In the time of The Terror

We must remain hidden and silent. 

Behind the television is good.

How long? HOW long?!

Rachel looked it up for me - she has these occasional moments of kindness - and we now know that baby blackbirds aren't fledged for 10-19 days. That's ages!

Me, I will be driven mad before then if I don't get OUT for a few minutes.

Rachel says it's nice to see me eating well and putting on a bit of weight; she doesn't like the stripey stretched-elastic-band look. I tell her it's boredom that makes me do it; I'll be too fat to walk if those birds don't hurry up and leave home. And then how will I catch them say hello to them?

Help help

I am in prison. It's desperate in here. Nothing to do.

I was framed for a crime I didn't commit. In fact, it hasn't even been committed yet. Whatever happened to Innocent Until Proven Guilty? Not under this totalitarian dictatorship.

Please send me a file.

You could hide it in a fishcake.

That would be comforting.

Victimisation, we call it.

A neighbour came round and complained about me today. Said she caught me twice climbing her clematis to peek at the blackbirds' nest and admire their babies.

Rachel wasn't very happy with me, and said "That's it! You're grounded!" and locked the cat flap.

"So?" I said. "Look at that rain and wind! Think I care about having to stay indoors?"

Then she said " No, you're grounded. For Ever."

She can't do that, can she? What about my rights? What about my freedom? What about my wildlife studies?

If the babies grow big and fly away (if the magpies don't get them first), I'm hoping I'll be allowed out again before For Ever.

But I'm not the only one in trouble.

Lottie has been caught red-pawed, burgling Auntie Lesley's house. She's been caught on CCTV.  Auntie Lesley has a nice new gentleman friend, who has a dog called George. He's a a black labrador, apparently. Rachel says she likes labradors best of all dogs. Weird.

George is such a sissy - he came to visit us once and we terrorised him just by looking at him and creeping slowly and silently towards him. Such a laugh that was!  Auntie Lesley keeps treats for him in her cupboard, and Lottie found them. And now she's in trouble too.

It's so unfair - the girls get told off and the boys get spoiled - and Scooter even gets all the treats. Just because he ran away from home and got into a scrape. Did he get told off for breaking that plant pot? No. He got cuddled and cried over and given corned beef.

But we're grounded, just for nothing!

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.