First snow 2012

One solitary degree at 8:03am. Frost in the frost pockets where the cold air tumbles down the sides of Carmine's ramparts. Ice cubes in the chickens' drinking water. And now there is a dusting of snow on the palms, and a pile of cats on Mathilda.

The great Carmine autumn migration

Cool and damp. Rain later. Probably just as I am descending The Hill, having decided against an umbrella.

The Carmine cats have noticed the change in the season, and are busy organising their indoor nests for the winter. Somehow there seem to be more this year. I have gained one very thin and very hungry blacky, a caffé-latte with only one eye, a rather bad-tempered fluff-ball tabby and a marmalade bruiser who's less confident than he looks.

And it seems that various members of a less ... tactile species are thinking along the same lines. This morning I evicted three of these fellows before 9am, and am remembering India...

Cats in the pantry

Finally, the winter has dropped below zero. The chickens' water was frozen yesterday for the first time this time, and there are icicles in the stream, a bit like this.

Four Carmine cats at their post in the pantry. Second from the left is Mamma di Tutti, who has mothered more than 20 kittens in her long life. She's a tough nut, but now has difficulty eating and breathing and has lost so much weight I fear she may not see the summer. I'll do my best for her.

Real snow

Today in Carmine it's snowing wetly but persistently, with a little whippy wind every so often ...

I opened the front door at 7am, and six so-called stray cats elbowed their way into the house. They quickly ate breakfast and dispersed to the furthest reaches of the house- each to his own particular spot - to get warm and dry. Contrariwise, the children dressed themselves faster than I've ever seen before and have just now elbowed their way out of the house and toddled off to the prato to take snowball potshots at the chickens, Jakob! and their father. 

You gotta like winter!

Trouble at the window

Trouble - who for once is not actually making any trouble - eyeing human antics from the bathroom window.

For more Window Views from every corner of the globe, click here.

Easter in Carmine

Azure skies. Fast-flowing mountain streams. Blossom on the fruit trees. Camelias red, pink and white. Warm, wet, freshly-turned soil. Eggs under the broody hen. Chicks trying their wings. The Mama cat heavy with kittens. Children smeared with chocolate. The Carmenites in residence. Tourists in droves.


A belated happy Easter from a Carmine sprung to life.

Confirming intelligence reports

"I'd say that was a D-O-G alright. Better get back to Big Tabby at Cat HQ and let him know.
Boy, is that big hooter ugly!"

The cat telegraph

Warmish - sunnyish. In the last seven days, the children have been home, sick, for six. Mama, also with the 'flu, feels as if she's about to disintegrate in a Lem-Sip flavoured puddle of stress and sleep-deprivation.

"The big tabby up the road says you've got a D-O-G in there... Is that him there with the short tail and droopy ears? No contest!"

Six degrees at 8:30am, rising to an astonishing, hardly believable, jaw-dropping 25° in the garden at midday.

Carmine's toms have declared spring by spending the last few days ripping hell out of each other. Yesterday I could stand the caterwauling (and, indeed, the sight of bloodied cats) no longer and the Carmine Animal Hospital now has one very contrite fellow in lock-down, waiting for a visit to the vet.

A plague upon our heads

Zero degrees at 8:30am. But the bright sunshine is warm enough to take our lunch, of pasta homemade with our own eggs, out to the churchyard beside the Chiesa di San Gottardo, where spring thoughts come unbidden and we start to make plans for the garden.

As all mothers know, the first few terms in the kindergarten hothouse for microbes are a litany of sickness. If it's not a cold it's the 'flu, if it's not the 'flu it's a tummy bug. From about October well into the following spring (okay, summer) everybody in this family has been for the last two years either sickening, sick or sicker. And sometimes all three at the same time. And more so since I took the rather rash decision to say 'yes' to the school board's kind request to introduce Cannobio's under-6s to my own mongrel language, which clearly also includes doing the business with 30 dribbling noses and a box of Kleenex.

But a week or so ago, there seemed to be a pause in the frantic round of temperature-taking, food and drug administration, disinfection of vomit-spots and all those secret pleasures of motherhood. It was as if an angel had passed over, raising a shining hand to still the storm, and Mama looked around the kitchen, slightly mystified. Two children, four Carmine cats. No coughs, retches, sneezes. No floppiness, no hot foreheads, no flushed cheeks. No aching limbs, no deathly pallor.

I was just starting in on the biggest sigh of relief I could raise, and thinking about opening a bottle of crémant du Jura to celebrate, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something disturbing. There it was again in another part of the room. And again...and, oh my God, again.

Scratching.

B., eyes glued to Cinderella was scratching the back of her head vigorously. The Big Cat, Trouble and the Girl Cat were all in various yoga asanas, scratching, gnawing and nibbling.

Bugger! Dammit! And blast! Because Mama was doing it too - just the scratching that is (the yoga is next year's New Year's resolution).

So, Mama headed off to the herbalist for Paranix spray (recommended) and declared a girls' night in with B. The first ever, considering that Mama isn't very girlie, and B is only three. We ponged out the bathroom with ylang-ylang, we sprayed and waited. We shampood and we lathered, lathered and rinsed. And we finished off Mama's stock of fancy Joe Mallone shampoo to celebrate being female and to help us forget the ambient air temperature in the bathroom was 4°C. And then came the fifteen minutes of B-torture with the fine-tooth comb. And about an hour for Mama, whose hair is again longer than it ought to be for a woman of a certain age.

Soon, the itching had stopped and the scratching abated. And now all that remained was for Mama to spend a couple of days lurking around the village like a Stephen King loony-lady with a syringe full of anti-cat-flea serum. Not that I'm casting aspersions on the cats, I just thought I might as well get the little jumpy-jumpies that were bothering the cats as well while I was in the mood. Oh yes, and the other thing that remained was the mountainous plague-pile of clothes and bedding waiting to be laundered at 60°.

Phew. Panic over. As you were. Mama saves the day again.

Yesterday, I turned up at my first kindergarten class of the week and was greeted by the usual group of little bodies hurtling towards me for a welcome hug. As I leaned down, my loose hair brushed several little heads. Inwardly I smiled with nit-free contentment as I worked through our weekly flashcard contest to start the morning off, when out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of something disturbing...

Love winter

Cold and sparkly, with a picturesque mist over a glacier-blue lake.

The chicken water is frozen solid. There are four cats haunch-to-haunch on the sofa (with a feline diplomatic incident every few minutes). The icicles AJ brought indoors yesterday are still frozen in a bowl in the hall.

Up in the woods at 800m as the sun rose, my husband stopped to rest and change his sweat-soaked shirts for fresh ones. By the time he was ready to pack the damp clothes into his rucksack, they were frozen and creaking.

When he returned from his walk in the woods, we took our sheepskins and woolly hats out to the churchyard for a plate of pasta and a glass of Crémant du Jura in the sun.

Don't ya just lurve winter?

The Carmine Caption-Writing Contest

Another warm and sunny autumn day outside, but indoors we're looking pretty war-ravaged after a night of scuola sickness, kindergarten cough and five-year-old fever.

"That stupid cat'll never notice me behind this clover..."

Alternative captions in the comments box, pur-lease! Go on, give us a laugh!

New arrivals

This week has been a week of new arrivals.

As we kicked our way down the hill for the first week of kindergarten, the children noticed with glee that the chestnuts have started to drop from the trees. The start of prickles-in-little-fingers season, then. The chestnuts are too small as yet to bother with, but soon we'll be collecting bags of them, roasting chestnuts on the fire and making chestnut-flour cakes.

Another new arrival was the entire Booker shortlist in hardback, which was slammed down on the stone bench outside the front door by our postina, who could have left them with our neighbour downstairs, but didn't because she's like that. Their arrival makes Mama very happy, because now she has the promise of Verifiably Good Literature to keep her going through many happy autumn and winter evenings in front of the woodburner, a glass of Monsieur Lafarge's best by my side.

With the cold weather, the cats from the outlying regions - the outlaw cats as I always think of them - have been popping by to see if their currency is still valid up at the big house. And a new tabby, all pointed ears and hungry eyes, has been running the gauntlet of the residents every day now to grab something to eat and, once, to curl up on the sofa while no-one was looking.

And at last, Carmine's tabby matriarch finally brought this year's offspring to meet me. She lost the first litter of the year, which she had nested in our next-door-neighbour's bedroom, but was immediately pregnant again. She dropped the second litter a couple of months ago, and there were wild rumours of the existence of kittens hidden away in one of the more inaccessible gardens, but also of the intermittent presence of two hungry-looking foxes. I wasn't hopeful. So I was very happy to see the proud Mama jump up onto the terrace the other day, to hear a little mew behind her, "You mean it's up there?", and then to see a fluffy white head and two white paws appear over the edge.

So the orientation tour began :

"Okay, now listen carefully, here's where they put the normal cat food. It's fortified with calcium and vitamins and it's good for you, so get used to it..."

"...If you nose your way into the kitchen, there, by that big, warm, silver thing - especially when the tall guy's cooking, you might be able to wangle yourself some offcuts of fish or meat. Just tilt your head to one side, flash those big blue eyes and look cute..."

"Oh yeees, did I forget to tell you? This is your brother. The big people call him Trouble, because he is. If you have any further questions, just ask him!"

Welcome home

This is how it feels to return after a holiday and be greeted on the mulattiera by Carmine's semi-wild cats.

Feline epidemic

Twenty-one degrees at 8:30am. Overcast and heavy. Trying half-heartedly to rain.

Cat count : one dead-in-my-arms of poisoning (confirmed); one 'flu victim looking much happier after last week's veterinary intervention when his temperature reached 40°; the Mamma-di-Tutti still snoring and sneezing, but eating, recovering slowly out of her own native grit; one still languishing with neither food nor water, and intent on ripping my arms to shreds rather than ingest antibiotics. We're not quite out of the woods yet.

[PS, don't you just love semicolons? Rather like the playroom when all the toys are put away, a list correctly punctuated with semicolons gives me an immense feeling of contentment. A suitable case for treatment? Probably.]

The first and last time you'll hear me get soppy about cats

Seven degrees at 8am. Squally. Yes, that's right, squally. Like Yarmouth Whitsun 1967. Don't ask.

The Mama cat seems to have done her disappearing act once again, and may well be holed up somewhere having dropped her 2009 litter. Bad timing, what with the sudden drop of temperature, the rain and all.

Carmine's semi-wild cats are an integral part of life in Carmine. Move into a house here, even for a week, and you'll be conned by a cat into thinking she's your friend before the second day dawns. Stay for a couple of years, be consistent with the Brekkies and the Friday fish-heads, and the Mama cat will be shoving her two-monthers in the small of the back towards your door, whispering, "Believe me, there's this big white thing in her house that's warm as toast - go settle your tush on it for the winter - it's better than a baita". Why she never invites herself in as well I'll never know, but I guess her standoffishness is what's made her such a successful breeder.

I like this kind of cat - the kind who come and go. Who were raised not in a house and sold on to a stranger, brainwashed into believing that the world ends at the apartment picture window and that the oft-absent owner is god. No offence. But I like these cats, the ones who grew up in the woods, who come because they want to and stay because there's something about you that they like (even if it's just the Friday fish-heads and Mathilda).

I like a wild rambler. One who disappears one day and reappears, thinner, three months later when given up for dead, when you're done crying over him and the last thing you expect is to be mugged one misty autumn morning by an ecstatic ball of prodigal-returned tabby joy.

I like our daily escort of three or four felines, the younger pair gamboling and skitting in the long grass, snapping at butterflies, pouncing on lizards, and the older two prowling along sedately with their tails held high, bickering all the way down. And I like it when we trudge back up to find them waiting in the undergrowth to meet us and greet us and guide us (or perhaps cadge a lift home).

I like counting the years of our presence here in Carmine by the successive litters of cats. The twin black cats, one now missing an eye, the other recently 'disappeared'. This Mama cat's first son (she was so proud). Her second litter, which was decimated by the marten. She cried for them for a week, and all of Carmine's mothers cried with her... I like telling the litters as someone from another culture might tell a list of ancestors. I'm hoping it will keep my memory intact, like Ezio's, into old age.

And I love to curl up somewhere warm with a half-wild cat cuddled against my belly. To fall asleep to the rhythm of his purrs and wake up with him stroking my face so exquisitely gently you'd think he was a lover.

Does all this make me the Cat Lady of Carmine?

Four minus three equals twenty-one

A shockingly low 10°C at 9am as we played truant from kindergarten and blew straight through Cannobio heading for the Swiss border (oh the thrill of it!). Raining hard and solid. The cucumbers are happy, the zucchini are happy, the tomatoes, the basil, the parsley, the radishes, the lettuces and the strawberries are happy. A very soggy Mama, trailing two soggy ducklings wasn't so content.

Behind the scenes in Carmine, a small tragedy has been unfolding. Not one, but three of the four chicks we managed to hatch this year developed clubbed feet. Click here for more. We fear a vitamin B2 deficiency or a genetic defect that comes from breeding fathers with daughters. But we're not experts - any friendly advice or information gladly (and sadly) received.

So we've had for the last few days a young singleton free ranging in the bathroom - at three weeks he's big enough to skip his coop and investigate the big wide world. When anyone comes in for a spot of private business he skitters across the lovely larch floor and bounces on the least mobile pair of feet he can find. From thence to a knee, an arm and eventually a shoulder, where he sits preening himself proudly.

He reminds me of Jonathan/Johanna, our seagull friend, who lived for several years in the kitchen and on the terrace before being sent into the wilderness to terrorise our second round of chicks. Why should that be? Despite M.'s many attempts to teach the seagull to perch on his shoulder, our web-footed friend could never get the hang of perching, so the similarity lies not in that direction. No, it's the fact that Mama has been spending a large proportion of her time skittering across the lovely larch floor with disinfectant wipes in hand, clearing up the chick's private business... and being reminded of this post...Chick doo-doo is, you may be interested to learn, slightly less corrosive and slightly easier to remove than seagull doo-doo. But they're both devastating to a tight schedule of domestic labour.

So, I hear you cry, how does four minus three equal twenty-one? And what does that have to do with the price of eggs?

Well, yesterday afternoon's mission improbable was to find mister-I've-imprinted-on-a-human (aka Singleton) some chums.

First, I thought the answer might lie with the next nearest fluffy things - the cats. In the absence of mice to chase they must surely be bored enough to want to make a new friend. I caught Trouble lying across the bathroom threshold the other day, listening attentively to the chirping beyond. The look of guarded excitement on his young, feline face led me to believe that perhaps the cats were not it.

Sending Singleton packing back to mama-hen wouldn't do either. Singleton's parents wouldn't believe me when I tell them he's theirs, and at this stage would probably peck it to its place in paradise sooner than check its maternity-ward wrist-band.

So off I went in the World's-Most-Battered, with the two sproglets in tow, to a chappie I know in Verbania who had found me what our little yellow friend seemed to be hankering for...

Twenty two-day-old chicks (a euro a piece, poor things) - 12 boys, 8 girls.

A rent-a-crowd.

A porta-party.

And Mama went chirpee-chirpee-cheep-cheep all the way back up the hill.

Last night, Singleton bedded down in the very centre of a mound of warm, fluffy friendliness once more and didn't give my boots (or the disinfectant wipes) a second glance.

Mission accomplished.

Springwatch 2009 (again)

A strange, uncomfortable day. An open-window day, but overcast with the occasional drop of rain.

With the fall of the cherry blossom, early spring deepens towards Easter. (Now how did that happen? Only two more months to the long summer holidays!)

Carmine Superiore is almost full, with the usual suspects taking up their usual Eastertime activities - clearing and planting their gardens, doing a spot of light home maintenance, bringing in wood from the forest, hauling provisions up the hill, undertaking pest control, and most importantly settling in for some fairly arduous gossip (of which there is plenty).

And all around us there is four-legged rustling in the woods and meadows. The wild boar are once again causing havoc in the outlying meadows. They dig for bulbs and roots and wallow in any place offering a spot of mud. Moves are afoot to give them a welcome they're not expecting later in the year - more of that later in the year!

Last year's frequent visitor, the lone deer, is more and more often sighted up in Ezio's meadow, visible from the kitchen window. There's something comforting about seeing her gently grazing away up there in the quiet early mornings. I take it as a sign of a good day to come.

Talking of signs, there are signs of the marten everywhere, in the form of little piles of doo-doo ("Don't step in the doo-doo, darling"). The Mama cat, who is at the pity-me-pity-me-and-give-me-fish stage of her spring 2009 pregnancy had better hide her little ones good and proper. Martens usually eat only berries and fruit, but they can wipe out a litter in short order - kitten blood is a marten treat.

Of course, the place is crammed with nests, just out of sight, but noisy with chicks of all kinds. Our own two-week-old bionda piemontese chicks, have mastered pecking about and are now working on flying. I can hear the occasional ping from the bathroom as one of them hits his head on the heating lamp. Unhappily, there are now only three of them. Last night brought a scene of French Revolutionary character, when I discovered one hobbling about on its elbows having developed clubbed feet. It happens. Having determined there was only one thing to be done, M. did it (it takes a Prussian), while Mama wept over her remaining round-and-fluffies.

One animal curiously missing from Carmine this year, though - at least from this particular house - is the mouse. I've seen no mice and not a single solitary sign (read doo-doo) of a mouse since sometime last year, when the combined efforts of the cat and M's chocolate-baited traps put an end to all the scurrying about. Although I did catch last year's girl-kitten practising with a pair of AJ's rolled-up socks the other day, so perhaps she knows something we're just about to find out.

And finally, Mama is looking forward to her Easter glass of crémant on Sunday...

Four plus four

Misty and rainy. A proper drink, finally, for the new roses, currants, rhododendron, lettuces and box.

There are four chicks starting to fluff up nicely under the warming lamp in the chick nursery. I doubt the remaining four eggs will hatch, but the incubator thermostat light is still blinking away in quiet optimism.

Banned entirely from the house, the cats are sulking.

Yellow

Yesterday, as I sped about VCO province, up and down the lake like a mad thing (thank God for the world's-most-battered Panda), I started to notice a theme.

A yellow theme.

The daffodils gathered in crowds (nay, hosts) everywhere I look are gaily nodding at the ripe lemons in the boughs of the lemon trees that do so well in sunny, sheltered spots. The mimosa trees are giant sculptures made up of thousands of tiny pom-poms towering from the lower slopes of the lakeside. The bright yellow primulas are still flourishing in the stony nooks and crannies. And the forsythia, large and small, are displaying their fragile flowers.

There are yellow butterflies and yellow-breasted birds. Yellow roadworks signs have sprouted up all along the lakeside SS34 (even where there are no visible roadworks), and gangs of chaps are out in yellow overalls painting the alberghi yellow in time for the Easter influx of visitors.

Even B., home from her travels, has ferretted out a yellow sunhat and wears it even in bed, and Mama is tempted to pull on her token yellow T-shirt.


Perhaps some marketing genius should institute a Yellow Festival - a Sunday in March when we all wear yellow, eat yellow, paint our faces yellow and race yellow boats. There could be yellow balloons and yellow bumper stickers, yellow paintballing, yellow cakes, yellow caramelle and yellow cocktails.

Sound like fun?


PS The eggs in the incubator have been candled and eight have quickened. Unless the cats or the kids get them, we may have cute little yellow chicks in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.