When I was in hiding

I was just getting used to walking along the yard walls. So many interesting places to see from up there!

So on Friday evening I decided to go a little further. I jumped down into Auntie Lesley's yard.

That was my Big Mistake. High walls, nothing I could jump up onto again so that I could get out. I was trapped! It was like falling down a well!

Later I could hear Mrs Danvers calling for me, but I kept quiet in case she was cross. I had broken a plant pot in my attempts to escape.

All that evening I heard her calling. I didn't know what to do, and after it got dark, I found a little hiding place in Auntie Lesley's little cubby hole in the yard, and stayed there, tucked in tightly - all night. I didn't know that Auntie Lesley had gone away till Monday.

The next day Mrs Danvers asked Auntie Lesley's neighbour, Suzy Nextdoor, to look out over Lesley's yard wall from her house. No one could see me where I was hiding, and no one could hear me because I was keeping quiet. Suzy Nextdoor didn't notice anything.

Mrs Danvers says that she and Sandra called and called and listened very hard, and Roger got on his wobbly ladder and looked over the wall too. Mrs Danvers asked him to see if the cubby doors were closed, and he said that they were. He didn't know about the little gap behind them where I managed to get in.

I stayed in that little shelter for 3 nights, and it wasn't very nice. I began to feel very scared that no one would find me, so I began to cry. Mew! Mew! Just a little cry, not my big loud howl. Mrs Danvers and Sandra called so many times, and walked all round the area. Mrs Danvers told me later that sometimes she had to have a big cry.

It wasn't very comfortable in the cubby hole, and I had to make a bed on a hosepipe, but I stayed dry when it rained all day on Sunday.

And then, on Sunday night, Suzy Nextdoor, who is often rather deaf and has to have her ears syringed - can you imagine how horrible it must be to get water in your ears? - heard me. She was in her own yard having a cigarette, and she definitely heard me.

So she phoned Mrs Danvers, who had gone to bed nearly an hour before, and was sound asleep; she came running out in her nightie.  Even though she could tell that Suzy Nextdoor had had a little drinkie and was deaf too, she decided to believe that she had heard me crying, and wasn't imagining things just because she was worried. Together they called for me again and again, but quietly so that neighbours didn't come out and say that they were worse than the students.

And I don't know what came over me, but I didn't reply. I must be mad, I think. Mrs Danvers says she loves me very much but that she has to accept that I don't have two neurons to bang together. I don't know what that means, but at least she loves me, which is a good thing.

Anyway, they both went back home again, although Mrs Danvers says she hardly slept again. The next day, she spoke to Auntie Lesley about it all, and Auntie Lesley said she would be home at 10 o'clock. She was very worried too. When she came home, they both came through the house into the yard. Auntie Lesley was so worried that she set her own house alarm off.

As soon as Mrs Danvers saw the little cubby and the little gap, she could tell that I could have got in there. She says her heart leapt in her chest and her hands shook, and she opened the doors to find me inside. I was so scared that I couldn't move; she had to help me out by the scruff of the neck, and hold me very tight.

And then I came home, and when I realised where I was, I was so happy, and purred so much that a lot of drool ran down Mrs Danvers' arm, but she didn't mind a bit.

Hamish gave me a kiss, and Lottie spat at me and called me some very rude names for making Mrs Danvers so unhappy. But she's not unhappy any more, I told her. She told me so, and has been giving me lots of treats to show me how much she loves me. But she says I mustn't go adventuring like that ever again, and I don't think I will.

No offence, Auntie Lesley, but your accommodation doesn't compare well to my own nice warm bed.

Leave nothing but footprints

Every morning, when we are up and allowed out, I go visiting. First I call on Sandra, two doors dow; I stand on her wall, her windowsills, or even the roof of her car port, from where I can squint into her dining room, till she comes out to say hello. If the back door is open, I just walk in unannounced. It's my civic duty to visit humans and check that they're not lonely.

Then I move on to visit Lesley further down, and finally, I go to Suzy's, to remind fat Hattie that it's my tree, although it's in her yard. The branches are covered in my fur. This signals that they're mine, like the bathing towels of a certain European nation, left on hotel poolside chairs at dawn as a sign of ownership.

Yesterday was a bit different. I hopped up onto Sandra's windowsill, and she squawked at me that there was wet paint on it. Honestly, how silly of her to think it would be dry before I arrived! Nasty sticky stinky stuff; not conducive to feline elegance or poise.

I had to have my feet washed, and then be carried home to Rachel, who just gave me a Look, and carried me indoors for more paw-wiping before letting me stand on the floor. Then she watched me carefully.

And then she made a sound."Harrumph!"

I know what she meant. Cream masonry paint is so not my colour.

Keeping her on her toes

Rachel and I have a new exercise regime. It's a type of circuit training, with bending and stretching and some sprinting.

This is how it goes: I dash in with the latest mouse (8 so far, and more to come), and she dashes after me. She's pretty good at sprint starts. I drop it, she makes a dart for it, I pick it up and run like mad, she chases me, I drop it again, and we do this several times. Then I let her catch it. I have to keep her motivated, so I let her win. Humans are easily discouraged, and this one's so lazy she actually prefers dead mice!

At the end of our exercise session, I rush off to the secret location where my mouse factory is based, and Rachel trudges off to a place that she thinks I don't visit to release the mouse under the trees.

Then we do it all again, about an hour later. Burns calories very nicely.

Except when Rachel locks the cat flap, and only lets me in if I don't have a mouse. Then she has to wait till morning when she (or Scooter) can find the dead mouse in the back yard, and put it in the bin. There are 3 in there now. The bin men come round tomorrow, so she can stop moaning about health hazards.

It's heartbreaking, you know, sitting on top of the wheelie bin thinking about my lovely mice inside, but not being able to lift the lid to retrieve them. I should have a display cabinet for them all instead, and share their loveliness with the public. Rachel just gives me her Withering Look when I say such things.

Instead, I have to make tableaux with the fake phoney toy mice! So humiliating.

Sigh.....love those meeces to pieces, I do.

Battle has commenced

This is Millie's third mouse of yesterday. Unfortunately, it's dead, but that doesn't stop it being a toy.

Millie had to leave it in the yard last night where Mrs Danvers couldn't see it. Then she had to bang on the window to get back indoors, as Mrs D had locked the cat flap. There will be guards on that cat flap next; I can hear them now: "Halt! Who goes there? Friend or mousehunter?" And maybe even strip searches. Nothing is beyond that woman.

But I was the first one to find it this morning when we were allowed out, and I rushed inside with it. Mrs Danvers heard me - "galloping hooves", she remarked, and followed me to see why I looked so excited.

But I wasn't excited for long. Was Mrs Danvers any kinder to me than to Millie? Not at all.

Another lovely treat confiscated.

Millie has gone out to find a replacement.

Not a spoilsport at all...

...but a woman standing by her principles. I know I'm biased, and a bit besotted by Rachel, but I feel I should defend her against the slurs and aspersions cast by Millie.

I think Millie was out of order with that last post. Rachel has opposed blood sports all her life, and doesn't wish to host them in our home. Right after the mouse was taken out, Millie rushed off and caught another one! 

But Rachel saw her come in with it this time, and picked it up off the carpet and took it away. Two mice within an hour; it's just plain old defiance on Millie's part, I think, and I might have to clip her round the ear about it. When she gets home, that is: she's out again, and we think we know why.

Rachel said the second mouse was a bit wobbly when she let it out of the box, but it tottered away into the undergrowth. She says she doesn't know how to put an injured mouse out of its misery (I do despair of humans sometimes - they have teeth, don't they?) but that some experienced mouse rescuer out in blogland is bound to tell her.

Meantime, Rachel has locked the cat flap so that Millie will have to bang against it to get in, and Rachel can look through it first to see if she has another mouse with her.

It's a battle of wits and wills; I know whose side I'm on. 

Rachel says I'm her Second-in-Command.

Spoilsport

That Rachel, what a bad sport she is. Hears a mouse pleading most entertainingly for mercy, and she comes haring downstairs. She doesn't know if it's the last, lost mouse, or a new one I've brought in for her, and I'm not telling. Humans can't tell one mouse from another, I reckon; they really are altogether pathetic when it comes to these delightful little toys creatures.

Anyway, she shoos me and the dog away, puts this nasty little black plastic box thing in front of the mouse, who is handily cornered into a very tight spot, just right for a good game of Cat and Mouse, and covers it all with a tea towel. "B**gger off, Millie!" she says.

Well, of course, given an opportunity like that the mouse is going to cheat, so it runs inside the black box and Rachel goes off with it - to let it go! How mad is that!

She wouldn't let me or the dog come with her.

But I know where I can find more.....

House survey

This house is a disgrace.

Mrs Danvers is supposed to be a housekeeper. More a housewrecker, we say.

Look where our beds are!

She says she's 'sorting' the small attic. Some kind of sorting;  moving it all into her own bedroom, higgledy-piggledy.

We have mounted a protest at all the disruption. None of us would sleep in Mrs Danvers' room last night. She tossed and turned, and worried about where we were but we didn't weaken. Housewreckers don't deserve the delicious comfort of a sleeping cat beside them.

She says it was only for one night, because she was too tired to fit the carpet all in one day.

We won't be allowed anywhere near the new carpet either. "Especially not you, Scooter, with your wicked claws!" How can claws be wicked? They are things of beauty, to be kept clean and sharp by scratching and pulling, first on the scratching posts, then - to buff them up - on carpet.

Remember my claws when I first arrived? Dreadful. No carpets in the woods where I had been living.

But after a while, with nice claw-conditioning carpets everywhere, I had lovely snowy paws.

Aren't they just beautiful?

You don't get quality like this without effort, you know. I have to work at it.

That new carpet would be an excellent grooming aid.

Mrs Danvers just doesn't understand....