I started the week with a missing cat, but all is now well. Nobby, who’s nearly 18, has been increasingly showing his age, and losing his sight to the point that I think he’s now more or less blind. I’d left the cat flap open though, as he only ever briefly popped out to the garden, and he seemed to be able to find his way round by touch and smell. On Saturday night he’d been helpfully trying to sleep on my pillow, then in the early hours of Sunday I was woken by a noise from outside that in my half-awake state I couldn’t work out whether was him or a fox. By the time I’d thrown on some clothes on and gone out to look, the noise had stopped and there was no sign of him, but he didn’t appear to be in the house either.
I had a brief look round the neighbourhood before heading off to Tarpley on Sunday morning, but when he still hadn’t come back by the time I got home I started to worry, put up some posters and reported him missing in a couple of local Facebook groups. A few people rang or messaged with potential sightings, but I never managed to spot him when I went to look in the roads they mentioned. Then just as I was about to head out on Tuesday evening I got a notification that I’d been tagged in a post, and it turned out that a couple one road along had found him in their garden and asked whether anyone recognised him, and someone who’d seen my missing cat post connected the two together. I rushed round with a cat carrier to collect him, and found him in their kitchen where they’d kindly given him some water and tuna. He doesn’t seem to have any lasting ill effects from his adventures, but the last time he’s allowed outside on his own!
I took Thursday and Friday off work, so naturally the cold I’ve been fighting off for a few days finally won the battle. Apart from a bit of a runny nose it’s mostly jumped straight to the cough stage, which is playing havoc with trying to sleep.
On Thursday I had a follow-up nurse practitioner appointment at the doctor’s after my various elevated blood pressure readings. They took some blood samples, which I haven’t had results back from yet, and did an ECG. Impressively, the latter was sent straight to a GP to have a look at, and after about five minutes of waiting (which was much longer than I’d had to wait when I first arrived) I was sent along the corridor for a quick chat with the GP. Apparently it was mostly fine, but with one abnormal bit that might indicate some minor effects from high blood pressure. The current advice seems to be to try to improve my diet a bit and hope that makes it drop down again.
Far too much running this week, with the Tarpley 20 still in my legs (and a cold), but unfortunately the marathon won’t train for itself. Normal club training on Tuesday, a track session on Wednesday (which I took very easy) and the standard Thursday Tempo Ten which I ended up doing solo. Then a slow parkrun and an even slower 17 with the usual suspects on Sunday. And of those five runs, only three ended up with beers in the Cricketers!
