Chapter 13: Mice wars

The West Wing extension at Tom Cat Towers is being well used.

It’s quite nice to just flop in there and snuggle up on an old sweatshirt that smells of my human after a waddle round the gardens and a chomp of the ants. It’s nice to just curl up and keep an eye on the birds. Invariably the little pod next to mine will be stuffed with the humongous ginger slug snoring away.

There is a new attraction on the patio; small mice. They shimmy down the wall from next door’s garden and dash across the slabs picking up seeds which the birds have dropped. Sometimes when I am sitting on the patio I imagine that they are inside the pods.

Blackbirds come hopping round the patio looking for the cat kibbles and raisins which my human puts out. Ginger gut truck will Hoover the cat kibbles up if he sees them. Not sure if he’s hungry, just greedy or whether it’s spite to prevent the birds eating them. We also have a tiny dunnock who lives behind the pods and he comes bouncing out from the Leylandii looking for things to eat. He has just been joined by another dunnock; clearly there are rich pickings on the patio of Tom Cat Towers.

The blackbirds are considered the property of Dumpty. She sees them as her royal collection of birds and will spend time by the open French window just watching them as they get quite close to her.

If wuss can keep his eyes open for long enough, he likes to chatter and chunter at the bids. Trouble is he is such a lazy lump that he spends most of his time on the patio either sitting there or on his back, legs in the air … asleep. No wonder the birds snicker and laugh at him. Useless lump. They get so close to him, so unafraid of him are they that they almost land on him!

This morning, I had been monitoring the mice on the patio as they came and went snorking up great mouthfuls of seeds. They were all round the two plastic pods under the trees which we call the West Wing Extension. I got more and more excited as they zipped across the patio slabs and at one point I could hear them behind the pods. However with my wonky hearing, I was convinced that they were actually inside the smaller of the two pods.

The excitement got too much as I lunged into the smaller of the pods and landed on the big ginger wussy cat who was curled up tight into a ball at the back of the pod. He woke with such a start and let out such a vile breathed hiss, I almost fainted. He must be eating poo as his breath is that bad. I thought he was going to attack me, he was so startled.

Willi’s version

The human feeds cat kibbles to the birds.

At first I thought that this was such a waste and would go and eat as much as I could before they came down to indulge. Then my monster master brain kicked in. If the birds ate the cat kibbles, then they too would taste of cat kibbles.

I have, as yet, not caught one to prove my theory.

I was rudely awoken by Dippi crashing into my pod as I was lying in a comatose lump. Clearly she needed my company. At last she is beginning to recognise me as her carer. She tried to maintain that mice were in the back of the pod, but we both know that's not true!

• < Prev
• Next >