Swept away...or not

Can it really be almost three months since I wrote about my ghastly experiences with pizza and dead squirrels?   Well, reader, I have more to share.


Having insisted that the Shah wake me this morning before his departure to the Midlands, I was up and about damn early for one who has a week off.  Catching up on blogs I never get time to read, I heard what I naively imagined to be the ASBO cats enjoying a merry romp in the next room.  The romp did seem to be a little on the hysterical side, admittedly, but hey - it was early and I had better things to think about.  However, after about 5 minutes, I became aware of odd sort of clucking sounds and far more scrabbling than I would have expected... oh crap - another bloody pigeon, I thought.  So I bravely stuck my head around the door.  both cats were staking out the table that the TV sits on.  Whatever they had brought in had obviously managed to hide underneath it and was making the mother of all noises.  I tiptoed past and up the stairs to wake TS - mightily unimpressed as you can imagine.  "Please - I need you," I begged and he unwillingly loped downstairs looking like something freshly disinterred.  


This time we were organised.  I opened the back doors as wide as they would go.  He stood on a kitchen chair with the broom, the better to brush whatever it was out towards the door.  I stood on an armchair with an ancient window pole and prepared to use the hooky end to move the table.  Lo and behold!  Another feckin' squirrel - only this time very much alive and very panicked.  Did it work?  Did it run to the back door?  Did it hell.  No!  It gambolled merrily to the front door and jumped up and down in a crazy manner as if to cry - "let me out, you heartless bastards."  Then, sensing the futility of this action, it ran back to its hiding place under the telly while TS and I squealed like babies and waved brooms and poles around feebly.


By this stage, the cats had both decided they were now scared of Sciurus Minimus and they were the ones who departed sharpish out of the back door with our curses ringing in their ears.  TS then bravely climbed down from his perch and unlocked the front door and we went through the whole horrible process one more time, except that, this time, Sciurus saw sense and bolted with, of course, both cats in hot pursuit.

As I said to the Shah on the phone later, they were like two blokes boasting down the pub about the one that got away.."of course, I coulda had 'im, right?  "Yeah mate, me too...we were THAT close - no worries."  


And the moral of the story, dear cats, is - DON'T START WHAT YOU CAN'T FINISH!