Myrtle and Tony's year 2020
Dear Family and friends,
As everybody knows, this has been a very strange, and difficult, year. I will try to summarise from my point of view although many of you who got the usual newsy letters from Myrtle will know some parts already.
In late winter I noticed that a hole had been dug under the house wall from the back terrace. As the year before I had bought a wild life camera to get photos of the birds at the nest box, I set it up looking at the hole to see if we could spot what had caused it - the camera got some good night shots of a Rat! I contacted the town's rat catcher office and they came straight away and confirmed that the hole was very likely caused by rats so positioned some traps and later they found droppings in the loft which confirmed our worst fear that the rats had climbed through the wall insulation to get up there.
In the meantime, the virus Covid-19 arrived in the country and from then on it became much more difficult to make plans. But we were able to get a builder to take a look and give us advice and in conjunction with Kathrine and Christian to make a plan. The first plan was quickly dropped when we were told that the barrier to protect against rats which should have been built into the walls was missing! The cost of doing that was estimated as very high as it would mean rebuilding the walls. We then found that all the firms involved in building the house in 2007 had not survived and there was little hope of any sort of legal action getting a useful result
In the end, Kathrine and Christian came to us and said that they had decided to do all the work for us if we just bought the necessary materials. We worked out how to retrofit a rat barrier all around the house and they spent a couple of weeks in the summer fitting part of the barrier and there was no further sign of rats. Over the next couple of months when they could spare some time they did more and by the start of winter it had all been done at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost.
31st July 2020
Before all that, Myrtle had a seizure one night in February and I woke to find her sprawled unconscious on the bedroom floor. I called the ambulance service and then Kathrine who all arrived within about 20 minutes and the ambulance took her to A & E at Svendborg hospital. I settled the cats and locked up and travelled in Kathrine's car to the hospital. By the time we got to the emergency room, Myrtle was coming round and we stayed in the room for most of the day while a lot of tests and scans were arranged. As there wasn't anything obvious found, the doctor made arrangements for her to go to see a consultant the next day for more detailed examinations and scans. That was when her infant illness was mentioned as a probable basis for an epileptic fit. Myrtle decided not to have any further investigation as no benefit would result - she never liked hospitals anyway!
She continued to be a bit confused but gradually regained her confidence and mobility, as far as the Covid situation and her general health allowed. Once again, our adopted family came to the rescue and took over the weekly shopping so we didn't have to take unnecessary risks and as I write this in December, they are still doing so for me.
We had one unhappy event with our cats as Quice, 15 years old, - son of Myrtle's cat Willow - died at home on 7th September. His story is at this link-
Cats/Danish cats - Quince.
But sadly, a month after that, Myrtle had another overnight seizure on the 7th October and was taken to Odense hospital where the neurological surgeon she had seen was based and during the following day and night she remained mostly unconscious with continuing seizures that became more frequent and despite increasing levels of treatment she died at 5 am on the 8th.
She had talked about the future with Kaja and Kathrine a year or so earlier and they had agreed with her to respect her wishes regarding intensive hospital treatment and funeral arrangements. She did not want any formal sort of funeral or service and so we arranged for a simple cremation directly from the hospital. She also wanted her ashes to be scattered on the sea so as to symbolically circulate to the Thames and the East River where they would be closer to her sons. The only special arrangement that we needed was to get official permission for the scattering; that would have to be a minimum distance from the coast. Eric and Mike agreed with us that we could best fulfil her wish if we went to the North Sea as that is part of the Atlantic and the coasts of Denmark, USA and England are all connected to that. The best harbour to sail from was Esbjerg and Gunnar found a small boat owner, Jens, who had arranged such sea burials for other people. On the 7th November we met him at the harbour and he took us beyond the breakwaters into the North Sea itself where we stopped for the scattering. We had our own "family bubble" of me, Kathrine, Christian and their three boys, together with Kaja and Gunnar. I am making an album showing it all and will post a link to everyone when it is ready. I had to learn how to do it, but the result is on Dropbox - use this link
Scattering of ashes
Our cats are getting older and in September Quince's appetite had finally collapsed and he faded away. He was almost 15 years old when he died in his bed one night. The remaining four cats rearranged their relationships and took comfort in each other as a group. Since they lost Myrtle as well, they eventually stopped looking for her and spend more time together, except at night where just Gerd and Zarina sleep on my bed now and Jerry and Impy stay together in the living room.
Kathrine wrote a letter to all my family to give a better explaining the whole sequence of events. You can open it to read if you click on this link.
Letter about Myrtle
Love from
Tony
