It is with great sadness that I report my beautiful boy Lennie has left us.
Lennie
We had returned from a vet visit. Shortly after, he rapidly took a turn for the worse. He died in my hands. In his last moments, I was able to tell him how much we loved him… That I loved every second of every day that he spent with us… What a wonderful companion he was… I thanked him for everything, for just being Lennie.
My only consolation is that he only spent 19 days without his beloved friend Perry.
His loss is great.
The loss of both Lennie & Perry in such a short time is hard to bear.
For sometime now, the Thomas Bath has been set up on the outside of the main door of Moriarty’s (previously Dalai’s) cage.
Because of Perry’s recent wobbliness & the need to avoid open dishes of water in case he fell in, I had been putting the bath out less & less. Add to that, Lennie rarely, if ever, comes out & he is our main bath user. The bath location seemed redundant.
Lennie has always liked a bath, so I was holding it up to him in his cage so he could continue having his baths. With this in mind, I decided to relocate the bath to the inside of the main door of Perry & Lennie’s cage. That way, when Perry is spending the daytime in Moriarty’s cage, I can set up the bath for Lennie, close the door so it is lined up neatly with his perches & he can bathe at his leisure.
Lennie checking out the bath
Lennie having a bath
Lennie having a bath whilst Moriarty watches
Moriarty & Lennie conversing over the bath
Lennie comes out to check the bath whilst Moriarty watches
This system has been working well. Lennie can have his bath (he has been known to shout when he wants me to put it in!) I do not need to stand there holding it. Perry is safe from the open water. Moriarty is free to take a bath on the rare occasion that he is in the mood!
Lennie has not come out of his cage for some time. He comes out onto the door platform but that is about it. In the morning, when Perry has gone to sit in Moriarty’s cage for the day, I open up Lennie’s so Moriarty can pop in & out to play with Lennie.
However, one evening, at the beginning of October, I looked up & saw Lennie was out! He had made his way to the top of Moriarty’s cage. It was meant to be a time for winding down for bed, but here he was, on a jaunt! I quickly locked Moriarty in (Perry would not come out anyway) as I was not sure if there would be any territorial issues over Perry. Lennie had a little roam around, then went back home.
Perry, Lennie & Moriarty
Lennie & Moriarty
Lennie
Lennie preening
Strangely, he did the same the following evening.
It felt like he was waiting for Perry to return for bedtime & decided he would go & find out what the delay was!
The following day he came out about 11am. Once again, I locked Moriarty in to keep things calm. Lennie stayed out for quite awhile. He made his way over to Moriarty who was in his old cage. Then he went to the top of the cage where Perry was, before making his way down to sit on the top of the open door where he preened for a bit. He returned back to the top of the cage & played with the ball with crinkle paper before retiring back to his own cage. He came out another couple of times later that same day.
Perry, Lennie & Moriarty
Lennie on top of cage door
Lennie playing with ball & paper
Lennie
I had hoped this would be the first of many outings, where I could gradually introduce Moriarty, but he has not been out since!
Here are some videos of the rare outing:
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If you are wondering about that dodgy wing feather, it was sorted out by the vet a few days later on the 11th of October.
Lennie had a defective wing feather some weeks back. It was dangling precariously from his side for about 3 weeks.
Lennie on the door platform
Initially, he spent some time fiddling with it, but then gave up & just accepted it, even when it was flicking around in positions it was not meant to be in. After the blood loss drama when he lost his tail feather in September (click here for that post), I kept a close eye on the wing feather. My thinking was that the longer it hung on, the less chance it would cause trouble when it finally dropped. However, it withstood several vigorous flapping sessions, four occasions when I grabbed Lennie to transfer him to a different cage (click here for that post) & many times when Lennie trod on it. When the vet came on the 11th of October to see Perry, the feather was still holding fast, so I asked her to take a look at it.
Lennie
Lennie
Lennie
Lennie’s broken wing feather
It was not clear what the problem was, but she gave it a short, sharp tug & it was free. Fortunately, it was a clean separation without any complications. I am not sure what happened, but I feel it would still be connected to this day had it not been forcibly pulled out!
During the day, Perry mostly spends time in Moriarty’s cage, whilst Lennie stays ‘home’. Moriarty flits between Perry & Lennie. However, at bedtime, Perry & Lennie sleep overnight together, so at some point in the evening, Perry returns to Lennie.
Lennie always gives Perry a nice welcome & more often than not, it is accompanied with a head preen. Lennie gives a good head preen too – gentle & thorough. Moriarty also preens Perry’s head during the day but he gets distracted after a few seconds, so I am sure Perry appreciates Lennie’s efforts. It certainly looks very sweet & touching.
I have taken some photos but as the preening usually occurs around 7-8pm in the evening when lights are low, I did not want to ruin the mood by using flash, hence the bad quality! I felt the recurrent scenes were worth recording though.
At 11pm on Saturday the 3rd of September, I peeked under their covers, as was routine, to check all was okay before dropping the big cover down further. Perry & Lennie’s cage liner on the bottom had been changed about 2 hours earlier, so I was surprised it did not look clean. When I looked closer, I realised it was blood.
Everywhere.
I spotted Lennie’s tail feather laying across the seed pot. He had lost his other one a couple of days earlier, which seemed odd to me as it had only just grown in. He had lost both tail feathers just weeks ago (click here to read that post) so I was not expecting the new ones to drop so quickly. I assumed this was a blood feather problem. Had the bleeding stopped or was it ongoing? I took the cage liner away to reveal the clean one underneath so it would be easier to check.
Blood splattered cage liner
Lennie’s fallen tail feathers
Then I saw a big clot drop. I knew I had to take immediate action.
Carrier cages
Under the flight cage, I have three small travel cages for emergency evacuation (one each in red, white & blue). The one on top just happened to be the red one. Cornflour was put into a wide container. I caught Lennie & basically covered his lower section in the cornflour, not really knowing where the site of the bleed was, & then placed him in the travel cage with a cover over.
After a few minutes I checked to see if he was still bleeding. It was difficult to judge how much blood had dropped because the base of the travel cage was red, but I could see blood mingled in with the white cornflour that had fallen off him. I doused Lennie again in cornflour & put him back. He was still bleeding so I carried on dunking him in the cornflour (literally, I dunked him in & ‘bathed’ him). I discarded the red travel cage & alternated between the white & blue one. That way, I could wipe around the one not in use, so each time he was placed into a clean one, making it easier to judge blood loss.
Poor Lennie has lost both his tail feathers within days of each other. He is looking a bit tatty with this latest moult & now has to contend with not having a proper tail.
Phase II of the raising of the cage floor was undertaken on the 20th July. As previously posted (click here), I thought the raised floor could be improved by lowering it a section.
This time I mostly used mini bungee cords, with string to cover a few gaps. This lattice work was covered with pieces of cardboard connected with foldback clips. I reused the piece of cardboard providing a rim across the front. As before, the padding, oil cloth & cage liners were then placed on top. An extra rope perch was added to bridge the gap between the new bottom & the existing low perch.
Cardboard layer
Bungee cords & string
Padding
Oil cloth
Completed
Lennie settling in
The changes were accepted immediately. This time, Lennie was the first to test out the new floor’s bounce-ability! It works a lot better this way so I think I will stop fiddling with it now!
I previously detailed how I split Perry & Lennie’s flight cage to raise the floor (click here to read that post).
When it was time for the swap to take place. Perry was in with Moriarty, so I caught Lennie & popped him in the ‘new’ cage. After the initial upset over being caught, he seemed relieved to be back in familiar surroundings again, despite the floor being raised.
The quarantine cage was removed & the half & half cage placed back in its original position. Moriarty was keen to visit Lennie (he had not been able to do this whilst he was in the quarantine cage) but did a double-take on clocking the raised floor & backed off. He kept coming back though & finally braved going over the threshold to greet his friend. When it came towards bedtime, Perry returned home as he usually would. All seemed to be back to normal again after nearly a week of upset!
Lennie & Moriarty in the ‘raised bottom’ cage
Ironically, the first to fall & test the new floor was Moriarty!
Whilst doing the conversion I had some better ideas but because I needed to work quick to minimize Perry & Lennie’s stay in the quarantine cage I decided to leave them for phase II. The next phase is to actually lower the floor down to the next section (I think this will be a better compromise) & to use bungee cords instead of string.
The lower half of the cage is not expected to be used so is currently kept bare. This arrangement, so far, seems to suit us better.
Video of Lennie & Moriarty chilling in the new set up:
Puddings & Toyboys 