In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
I've tried Feliway. I'm not sure it does what it says on the tin, but of course the problem is that you can never be sure how bad things might have been if you hadn't used it. For what it's worth, I agree with your vet about sedation. Cats don't cope with tranquilisers very well and age increases the risks. As far as pet passports are concerned, I paid for the rabies vaccination and the tests, but of course there are no border checks once you leave the UK, and the British authorities don't care at all about animals you're taking out of the country. If I was doing it again, I wouldn't go to the bother and expense. It seems to me that it will benefit nobody if you take a distressed cat into a hotel room and then have such a disturbed night due to its yowling and prowling that you're not well-rested for the drive the next day. You know your cat better than anyone, but I do think that people very often treat their pets as they would want to be treated as a human, rather than considering what best suits the nature of the beast. Dogs are pack animals and they get distressed if separated from the rest of the pack; I think that it therefore makes perfect sense to take a dog into a hotel room with you rather than leaving it in the car. Those of us who provide homes, food and medical care for cats may want to think that they feel part of our family, but the fact is that cats are, by nature, solitary animals and they wouldn't pine for us like a dog would if we suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke. Far more important to a cat is the security of having an area they consider home. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like to be left in a silent, darkened car in a hotel's car park while the rest of your travelling party goes inside to sleep in a room, but you shouldn't project that onto your cat. It might well be that the best possible way for him to pass those hours - for him and for you - would be for him to be left alone in a familiar (although unloved) cat box in a car parked in the most quiet area you can manage. How you deal with things like food, drink and toilet needs is another matter, but my experience is that cat's don't eat or drink much while on extended journeys and they therefore don't have much need for a litter tray. Obviously, whatever you do, you absolutely have to make sure that the cat can't run off in a panic if you take him out of the travelling box. If there should be a mess, well, it's not like you're going to be on the road for many days. Seems to me that the main priority is to get the cat from Point A to Point B as safely and as quickly as possible and then make sure there's someplace dark and secluded for him to hide while he starts to suss out his new home. Al
When I left my last home in Scotland and moved to Abruzzo along with my two cats, they made the trip in a plywood "house" which I'd made. It fit in the back of the car (hatchback with rear seats down) and had three little compartments: one for a litter tray, one for food and water and one for sleeping. The last was lined with carpet tiles to cut down on noise and to give them something to cling on to when going around curves. I did that drive in more or less one "sitting"; stopping in rest areas to doze whenever I got sleepy, rather than staying in a hotel. The only problem I encountered was that the dimmer one of the two cats turned out to be a real yowler who complained constantly and loudly all the way. That got rather tedious after ten hours or so. When my partner decided to bring her cats to Italy from Holland, the box got reused, but this time it went in the back of the pickup I'd bought after moving here. We broke that journey with a stay in a hotel in Germany, but the cats remained in the box overnight. In both cases, the cats coped perfectly well with the trip. It seems to me that the key point is that cats are territorial animals, so removing them from their patch and dumping them in unfamiliar territory will always be stressful. That means I really do question whether it's kind to take a cat into a hotel room. Putting cats in a travel box, putting box in a car, bouncing them around with a lot of strange noises for a few hours, then taking them out and turning them loose in a hotel room (with God only knows what scents due to prior animal residents), then putting them back in box and putting box back in car before driving on and eventually turning them loose in yet another unfamiliar environment never seemed to me a sensible way of dealing with the moggie move. Far better, I thought, to provide them with their own little darkened cave where they could hide for the duration of the drive. Al
In my (very limited) experience of baking cakes here, I've had the best results with flour labelled as being, as Patz says, per torte or per dolci. It's not hard to find self-raising plain flour, just look for "con lievito" on the label. Baking powder comes in little sachets and it, too, can be found in supermarkets of any size. From memory, the most common brand is called something like Pane Angelli. You'll probably find it somewhere near the flour along with cake decorating stuff, artificial colouring, flavourings and little packets of powdered sugar intending for dusting. (If you want larger quantities of powdered sugar to make icing for a cake, your best bet is Lidl.) It took me some time to see bicarbonate of soda in supermarkets, since it wasn't with the baking powder and other baking stuff. Eventually, I found it lurking near the mineral water and water-flavouring syrups. It's sold in 500 gram and 1 kilo boxes, so don't look for the little containers you see in British shops. By the way, I know it doesn't apply to cake-baking (unless you like very robust cakes), but you'll probably have difficulty finding dried yeast in most Italian supermarkets. They do, however, sell fresh yeast and it's somewhere in the chilled cabinets. If you really want dried, Lidl is again the best bet. Al
Well, yes there was an unwarranted assumption on my part that the sewage treatment plant was being bought in Italy. I imagine that you can give up all hope of getting one installed by your geometra if you're planning on buying it from someplace outlandish like Germany, Austria, Switzerland or France. Those daft foreigners have no idea of how wonderful concrete truly is. Al
Sorry I can't give you more practical advice and assistance, but the thought occured that maybe the right people to sell your geometra on the idea of a Sewage Treatment Plant are the (Italian) people who would sell it to you? Of course, this assumes the geometra is actually willing to listen to novel ideas. It also assumes that the geometra is not determined to give you a septic tank because it will be sold or installed by his brother/cousin/uncle, and that there's not an arrangement whereby he gets a nice cut of the price his clients are charged for septic tanks. How entangled are you with this character? If he's not willing to listen to your wishes on this point, how many other things you ask for is he going to ignore when it actually comes time for work to be done? Al
My partner's mother flew Ryanair from Eindhoven about three weeks ago. On check-in, she was carrying a few bottles of medication in a plastic carrier bag long with a small handbag. When the Ryanair counter staff told her she would have to pay for a second item of hand-luggage, she simply put the handbag in the carrier bag and the "problem" (which could only have ever existed in the mind of a cretin or someone working on commission) disappeared. On the other hand, she feels very positive about Pescara Ryanair staff since a nice young man on the check-in counter gave her a priority boarding card the last time she flew out of there. Of course, since she's only in her mid-seventies and has only minor mobility problems, she decided not to use it and offered it instead to a "poor old lady" she met in the waiting room. Al
I don't know about sweet potatoes, but I believe that the ordinary potatoes you get in supermarkets are usually sprayed with a chemical which inhibits sprouting. If your experimental subject isn't looking too shrivelled, mouldy or generally sorry for itself, perhaps you might try giving it a good wash before returning it to its little damp perch and waiting a bit longer. Al
It seems to me that Alan H's suggestion to turn off water and gas is very sensible.However, I'd suggest you might consider leaving a dehumidifier running. As I've mentioned previously here, we have one of the cheap portable versions and think it's very useful over the winter in our old house.I'd imagine that you have much less of a problem with dampness in your recently built place, but since you mention damp beds...When we go away for extended periods, we leave the dehumidifer on with the humidity sensor set to the mid-point. The thing normally dumps collected water in a container, but by moving a plug from one tube to another the water will dribble out the bottom, so we leave it sitting in the shower.The dehumdifier uses less than 300 Watts and the sensor means it's not on all the time, so it's not going to cost you a fortune to leave it running. What's more, the power it consumes is a small source of heat which might ensure that your place is frost-free over the winter.Al
As Giovanni remided us, this now a community, not a mere forum.And, since Brits have a tendency to pretty much keep themselves to themselves in their real-world communities, is it really all that surprising that this place has all the community spirit of a Wimpy estate in the Home Counties?Less facetiously, I think Chris and Badger make excellent points above. At this point, it seems to me there's little chance of this turning into someplace that's as interesting (and occasionally annoying or bewildering due to hidden meanings) as the old forums. Maybe that is indeed progress. I guess The Powers That Be consider it a positive change, since I've not seen any hints of a rethink.But then maybe things are going on and I've just not come across mention of that fact. That wouldn't be hard to do.Al
Comments posted
I've tried Feliway. I'm not sure it does what it says on the tin, but of course the problem is that you can never be sure how bad things might have been if you hadn't used it. For what it's worth, I agree with your vet about sedation. Cats don't cope with tranquilisers very well and age increases the risks. As far as pet passports are concerned, I paid for the rabies vaccination and the tests, but of course there are no border checks once you leave the UK, and the British authorities don't care at all about animals you're taking out of the country. If I was doing it again, I wouldn't go to the bother and expense. It seems to me that it will benefit nobody if you take a distressed cat into a hotel room and then have such a disturbed night due to its yowling and prowling that you're not well-rested for the drive the next day. You know your cat better than anyone, but I do think that people very often treat their pets as they would want to be treated as a human, rather than considering what best suits the nature of the beast. Dogs are pack animals and they get distressed if separated from the rest of the pack; I think that it therefore makes perfect sense to take a dog into a hotel room with you rather than leaving it in the car. Those of us who provide homes, food and medical care for cats may want to think that they feel part of our family, but the fact is that cats are, by nature, solitary animals and they wouldn't pine for us like a dog would if we suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke. Far more important to a cat is the security of having an area they consider home. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like to be left in a silent, darkened car in a hotel's car park while the rest of your travelling party goes inside to sleep in a room, but you shouldn't project that onto your cat. It might well be that the best possible way for him to pass those hours - for him and for you - would be for him to be left alone in a familiar (although unloved) cat box in a car parked in the most quiet area you can manage. How you deal with things like food, drink and toilet needs is another matter, but my experience is that cat's don't eat or drink much while on extended journeys and they therefore don't have much need for a litter tray. Obviously, whatever you do, you absolutely have to make sure that the cat can't run off in a panic if you take him out of the travelling box. If there should be a mess, well, it's not like you're going to be on the road for many days. Seems to me that the main priority is to get the cat from Point A to Point B as safely and as quickly as possible and then make sure there's someplace dark and secluded for him to hide while he starts to suss out his new home. Al
When I left my last home in Scotland and moved to Abruzzo along with my two cats, they made the trip in a plywood "house" which I'd made. It fit in the back of the car (hatchback with rear seats down) and had three little compartments: one for a litter tray, one for food and water and one for sleeping. The last was lined with carpet tiles to cut down on noise and to give them something to cling on to when going around curves. I did that drive in more or less one "sitting"; stopping in rest areas to doze whenever I got sleepy, rather than staying in a hotel. The only problem I encountered was that the dimmer one of the two cats turned out to be a real yowler who complained constantly and loudly all the way. That got rather tedious after ten hours or so. When my partner decided to bring her cats to Italy from Holland, the box got reused, but this time it went in the back of the pickup I'd bought after moving here. We broke that journey with a stay in a hotel in Germany, but the cats remained in the box overnight. In both cases, the cats coped perfectly well with the trip. It seems to me that the key point is that cats are territorial animals, so removing them from their patch and dumping them in unfamiliar territory will always be stressful. That means I really do question whether it's kind to take a cat into a hotel room. Putting cats in a travel box, putting box in a car, bouncing them around with a lot of strange noises for a few hours, then taking them out and turning them loose in a hotel room (with God only knows what scents due to prior animal residents), then putting them back in box and putting box back in car before driving on and eventually turning them loose in yet another unfamiliar environment never seemed to me a sensible way of dealing with the moggie move. Far better, I thought, to provide them with their own little darkened cave where they could hide for the duration of the drive. Al
In my (very limited) experience of baking cakes here, I've had the best results with flour labelled as being, as Patz says, per torte or per dolci. It's not hard to find self-raising plain flour, just look for "con lievito" on the label. Baking powder comes in little sachets and it, too, can be found in supermarkets of any size. From memory, the most common brand is called something like Pane Angelli. You'll probably find it somewhere near the flour along with cake decorating stuff, artificial colouring, flavourings and little packets of powdered sugar intending for dusting. (If you want larger quantities of powdered sugar to make icing for a cake, your best bet is Lidl.) It took me some time to see bicarbonate of soda in supermarkets, since it wasn't with the baking powder and other baking stuff. Eventually, I found it lurking near the mineral water and water-flavouring syrups. It's sold in 500 gram and 1 kilo boxes, so don't look for the little containers you see in British shops. By the way, I know it doesn't apply to cake-baking (unless you like very robust cakes), but you'll probably have difficulty finding dried yeast in most Italian supermarkets. They do, however, sell fresh yeast and it's somewhere in the chilled cabinets. If you really want dried, Lidl is again the best bet. Al
(Double-post text deleted.)
Well, yes there was an unwarranted assumption on my part that the sewage treatment plant was being bought in Italy. I imagine that you can give up all hope of getting one installed by your geometra if you're planning on buying it from someplace outlandish like Germany, Austria, Switzerland or France. Those daft foreigners have no idea of how wonderful concrete truly is. Al
Sorry I can't give you more practical advice and assistance, but the thought occured that maybe the right people to sell your geometra on the idea of a Sewage Treatment Plant are the (Italian) people who would sell it to you? Of course, this assumes the geometra is actually willing to listen to novel ideas. It also assumes that the geometra is not determined to give you a septic tank because it will be sold or installed by his brother/cousin/uncle, and that there's not an arrangement whereby he gets a nice cut of the price his clients are charged for septic tanks. How entangled are you with this character? If he's not willing to listen to your wishes on this point, how many other things you ask for is he going to ignore when it actually comes time for work to be done? Al
My partner's mother flew Ryanair from Eindhoven about three weeks ago. On check-in, she was carrying a few bottles of medication in a plastic carrier bag long with a small handbag. When the Ryanair counter staff told her she would have to pay for a second item of hand-luggage, she simply put the handbag in the carrier bag and the "problem" (which could only have ever existed in the mind of a cretin or someone working on commission) disappeared. On the other hand, she feels very positive about Pescara Ryanair staff since a nice young man on the check-in counter gave her a priority boarding card the last time she flew out of there. Of course, since she's only in her mid-seventies and has only minor mobility problems, she decided not to use it and offered it instead to a "poor old lady" she met in the waiting room. Al
I don't know about sweet potatoes, but I believe that the ordinary potatoes you get in supermarkets are usually sprayed with a chemical which inhibits sprouting. If your experimental subject isn't looking too shrivelled, mouldy or generally sorry for itself, perhaps you might try giving it a good wash before returning it to its little damp perch and waiting a bit longer. Al
It seems to me that Alan H's suggestion to turn off water and gas is very sensible.However, I'd suggest you might consider leaving a dehumidifier running. As I've mentioned previously here, we have one of the cheap portable versions and think it's very useful over the winter in our old house.I'd imagine that you have much less of a problem with dampness in your recently built place, but since you mention damp beds...When we go away for extended periods, we leave the dehumidifer on with the humidity sensor set to the mid-point. The thing normally dumps collected water in a container, but by moving a plug from one tube to another the water will dribble out the bottom, so we leave it sitting in the shower.The dehumdifier uses less than 300 Watts and the sensor means it's not on all the time, so it's not going to cost you a fortune to leave it running. What's more, the power it consumes is a small source of heat which might ensure that your place is frost-free over the winter.Al
As Giovanni remided us, this now a community, not a mere forum.And, since Brits have a tendency to pretty much keep themselves to themselves in their real-world communities, is it really all that surprising that this place has all the community spirit of a Wimpy estate in the Home Counties?Less facetiously, I think Chris and Badger make excellent points above. At this point, it seems to me there's little chance of this turning into someplace that's as interesting (and occasionally annoying or bewildering due to hidden meanings) as the old forums. Maybe that is indeed progress. I guess The Powers That Be consider it a positive change, since I've not seen any hints of a rethink.But then maybe things are going on and I've just not come across mention of that fact. That wouldn't be hard to do.Al