Hello, Ludo here today.

We’ve had lots of sunshine this week, and it got very hot. So hot that Mummy got the blowy white post out to wave the air about in the afternoons. I didn’t much like the sound, but the air felt nice.

Then we went outside onto the grass in the shade when the temperature outside was much the same as the temperature inside. Mummy has a thing on her desk that tells her about the outside, inside front and inside back rooms. It was a bit cloudier yesterday and we went out a little earlier, onto some fresh grass that was shady because it was cloudy.

I’ve been making the most of the grass. I ate all the long bits and all the nice flowers. Pippin took a long time to get used to eating the grass. He’s been in a funny mood this week, spending lots of time asleep and not wanting his food. Mummy thinks it might have been the heat, or having a bath which he hated, or worrying about me.

Ah, here comes the serious bit. Mummy and I had a big chat yesterday. About my lump.

Thursday morning Mummy came in and saw me looking unhappy. Well, I was a bit scared when my lump started bleeding all over the place in the night. I didn’t know what to do. I crawled out of my tunnel so as not to mess it up too much, but there was a big pool in it. It was coming from my lump, which was very sore. Mummy helped me up, and cleaned it up, and spoke to Dr Rebekah on the phone, and gave me a pee pad to sit on while she changed my cage wear and put new fleeces and underpads in. She washed them and my tunnel, and the tunnel came back later.

So, yesterday at breakfast we had a serious chat. The thing is, my lump is much bigger, and it gets sore, and I hate dragging it around. And now it bleeds off and on. Mummy weighed it with me sitting next to the scales and the lump resting on them. It weighs around 100g, which is about one-tenth of my whole weight. I asked her why Dr Rebekah didn’t take it off at the beginning of June. Mummy cancelled that because she didn’t like the risk.

It seems there is a big risk of me dying if I have an operation. With my age and heart trouble, it’s quite likely that my body will react badly to the sleep medication. But we know for certain that the lump is hurting, causing me a lot of distress, and some pain. So Mummy has to decide whether whether the risk is worse than the certainty of me being unhappy. So after I thought about it, I said I think I’d rather get rid of the lump. She said there’s another twist. I might survive the op, but suffer something like a stroke, and not be quite right in the head when I came around.

”Like Roscoe?” I asked.

”Yes, although he had the stroke anyway, without having the sleep meds.”

Roscoe went four years ago. I wish I’d got to know him better. If I go over the rainbow bridge, I’ll see them all again. I miss Locksley. Funny, after all the upsets we had.

I think I want to get rid of the lump. You never know, I might be fine.

So, Mummy will phone the vets today and sort a date and time out. If I don’t make it to next week, it’s been good to know you. And I wish I’d learned to trust Mummy much, much sooner. I’m glad she rescued me.

Lots of love,

Ludo xxxxx