24H

This time last night I received an e-mail at work which effect on me had symptoms similar to that of a heart attack. I had just wrapped up things for the day and was looking forward to getting home to have an early-ish night. Adrenaline kicked in and within a couple of hours I had nearly typed my fingers to bloody stumps. My boss was still at dinner so I headed home knowing that I would have an hour or two before I started receiving his (missed) calls and infamously one-lined e-mails.

Got home, put my dinner on a plate and set up the laptop for a final burst of productivity for the day. I had barely gotten through one e-mail when my cat jumped in through the window with something(s) caught between his jaws. I shrieked. It looked small and brown and too much like a fat cockroach. He dropped it(them) at my feet and I realised that they were two tiny nestlings, each smaller than my (smaller than average) big toe. He picked the smaller one up and ran off to a corner to "play" with it.

The urgency of work however made me delay stopping the wretched feline from his terrible diversions. Once done, Bob the cat found himself ignominiously incarcerated in the bathroom shower stall, and I found myself with one dead nestling and another barely alive. The search for their nest proved futile, and I forced myself to accept that it too would die shortly. I left them in separate flowerpots, had a shower and fell asleep.

Morning was a blur. Rushing several changes for an 11am deadline while battling a cold-from-nowhere left me breathlessly making my way to Parliament for the debates. The cold raged on, aided and abetted by what must be air-conditioning designed to deter terrorist attacks. I could not focus on anything and my only thought was an overwhelming desire to ensconce myself in a thick, fluffy towel in a sauna somewhere really really hot.

I was the first person out of there when it all ended.

It was only when I picked up my mobile from the legions of policemen guarding a glorified freezer, when I was reminded of last night's incident by a text from my mother saying: "The bird is still alive." Half an hour later I was sat in the kitchen observing a miraculously still-alive nestling sat amidst a mountain of shredded tissues, a syringe full of catfood (organic salmon and trout) in my hand.

It's not easy feeding a nestling. I don't even know what sort of bird it is. (It has not feathers - it's that young.) Great accuracy and impeccable timing is required to catch the exact moment it opens its mouth (beak?) for food. Battling a cold and a curious cat made it incredibly difficult to control my fingers on the left hand - so that it didn't exert unnecessary pressure on the bird -and to the right thumb - to ensure that I wasn't choking the bird with too much salmon and trout at a go.

I've never been more relieved watching a bird poop (head down and butt up - I really wish I had recorded it). I've taken it as a sign that it's well on the path to recovery. The bird - I think I'll call him Birdie - now sits in a mound of tissues, in an ice-cream tub, in the only part of the house beyond Bob's reach.

If I've made a lot of mistakes in this post, or if you find it meandering and purposeless, it's probably because I'm having difficulty focussing because of this cold. I just really wanted to tell everyone about the bird. That's all. I'm off to bed now. Tweet tweet.