Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Terror In The Garden
by admin - 15:34 on 23 March 2013
The Rural Retreat's garden death toll continues to rise. Fortunately, The Tabby Terror doesn't strike every day, but every few is more than enough.
Two days ago, Matchgirl was unsuccessful in her attempts to rescue a mouse from the growling jaws of destiny and had to let Pandora carry off her quarry through the cat-flap and back into the garden. Shortly afterwards the mouse became a flying ex-mouse.
Willow is still an observer but one with a keen interest in post-mortem activity. She brought the ex-mouse back into the cottage where she played with it until I was able to distract her and retrieve the remains.
Our smaller kitten is indefatigable in pursuit of fun, so it was nothing unusual last night to see her scrabbling around on the carpet with one of her toys. It was only after a while that I realised what I'd taken for stuffing was small breast feathers from an ex-blue tit. Distraction was easier this time as yesterday Matchgirl had bought a small laser pointer for purposes of feline entertainment.
My initial thought was that Willow had made her first kill. However, it's more likely that she picked up another of Pandora's victims. I hope so – two small furry killing machines would be bad news.
The Fearless Ones are now used to the cat-flap and happy to be in and out whenever they wish. Unfortunately, neither have grasped that it's OK for them to do their business outdoors – both scurry inside to use their litter trays (and scatter litter across the kitchen floor in the process) then run out again to continue their games until it's time for food or a snooze in Maia's bed or my chair.
Meanwhile, Maia leads her life at a much more magisterial pace. Garden wildlife has nothing to fear from the black cat.
Weather Update: White hell has returned to much of Scotland and northern England – but not to our part of the world. Matchgirl is convinced that there's a conspiracy.
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