I was trying to think of what to call this.  Ups and downs is of course what the Ds and I do most days, we come up the stairs in a tent or a chube or in mummy’s arms, then we go down at the end of the day.  But it also refers to how Mummy is at the moment.  Sometimes she seems happy and up, and sometimes she seems down and sad.  And sometimes she’s both at the same time or goes from one to the other very fast.  I would worry about her but I can feel her worrying about me and I don’t think we should both worry at the same time.

Part of it is because it’s ten weeks since Fred died and six months since Hugo died.  We miss both of them.  Mind you it’s 2 months since Dylan and Dougall were born, which is an Up. But it’s 36 weeks since George died and he died three weeks before his 4th birthday and its 3 weeks till my 4th birthday and Mummy is worried about me.  I think she should stop worrying because there’s nothing much to be done about these things.  But I know she thinks she should have taken more time before taking Fred to the vet.  She told me  his teeth were splayed and the vet found it was because he’d got a bruise between them.  And she remembered putting him back in the cage one day and he collided with the fiddlesticks.  So she thinks its her fault.  And she thinks she should have thought a bit more when she discovered he had a problem, and trimmed his teeth and fed him thin sticks and from a syringe, and waited to see, not just rushed to the vet and let him have anaesthetic.  Well, that’s easy to say now you’ve had a chance to think about it mummy, but you did the best you could for him, you always do the best you can for all of us.  And you always say you learnt everything you know from Fred & George, (and Hugo and me) so you just learn that and don’t worry yourself about it, okay?

She’s worrying about me because I lost a bit of weight last week.  Not a lot but I’ve been slimming a bit.  Well, all this exercise looking after D&D… and the veggies aren’t great at this time of year.  We get a bit fed up with shop celery and we leave it.  And the carrots.  Their weights have gone up of course, they were 540 and 555 today (Dylan and Dougall respectively).  I don’t know how they do it when they leave their carrots too. Mummy brought us in some kale from the garden this morning but she says we can’t have it every day or we’ll get bladder stones like Hugo, and she should have realised he had them sooner.   Sigh.  Well, I wouldnt lose weight if I ate more kale.  You can’t win.

But I miss Hugo, Fred and George too.  Those were good times.

Mummy found a good quotation the other day.  It went something like:

Don’t cry because we’ve gone, smile because we were here.