On Cat Sitting and a Tortoise Called Ernie

This morning my cat sitting began in earnest.  I set my alarm for 7.45am just in case I slept on but I was awake long before that (you can see I take my responsibilities seriously :/ )  I had not one but two cats waiting for their breakfast....Eek!...Now I am not a 'cat person' having never owned one in my life and am naturally a bit nervous around animals anyway.  If I confess that I was nervous around our family pet mongrel as a kid, and he was a friendly happy chap, then perhaps you might forgive me.  Anyway, my neighbour's moggie is a stray which she took in a few years ago and she is an eat-and-dash-off- again sort of cat, no bother at all really.  She will come around my legs for a greeting then eat and away.  The visiting cat (named Fudge) is twice her size!  She muscles in when she can smell food so I had to feed her too by placing some in a dish outside, leaving me a bit of space to feed Puss. Ah well, this is day 2 of a 28 day mission :-0

My next task is looking after a tortoise called Ernie who just happens to be hibernating in a fridge at the moment.  My childhood tortoise was hibernated in a shoe box under the stairs but these days it has all become very technical and apparently a fridge is the way to do it.  Luckily I have contact numbers if I have any worries but I have no idea how long these creatures hibernate for.  Do they move at all? When will he wake?  I sincerely hope he will sleep through the time he is in my care.

Has anyone else got a tortoise? What do you do with it during the winter months?

Thanks ever so for popping in x