Tortoise moves and Police concert

It’s been a quiet week in Århus, my home town, out on the edge of the Baltic sea. The temperature dropped to the range of 5-15ºC (~40-60ºF) and the wind is tugging angrily at bushes and trees...  The apples are ripe, half my tomatoes are orangey... I have eaten 4 or 5 already. I finally managed to get the last of the hedge and grass trimmed, so the garden should now be acceptable to the powers that be. A frog has moved into the garden, and baby snails hatched... at least I found this little dude in my salad and he looks quite new.

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Last thursday, I took Urracá in for his blood tests. We’re trying to find the right level of medication for his thyroid problems... He is hyPOthyroid, which is insanely rare in cats so I think the vet is improvising. Two months ago we lowered his dose to half because his levels of thyroid hormone were too high...  this change affected his personality, so he got more aggressive and he beat up Kitty more than usual. He also gets horrible hissing growling screaming nightmares. So I was hoping I could increase the dose a bit again... But NO! turns out his levels are still too high even though his blood fat (cholesterol) level has gone up as well...  NORMALLY one should go up when the other goes down... but for some reason they both hormone and fat went up. Makes no sense... So I don’t really trust this and I worry that we’re doing something wrong. The vet told me to halve his dose again. He also promised to consult with some more experienced colleagues and let me know what they thought.

Afterwards, my mum and I went and moved my tortoise, Rusla, from mum’s house over to my house...  Rusla has been living with my mum for the last 9 years while I was abroad. She lives in a big old glass terrarium that weighs a ton... well not quite, but it’s not easy to move around. I want to build her something bigger and better, but couldn’t wait any longer to get my act together on the building project. So, meet Rusla.

She’s a protected species (Horsfield’s tortoise), but I got her the year before the CITES was ratified... on my 5 years birthday. So she has all her paperwork in order and we’re about the same age.
She’s been out in the garden when it was sunny, and she’s inspected about half the floor inside – I think she approves... but it’s hard to tell with her. She takes time to make up her mind. I was a bit worried the cats would think of her as canned food, but they’re keeping their distance looking more worried/disgusted than hungry at her.  Rusla on the other hand thinks the cats might be edible... but they’re not sitting still enough for her to find out.

SaturdayI volunteered at a huge open air concert with Sting and the (reunited) Police. The organisation where my mum works (the foundation for muscular dystrophy) organized the concert. I stood in the ticket and information booth at the entrance together with my mum and some of her colleagues. The band had required no umbrellas inside the grounds. This is unusual in Denmark, so many of the 38 thousand guests showed up with umbrellas that were then confiscated and hung up on the fence in front of our booth.

The thousands of colorfull umbrellas looked quite spectacular. It actually went way smoother than I had expected. There were a few problems with the credit card machines blowing their fuses and then two people throwing fits about their umbrellas.. But it was busy all 11 hours I was there. There was no break for us during the concert as we had expected – except to scarf down some sad chili and rice.

So, that’s the news from Århus, where all the women are strong, all the cats are goodlooking and the tortoise is definitely above average.