Ronnie

A quick update on Ripples: she's settled in really well, and has worked through plenty of her anxieties: The irrepressible urge to be outside all the time has gone. She has free access to the garden (from which there's no escape) and has started to spend the bulk of the day inside, possibly coinciding with the return of rain. There's no camping out by the front door anymore, in the hope of surging outside if somebody happens to open it for her. She can now be trusted to have it open while I take the recycling out, standing on the threshold unless invited to come out. She seems to have got over her initial food anxiety. (She was raised on a dry-only diet.) She loves her food, scoffing down more than her fair share, and has within the last month become a proper cat, turning her nose up at yesterday's favourite because she doesn't like it anymore. What some might call obsessive eating has had a clear effect: she developed a mane during a heatwave, and followed that up with a winter coat about a month later. The conclusion? She should always have had those features, just like our other two, but clearly was not getting the required nourishment from her dry-only diet. There's also the inevitable result of eating way more than before: she's doubled in size. Bad parenting? Hardly: she was so small compared to Heidi and Pebbles that we were initially sceptical of her breed. Still, the paperwork and the fact that we're not allergic to her went some way to resolving those doubts, but the fact that she's now coming up to about 80% of Pebbles's size and that the new growth is muscle rather than fat really does confirm that nurture rather than nature were the reason for her small size. There's still a way to go. She's still given to panic attacks, which we think seems to be triggered by a thought that she can't see anybody if we're in the office and Pebbles is in the attic. (They stop as soon as she races to wherever we are at the time.) The progress is all positive so far. She's much happier than she was and has settled very well into the family. Oh, @Carbomb: you'll have to update your name list. She's still Ripples on her insurance documentation and as far as the vet's records are concerned but we're acting now as though that's derived from Ripley-Doo-Dah. We usually refer to her as Ripples but because neither she nor Pebbles can discern any difference between their names, we address her as Doo-Dah, and we've noticed other people picking up on that habit, too. That's the name she responds to, so don't be surprised if it starts taking over in future updates 🙂

No, the etymology isn't boring! (Or I'm boring for finding it fascintating, I suppose.) The transition kicks in once the wealthy start having townhouses. They can no longer have their main meal (“dinner”) in the early afternoon when they'll be out and about, so the main meal often gets pushed back to later in the day. It's replaced by a smaller meal; a luncheon. “Dinner” therefore becomes something very often eaten in the evening, although “supper” remains if the evening meal is small (as its etymological link with “soup” would suggest). The size of the meal traditionally determines whether it's a lunch / dinner / tea / supper. But plenty of people link the name with the time rather than the size, which is why we increasingly often hear of that monstrous meal which blocks up the toilets on Boxing Day being referred to as a “Christmas lunch”. Yuck. And even a carvery site will write this:

All the more reason to celebrate when his case is thrown out. I imagine that your employer won't have a problem with your not coming in the following day.