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The two kittens are now not only hunting but eating their prey. Deidre came in with a mouse a few nights ago, played with it while all the other animals watched enviously and Meg tried to steal it. Eventually she got bored and I disposed of the carcass. Last night I found something stuck to the bathroom floor which we identified after much prodding and poking as ‘unidentified entrails of rodent’. The rodent the entrails cam in was absent.
A little later she (Deidre) woke me with loud growling, the sort she only makes when she is guarding a kill, and sure enough another mouse was clamped lifeless in her jaws. I wanted to check it (the mouse) wasn’t just playing dead but as I got closer, the cat fled, mouth still clamped round mouse, upstairs. I’ve long and frustrating experience of chasing a cat with a kill around the house so, thinking she would bring it back down to show off, if I left her. And yes, within two minutes she was there wandering through the house, relaxed, proud and completely sans-mouse. I checked upstairs: no sign of dead mousey, and no animal interest (Al was lying around up there, Fatima was out) – certainly not enough staring and prowling to suggest a live rodent had been seen recently. Deidre’s whole demeanour said ‘there’s nothing to see here. Move along’. Only explanation: she ate the mouse. Just like she ate (most of) the last one. Now she’s stopped messing, put aside childish things and is and like her mum, who eats rabbits and squirrels regularly from ears to tail, finding her own warm food.
This excitement may explain the kittens’ new found confidence and the end (so far) of bed wetting. This is just as well as the girls’ new bunk bed arrived
Maddie is thrilled to have a proper bed with a proper grown up duvet. So lack of cat wee and rodent innards are an added bonus.
It remains unremittingly cold, vice-like in its intensity and scalpel-sharp. Saturday night was -5C and it barely rose through Sunday despite some hazy sunshine. When I got into the car at 6 this morning, the thermometer read -4.5C.
The Farm at 7.30 Sunday morning when we were out with Meg. I reckon it was -7 degrees.
I find time stalls when it’s this cold and I just grow an undefined fear inside me. How you guys who live your lives in Alaska, Scandinavia, Vermont, or even Scotland get through the winter is something I admire greatly – and you remain, invariably, positive about the whole situation: what a lesson for everyone.
The cats are properly dis-chuffed about the weather too. The kittens have taken to staying inside to go to the toilet, usually on our beds. I’m pretty sure Deidre went on Joel’s bed yesterday, and Maddie’s was moistened by a mystery feline (too small for Alan and I think Fatima is still going outside). Pam thinks it might be their mother, the fearsome Pansy, who routinely comes into the garden to scrap her daughters and who I’ve caught inside the house growling and hissing at the dog. Anyway, looks like cat litter trays are making an unscheduled return.
The upside, for the cats at least, is the woodburner. I cleaned the doors of it yesterday so we can see the fire better. All afternoon Fatima sat warming herself, watching the flames with playful intrigue and occassionally attempting to catch them.
Fatima: not the first to be enchanted by a dancing flame
They say it will continue like this for another week at least though the medium range forecast doesn’t see when the weather will break. I can hear the Scandinavians and New Englanders laughing, but I’m not sure my nerves will last as long as the frost!
thewestisyettocome
The West is Yet to Come 