It’s been a little while since I’ve spoken about the two loves of my life on the blog – no, not Ben; no, not sewing and reading, not even blogging and eating. I’m talking about my cats: Belle & Charlie. They feature on the blog every so often – they even wrote their own post here! – and on Instagram even more so (seriously, how can they be my most liked picture on Instagram?!), but I thought it was about time they had another post featuring them. Although, I’m sorry, but they’re getting pushed out of the spotlight a little as I’m also wanting to tell you all about a recent Brownie activity we ran too! But first up, how cute is Belle when she’s sleepy?!
They’re currently both doing very well and are more than happy. Although they aren’t as glad for the hot weather as we are…in fact, scratch what I said about happy, they’re actually a bit grumpy – they seem to think that we, their human owners, are in control of the weather, as we are their food, bedtimes etc. So they do seem to be taking it out on us at the moment that laying in the sun in the heat of the day with black fur is not ideal! Hence the picture of Belle above – it all got a little too much!
Anyway, I talked about wanting to share more our of Brownie activities on the blog to give others ideas so thought I’d try to get better at that! One of our recent badges was the Friends to Animals Badge. We ran a variety of activities including a charity event with another pack raising money for a local shelter, but the one that was the most fun was a visit to the local vet surgery. The plan was for them to learn all about caring for animals, both routinely and when they’re sick.
The vet and veterinary nurses were wonderful with the girls. We started off in the waiting room where the vet talked to them about what pets they all had (there were some rather unusual ones!) and what interesting animals they saw in the practice sometimes. We then filed into one of the examination rooms where they were shown around the different pieces of equipment and had a few things explained to them following their questions including vaccinations and neutering – they wondered why their pets had had to go for “The Operation” when they were young. Our girls really like details so this video (see below) was really helpful – what a brilliant way to explain to the girls with cute kitten videos!
We then headed into the surgery area where animals are prepared for operations, X-rays are taken etc. We had a lot of fun here as they were split into two groups and given a large stuffed dog each and taught how to bandage their legs. Our local practice is a training centre so they were well prepared for this and made it really fun too. I’d love to share some pictures but unfortunately had the girls’ faces in most of them so can’t do so!
They were also shown a few X-rays and asked to figure out what the problem was in each of them – the vets were certainly amused when on one particularly difficult X-ray there was silence as they tried to figure it out, then one Brownie shouted, perfectly seriously: “Oh, I know! It’s a crocodile with a problem with its lung!” Errmmmm, not many of those around North Yorkshire!
All in all, it was a brilliant evening out for the girls that they really enjoyed, and we’ll be sure to take groups back there in future. They finished the evening proclaiming that half of them now wanted to be vets or nurses when they were older!
