Odd Animals

Without a doubt, our oddest animals (and there’s quite a number of contenders) are Queenie and Primrose. Both have very limited sight – they can see shadows and Primrose appears to have some vision right at the bottom of her eyes, but this entails here putting her head right back, Queenie is also deaf.

Primrose waves her head around in quite an alarming way. I realize now it’s when she’s trying to look at something.

I was watching poor Queenie whose role in life is to be a sheepdog, following one of the cats into a room with no light but not completely dark, and to her the cat just disappeared – even though she was sat on the floor in front of her. Queenie kept going out, coming back in again and doing the dog equivalent of scratching her head.

I can’t help thinking that these two have the worst of it. The blind animals don’t see anything so their world is constant, however these two, seeing shadows and shapes, must have a very confusing life. Queenie also gets confused if Ian wears a hat or carries something under her arm as it changes his shape.

Alfie is on the mend. He is wearing a little fleecey jacket to keep his back warm and that seems to be helping. The biggest problem now is stopping him from jumping onto things. But it’s nice to see him nearly back to normal again.