caught a train from Carlisle to crewe ready to work the Trafford park last night, this came rolling in ahead of my planned train so I caught it to Wigan, first time I’ve been on one, mixed reviews, far more airy then a Pendolino with better views, the seats weren’t too bad but the ride was awful in places, and sat under the pantograph every time it went through a neutral section the, I can only assume, the breakers in the roof were ‘BANG.....BANG’ as they closed, they certainly accelerate well though off at Wigan for the train to crewe Walked for my car via the old diesel depot Landor st, massive fire in Tyseley colas 70 and HST passing by and in came my train Got held in sandbach for a couple of late running passenger trains Into manchester and back to bescot where I got off, must have been a possession as the rest of this week I’m finishing In nuneaton

I’ve been playing animal crossing new horizons on the switch, borrowed gethins copy he got for his birthday and set up my own account on my switch, takes a while to get going and I’m only on day 2 so stuck on my own island so far but it’s a bit addictive once you understand what to do and start fishing and catching bugs etc to earn money to upgrade things