Woke up during the night and my feet were freezing! Lay for a moment wondering why, when I heard the drip, drip of water on my bed, and groaned in dismay! It is exactly where the bally birds have stolen a huge amount of my thatching, leaving big patches just ready for the rain to come in. And rain we had this past two or three weeks, with terrible wind that uprooted a lot of trees and blew off a lot of roofs. I will just have to do my roof as soon as possible if I don't want to have a lot of damage to my furniture.
On top of this the poor cold dogs are pleading without stopping for their owners to give them a bit of warm space, where they can be dry and warm! I just do not understand this way of thinking, as to the villagers, a dog is there to protect you, a horse to plough with, and cattle to milk, plough with, or eat! There are a lot of strays walking around, so thin you can count the ribs, and most with udders hanging to the ground, showing that somewhere a new batch of unwanted pups are shivering and crying for milk. But I still think that the stray dogs are better off than the ones that are tied up with a chain or nylon cord about two meters long, unable to get to somewhere warm when there shelters get wet! Kristani, my grandaughter, who is a real animal lover, started working with the SPCA in Oudtshoorn to alleviate the hardships of this poor animals, but she was soon a hated frigure, and the people could not understand what she was going on about! Oom Vlei, the head of the municipality's
maintenace team, had a horse with big sores around his mouth, and one day when Kristani saw Oom Vlei ploughing with this horse, a piece of wire through his mouth, and his poor mouth bleeding, she asked her Mum to take photo's, which she emailed to the SPCA, and the horse was promptly taken away.
I have loosened quite a few horses and cows that were tied to a pole with a short piece of string, the water bucket quite out of the poor animals's reach, and the sun scorching down! Was not very popular, but after Oom Vlei's trouble, nobody said a word, just glared at me, and mumbling: F.....n Whitey', whenever they walked past me. I must say, it is a lot better, so our interference must have helped, but there is still a lot of negligence, specially to the poor dogs!
Since the murder of Larry, a very strange man, who slept with all his animals, including two huge pigs in the same house, I am just a bit scared, as my house is so far from the neighbours. Joy is quite close, but she has one of the kind of long houses, and sleeps on the other side from me. When dusk falls. I am in my house, and securely locked up. I was at Jan's for two weeks, and the baby Emil, who is not actually a baby anymore is just the curtest thing. He is now a little boy, and I am so sad that his mother will never see his cuteness!
Slept in the sitting room on a mattress last night, as my bed was wet through, and so was my bedding. I will just have to do the roof, as the birds are really busy carting away all the thatching!