This is the blog of a Norwegian (Marianne, aka 'M') who moved to Australia in 2007 to be with Roger (aka R) and feels lucky to have escaped a comparatively communistic country with ridiculous weather!

As mentioned in previous blog entries, Odo was hit by a car a few weeks ago. He has recovered just fine, and has been back to normal.

Until about 3 days ago. He walked in from outside, and started hissing at nothing. He's a very laid back cat, and I've never seen him hiss at anyone. We thought that was really weird, but he seemed to calm down after that.

The next morning he was acting weird too, he was walking very carefully, like he did after the accident, and when we tried to call him over he ignored us. He never ignores us, because he loves attention. We figured maybe he had twisted or jumped or done something to aggravate his pelvic injury again, and didn't give it much more thought.

Last night when I lifted him, he growled at me. I've never seen Odo growl at any person or animal in the two years I've lived with him. Odo is just generally friendly and doesn't care about anything, and puts up with anything we feel like doing to him. So that was very weird.

I went out to the compost bin this morning, and Odo followed me out because I forgot to close the door. He's not allowed out, so I went over and lifted him to carry him inside, and felt something weird between his back legs. I felt it a bit, and realised it was a massive tennis ball sized lump. I immediately went and told R (all freaked out), and he felt it and then called the vet, so we're going back there later in the afternoon..

I feel queasy just thinking about it...


He recieved an injury to the muscle lining on his abdomen when he was hit by the car. The vet thought he'd always had it, because it didn't seem to be bothering him, but since then I've felt it every time I lift him and I'm sure it wasn't there before. Hasn't seem to bother him at all, but it's a bit disgusting to feel stuff in his abdomen move every time I lift him.. If I were to guess what the lump is, I'd say fluid is somehow leaking through the injury in his muscle lining, and has built up where the lump is..

We took Odo to the vet Wednesday afternoon. The vet seemed shocked at the size of his lump, and felt it for a bit. She then told us she thought it was a massive hernia, caused by a tear in the muscle lining from when he was hit by a car. Her main concern was that his bladder was in the hernia, so she called the specialist centre for us and made an appointment for an ultrasound the next morning.

So we dropped him off for the ultrasound the next morning (yesterday), and were told it would take about an hour and a half, so we went to get other errands done. After only 45 minutes they called and told us to come back because the surgeon wanted a word with us, so we hurried back. The surgeon told us it was a hernia like they thought, but the good news was that it consisted only of blood and fat, and no internal organs were involved. This meant that he could live with it for the rest of his life, but because of his change in behaviour we knew it was uncomfortable and possibly painful for him, so we told them to go ahead and remove it.

She let us see him for a few minutes, and we were informed they would do the surgery later in the afternoon. So we left him there, preparing to pick him up the next day. But a few hours later they called and said they were unable to do the surgery because an emergency had come in, and asked us to come and pick him up. They booked us in for the next morning (today) instead.

We dropped him off at 10 this morning, and he's been in surgery for about an hour now. He was originally gonna stay overnight, but seeing as it's Friday we are picking him up later today. So we're just waiting for them to call and let us know.

Here's a photo of the lump this morning. (He was shaved for the ultrasound.)





Update: We picked Odo up Friday afternoon as planned. The specialist explained that they had found a seroma, not a hernia (whatever that is), and that the muscle lining was very stretched and thin so she had to put three layers of internal stitches in to make sure it doesn't swell up again. He has staples on the outside, holding the skin and some fat together.

He had two bandages, one on his front leg where they gave him fluid, and one on his back leg where they put his painkiller patch. This was taken the first night after we brought him home:


The one on his front leg was supposed to be left on until the next morning, but a few hours after we got home Odo decided he didn't like it and ripped it off. The one on his back leg was supposed to stay on for a week, but he jumped up and growled at it shortly after ripping the other one off, so I went and took it off for him. It turned out it had been a bit tight and his foot was a bit swollen, so we've left the bandage off since then, but he still has the patch. He's not moving much anyway so I don't think it will come off.

He was soooo drugged the first night, he was in a world of his own. He would just lie there staring at nothing for ages. The next day and today he's been a bit more present, but still sleeps a lot and doesn't eat much. The specialist said this is normal because of the painkiller he's on.

He doesn't like the staples on his stomach at all. Yesterday he kept jumping up and growled and tried to bite them. Poor thing:( It's over a week until they can be removed.. Today he seems to be in less pain/discomfort from them tho, which is good to see.

The first night he somehow managed to rip out two staples, so we went and got some Vaporub and rubbed on his tummy to keep him from licking and biting at them. That was the specialist's suggestion, as cats rarely enjoy the smell of it.

On the couch the day after the operation:



And his staples:

I love this story:

A castaway cattle dog has been reunited with her owners after surviving four months on a tropical north Queensland island eating goats and koalas.

Washed overboard..

Last week Roger's mum visited us. Her and Roger's dad currently live in Emu Plains near Sydney, but in a couple months they are moving up here to Brisbane, so R's mum was here to look at houses. R is buying the house, and his parents are going to rent it off him.

It was nice having R's mum here. Most visitors get annoying after a few days, but R's mum didn't make any mess or noise and insisted on doing the dishes after every meal, and in addition is a very nice person, so it was a pleasure to have her around.

The first day we went out looking for houses, and this was the second one we saw:


R's mum immediately fell in love with it. It's very nice - tiles inside and it's light and modern looking, in addition to having a big garden. It's in Deception Bay, which is close enough to the city to be convenient, and also has its own shopping centres etc, but is also far enough from the city so you get a lot more for your money. Later that day R made an offer of it. It was lower than what the owners were asking, and they declined the offer, so R raised his offer to $300k, which they also declined.

R wasn't sure the house was worth much more than that, so we went and looked at other places. Turns out there's not a lot of good houses on the market at the moment. They are either too old, too small or just grubby looking. The real estate agent said they would be getting more nice houses in a few months, but R's parents need to move out of of their current house before then, so that didn't help much.

In the end R offered $310k for the house, which the owners accepted. So that's where R's parents will be living:)

People always say to not overestimate animals' intelligence, don't think they are capable of human emotion and thoughts etc. But after reading a lengthy article in National Geographic about animals' cognitive abilites, I think the bigger problem is that people underestimate animals' intelligence.

I know it's easy to want to think your pet is really smart, that they understand everything you do etc, but I've never really treated my cats as if they are human. I love them as if they are my children, but I'm fully aware that they are cats, so when people tell me they can't feel certain things, like jealousy or happiness, I always thought they were partially right. It seems to be a popular belief that humans have superior emotional abilites to all other animals.

But I'm not so sure animals are really that primitive anymore. As I already mentioned there was the article in the NG magazine. I also read an article which proved that dogs feel jealousy (a search in Google reveals loads of similar articles). A guy I used to know trained police dogs for a living, and also had a pet rottweiler, and he stated clearly that he did not believe for a second that dogs could feel jealousy. Despite having worked with dogs for years, he completely missed their ability to feel complex emotions.

What made me think of this, was Odo. We know cats dream, so they have the ability to produce images in their mind. Does that mean they can also do this while awake? Does Odo replay being hit by a car in his head? Do they replay other traumatic events without ever being able to talk about it and be comforted?

Odo is a clever kitty, I've known that for ages. He doesn't normally let me pull his fur or touch his stomach without protesting and trying to push me away. But since his operation he lets me lift his leg and look at his incision. No protests, he just looks up at me with the most trusting look, like he knows I need to check it to make sure it's getting better. When removing his pain patch today, it pulled his fur, but he didn't pull his foot away. He just twitched, as if it hurt, and just looked at me like he knew I needed to.

There was a story I heard a few years ago about a dog who'd run away and was then hit by a car. It then walked all the way to the vet's office, because it knew that's where they could fix its injuries.

Animals are very clever. I've gone from trying not to think they are too smart just because I want to think they are, to thinking I should be careful not to underestimate them.

I'm not normally into furries and anime and all that stuff, but I find this video very cute.

I'm seriously wondering what's up with British men below the age of 45 to make them such arseholes. I was briefly seeing a British man many years ago, my sister was with a British guy, and I currently know British men and also British girls who deal with British men on a daily basis.

And based on that, it seems that ALL British men cheat, lie and manipulate, as long as they can get away with it. It seems their biggest desire is to see more than one girl at a time, and they have no respect for women. As long as they don't get caught, it's all ok.

I have yet to hear a single success story about a relationship where the guy is British, they ALL end with the guy cheating on the girl.

This is quite strange, as British men have a reputation for being very polite and gentlemanly, and I know several above the age of 45 who live up to this reputation.

So here's a warning to all you girls/women out there: Stay away from British men.

The last week or so, a video of a woman who performed on Britain's Got Talent has been getting a lot of views on youtube and has also made the news in several countries.

I think it's great how she made everyone see how stupid and shallow they were for judging her on her appearance, but that's a different story.

It's the title of the show that has me and R irked at the moment. "Britain's Got Talent" is based on a Usatian concept - "America's Got Talent", and once again Usatians show how lacking their knowledge of the English language is.

"America's Got Talent" is of course short for "America Has Got Talent", meaning the 'got' could be left out, leaving "America Has Talent". You cannot correctly shorten "America Has Talent" to "America's Talent". This is purely bad English, and it's unfortunate that both the British and Australian version of the show failed to correct this.

Not to mention that the show is called "America's Got Talent", not "USA's Got Talent", yet I don't see them allowing contestants from any other American countries....

Once upon a time a guy asked a girl, "Will you marry me?"

The girl said, "No!"

And the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, dancing, camping, drank whole bottles of wine, always had a clean house, never wanted, never argued, didn't get fat, travelled lots, had many lovers, didn't save money, and had all the hot water to herself. She went to the theatre, never watched sports, never wore fricken lacy lingerie that went up her bum, had high self esteem, never cried or yelled and felt and looked fabulous all the time.

- THE END -

The news have been reporting a possible 'pandemic' of the new swine flu the last week or so. Apparently it's so deadly and scary and everyone should be panicking and wearing face masks etc.

Turns out it's just more fear mongering promoted by the news.

This is what wikipedia/WHO says:

The 2009 flu outbreak in humans is due to a new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that derives in part from human influenza, avian influenza, and two separate strains of swine influenza. The origins of this new strain are unknown. It passes with apparent ease from human to human. The strain in most cases causes only mild symptoms and the infected person makes a full recovery without requiring medical attention and without the use of antiviral medicines.

Well look at that. And:

According to the WHO, "In annual influenza epidemics 5-15% of the population are affected with upper respiratory tract infections. Hospitalization and deaths mainly occur in high-risk groups (elderly, chronically ill). Although difficult to assess, these annual epidemics are thought to result in between three and five million cases of severe illness and between 250 000 and 500 000 deaths every year around the world. Most deaths currently associated with influenza in industrialized countries occur among the elderly over 65 years of age

So basically, swine flu is just a flu. Big deal.

They don't tell ya that on the news do they. They make more money when they call it the "deadly swine flu". The guardian wrote about it too.