The neighbour’s cat, perhaps finding hunting mice too tame a game these days, appears to have set its sights on more substantial fare. Not only has it been seen stalking the local pheasants – and given the dimness of the local pheasants, it’s surely only a matter of time before it catches one – but it has begun looking at us with a worryingly assessing gaze. It’s bad enough having to dig out several tons of Crocosmia in order to claim back a square foot or two of flowerbed, but doing it with a cat intent on stalking and pouncing on my fork gets rather tedious. It then pounced on my turned back (thank goodness for fleece, I say, although maybe if I wore something that made me look less like prey I’d do better). It also tried launching itself from the wheel arch of the car onto the other half, although apparently it changed its mind comically in mid leap having decided it was better off not attacking someone with access to a pressure hose who will not hesitate to use it. We’d feel securer if it hadn’t also worked out how to get in through our bathroom window which is disconcerting when you were rather hoping to have the bathroom to yourself.
But we’re not taking it that personally, because the cat is just a trainee killing machine and will pounce on anything that moves and some things that don’t. During the course of yesterday the cat variously attacked its own shadow, a bee, several leaves, a buddleia bush, a figment of its own imagination and the shed, and then actually caught a shrew which it carried around squeaking furiously (the shrew, not the cat) while we both implored it to do the decent thing and kill it properly. And so far, we’ve yet to be troubled by any more mice.
The other half is now hoping it will concentrate on its pheasant stalking skills and start bringing us back the spoils. The cat is undoubtedly hoping that we’ll turn our backs for just long enough for it to get a really good run up at us. Though if that’s going to work, it might have to rethink its hiding technique.
Lovely post. Thanks for the giggles
Our local moggy rips the heads off rabbits. So you could train local kitty that way and sort your rabbit problem for next year!
Jo – you’re welcome.
Wightworld – yeah, I’ve heard that the local cats will take a rabbit here as well. I’m hoping they don’t do hares…
Looks just like, and reminds me of, a cat we used to have! Is there such a thing as feline reincarnation? xx
It’s a very unusual looking cat, with brown eyes. Maybe it is reincarnated…
Sounds as if you have a bit of a joker on your hands. But it must be good to have the fun and not the responsibility of a kitty. It has recently dawned on me, my chasing of the neighbourhood tomcat out of the garden for eating the catmint and terrorising the birds, could be making my compost heap a bit of a safe haven for the rodents..perhaps I should be more hospitable.
We had one that used to catch frogs at night, then carry them around in its mouth while they screamed, making an eerie, unearthly row that kept the neighbours awake and shaking. Nice creatures, cats. Sounds like yours is as yet something of an amateur by comparison. Beware – that will change.
I noted you removed my comment — had you rather we not put links in?
It’s not me, it’s wordpress, it tends to assume it’s spam. I didn’t even see it and I can’t even find it now so it must have been wiped. Sorry about that
Well, smallest of my worries. Pertinent also that I spent about 6 hours yesterday ejecting a Google redirect virus from my computer — which has been the high point of the week so far. The serialized jeramiad currently running in my blog is not for the easily depressed.
This was the link in question:
It’s what your post reminded me of. One of their better albums IMHO.