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Sounds like a cat alright. One of ours used to drink out of the toilet bowl. I think I read somewhere that they like more than one source of water around the place.

When our cat was neutered I was told that if I fed him 100% croquettes then I should get the special ones to avoid bladder stones but if he got a mixed diet of tinned food as well as dried food and he had plenty of water to drink then he would be fine - and after 5 years he is.

Hi My huband is almost blind and has a carte d'Invalidité (80%). We are retired and have health cover under the E121. We have been here 5 years and have top-up insurance to pay the extra. Do you know if he/we would be entitled to 100% cover? Many thanks.

I am having problems with my internet connection. I live in Aude and use FREE ADSL. I have had good service for over 2 years but for the past 3 days it has been awful. It connects as normal for a few minutes and then goes down for an hour, then a few more minutes and then off again.   Is anyone else having problems? I was wondering if the atrocious weather had anything to do with it. Or maybe my box has developed a fault.   Last night it was fine for a whole hour and I was able to sort out my emails etc., then this morning it is back to being a real pain.   Can anyone tell me how to check on the status of my connection? Or how to report a fault.   Thanks Edith

Steve When you changed to Virgin did you have to pay to have your phone unlocked? I opted for NRJ because there wasn't a time limit on credit but of course they changed all that. So when my credit runs out I would like to change to Virgin. I am just wondering if I will have to unlock my phone first and if so how do I do it.

Has anyone transfered their telephone provider totally to Free.fr? A friend told me you can do this for a one-off payment of 18€ and save the bimonthly payment to FT. It sounds very tempting but I also heard that you may be without internet connection/telephone for up to a month while they sort it out. I was wondering if any member has actually done it and can give some feedback. You would lose your phone connection if there is a power cut of course but the money you save would pay for a mobile phone.

I understand that you have to declare your actual takings on your tax return. I got the following information from a financial/legal web site.  "If you pay under the BIC 'micro entreprise' regime then there would be an automatic deduction representing costs applied to the income of 72%. This means that the taxable amount will be 28% of the income. Note that under this regime, you do not deduct the actual costs as these are accounted for in the aforementioned 72% figure." I have just started to let our village house again this year after we moved into our permanent house here. We used to let it when we still lived in the UK but lived in it while we looked around for a house with a garden for our retirement. The bookings have been very poor, though my family and friends used it quite a lot, so we have in fact made no profit. The income has just about paid the local taxes, electricity, water etc. with nothing over to pay for other things like new bedding. If I declare my takings and not my profit I will be paying tax on income I have not received. It doesn't seem worth it - maybe I will sell it after all.

We have always rented to UK people and for the past 2 years have banked the security deposit with the balance. This is returned within a couple of days of them leaving after the house has been thoroughly checked. We used to return the deposit as they left if the house looked okay and they said there hadn't been any breakages. It's a bit embarrasing to go round testing everything so we, like most renters, trusted people. We started to bank the deposit after finding severe damage to the "latts" in a settee while cleaning for the next tenants on one occasion and finding a garden chair with leg smashed off and half hidden on another occasion. No-one has ever objected to this - it's explained in the conditions for them to see before they decide to take our gite. Mind you the security deposit is still the £100 we have charged for years. Maybe it's time to raise it to £150. This year we are advertising in the local tourist brochure so may in fact get a few French enquiries. Should I stick to the same conditions and make them pay the security deposit with the balance 8 weeks before the holiday or would this put them off? Also I have always used the "Chez-Nous" booking form and conditions. Should I translate these into French for displaying on my web site? or is there a better wording somewhere?

Can anyone please tell me how to find new posts since my last visit. I can do unread posts, active posts etc. but I do not want to read all of these so next time I visit I get the same ones again all of which I do not want to read and so it goes on. I seem to remember you could "mark all posts as read" but I cannot find how to do this. There was also a "new posts since last visit" on the old layout. Help - I just want to see what's new each time I visit. This long-winded method of trying to find new posts is putting me off visiting the forum.

Can anyone please tell me how to find new posts since my last visit. I can do unread posts, active posts etc. but I do not want to read all of these so next time I visit I get the same ones again all of which I do not want to read and so it goes on. I seem to remember you could "mark all posts as read" but I cannot find how to do this. There was also a "new posts since last visit" on the old layout. Help - I just want to see what's new each time I visit. This long-winded method of trying to find new posts is putting me off visiting the forum.

We phoned Newcastle yesterday to try to find out what was happening about my husband's E121 which he would get with his pension which starts January 12th 2006. They were very helpful and actually phoned back today to tell us they would issue the E121 from January 1st since there is only a matter of days between the 2 E forms. Incidentally she told us something we didn't realise. If a person is under retirement age and has enough National Health contributions in the UK they issue an E106 which means the UK pays for any treatment that person receives in France. When a person is over retirement age and gets an E121 the UK pays a monthly amount to the French authorities whether they need treatment or not. (I suppose this is to make up for the fact that the French are now looking after their pensioners).  

We came to live here permanently last August. I was 63 at the time so got my E121. I expected my husband (also 63) to be classed as my dependant until he reached 65 and got his own E121. This did not happen. He was given an E160 valid until the end of this year as he was under retirement age. Newcastle said they had changed the rules about it. When his E160 runs out he will have to request to become my dependant for a few weeks until he is 65. 

I tried to order the NRJ Mobile on their website with my credit card and after inputting the number and expiry dates etc. I got another screen asking for the bank account details associated with the card. I was unable to do this as my card is a UK one and the bank details bit was of course in the French format. How can I get round this apart from sending a cheque? Many French residents do not have a card of any sort so how can they make an order? The website says you can go along to any of their partners (eg. Darty, Carrefour) so I suppose I could pay cash there. But then how could I do top-ups on line with my credit card?

I used to pay online when we were still in the UK and I seem to recall reading information saying that no matter when you actually do the payment the money will not be taken from your bank account until the due date on your facture. I used to pay mine as soon as I got the bill, in case I forgot, but the money was never taken until the due date which could be 6 weeks away (or a few days if that's when you do it). I now pay by Prélèvement annuel and again it is taken on the due date.

I know of two others (from other forums so I do not know them personally) so “many of us” was an exaggeration I should have said "some of us". One of them said she has been waiting over 2 years to sort it out. I took my forms to the tax office in Carcassonne and actually handed them to the fonctionnaire who was explaining how to fill in my French tax form . After 3 months I had to ring Nottingham about reclaiming tax paid in the UK and I asked them if the exemption forms had turned up. They said there was no trace and that they may be still in Paris. Apparently they would be sent to Paris from Carcassonne and then on to Nottingham. I rang them again last week and still no trace so they suggested I chase up the French end. I have some new forms which I will fill in adding my husband's State pension which begins next January. (Last year there were only my pensions to put on the forms). A French acquaintance said it would probably have been wiser to wait until I had a fiscal number before filling in the first ones so these new ones should have a better chance of succeeding. I am just hoping that the duplication will not cause a problem as we changed our address this year. I will of course explain all this at the Carcassonne office when I go in. Incidentally I tried to have our savings account paid gross but the Nationwide will not do this – I will have to reclaim the tax at the end of the tax year and am informed I can only do this after the double taxation forms are sorted out. Also my local government pension must be taxed in the UK so things are not as straight forward as I thought. As has been stated on this forum many times things vary from one département to the next and from one person to the next. But hopefully it will turn out OK in the end and I will be able to reclaim anything due.