Manuel, the new baby is still doing well and is great friends with Baldrick, the nearest to him in age. At first Baldrick couldn’t resist bullying him, but he has gradually adjusted his behaviour as he loves having a friend to play with and now realises although it might be fun to pick on poor Manuel, it in fact just meant he was taken away from him. They go in the swimming pool together and Baldric is teaching him all his tricks. We have had one volunteer Samita, a Ukrainian lady staying in Goa, who has been coming to stay for 2 or 3 days a week and giving him one to one care but in fact he is quite a tough little chap and not nearly as demanding or clingy as the other babies of this age have been. At times he has to stay in a pen on his own for an hour or so as there is just no one available to take him, and he will simply amuse himself, which is unusual, but welcome.
Pani missed his vasectomy operation as the morning the vet arrived we discovered that when one of the local staff arrived that morning, they had stopped at his pen and feeling sorry for him, given him a nice big heap of cashew fruits to eat. We had deliberately removed all food and scraps the night before because of the aesthetic due in the morning. I need to make up some picture cards of a monkey and food, with a big red cross over the food to hang on the appropriate pen. Already with the language difficulties with not only Hindi, but the many other Indian languages, and the volunteers who come from around the world, I have resorted to skull and cross bones signs hanging in any toxic trees and shrubs around so monkeys are not fed them, and a cat outline with a red cross sign, to keep the cats shut out of any room that has one of the many rescued birds or similar in residence.
For the last few weeks we have been rearing a tiny 3 stripe palm squirrel baby, Alexander which was bought in after being taken from a cat. Most of the households 13 cats are well aware he is in there and are ever watchful to get in. He is now very active and difficult to catch to put back in his cage after feeding, as he races up and down the curtains or sits in the middle of your back so you just can’t reach him, but he is at last starting to nibble on solid food, so hopefully the night feeding at least will soon be at an end.
