Random residency survey

There've been some changes among the residents of Chateau Random. The Booze family has successfully brought up its brood and has moved on to hassle other people, other gardens, for cat food.

Mr Mucus and friends are still around, main congregating on our vinyl tablecloth of a night, drinking, eating what's left of our forgotten seedlings and oozing over one another.

Mr Tubby appears to have left us for pastures new. His behaviour had been changing -- we knew he didn't approve of the cat flap and we and he had been engaged in a battle of wills for the past two months, with him yowling at our front door, demanding to be let out, and us yowling back at him to use the sodding cat flap. Sometimes we hoicked him back from the door and to the cat flap, which he'd use reluctantly, and sometimes we'd just ignore his increasingly insistent yowling and door-scratching. "Cat flap!" we shouted from the sofa. In retaliation, he would make a demonstrative puddle on the hallway tiles and THEN use the cat flap to shit on the Goth bed, just to make a point.

He also hated all the workmen who kept traipsing through his carefully scented-out pathways; he hated us for moving furniture around and blocking off rooms; he couldn't stand the smell of fresh gloss paint and probably hated the new colour scheme too; he absolutely detested us for dowsing him with flea medication even though he probably was the culprit in bringing the damn things in and making us run around the house chasing the buggers with spraycans of Acclaim. We tried to alleviate his suffering by offering him fresh milk, which we know he loves, and plenty of cuddles, in between our cat flap tussles, but it was never enough. I also suspect he was involved in some desperately important power struggle with the neighbouring fluffy cat, who also crapped in our garden, so Mr Tubby took up permanent position on our front door step, vacating it occasionally to patrol our street and to get himself fussed by the neighbouring girls who are still on holiday from school.

I think we've lost him to the neighbours down the road where he can now be spotted lounging in their front garden, sprawled out like a mafia kingpin, acting like he's routinely having his ring kissed whereas I think he got his backside whupped and has merely ceded territory to Mr Fluffy. Who as I've said, craps in our garden but doesn't give us the benefit of return cuddles.

OH thinks Mr Tubby will eventually rock up here again. "When those girls go back to school, he won't get his daily fuss, and they won't let him into the house over the winter. He'll be in front of our stove for most of the day."

I'm not so sure but meanwhile, I am enjoying Neuroticat's affection, probably borne out of her palpable relief that that greedy, bullying tub of guts has moved on. Neuroticat is in fact so grateful that she's taken to bringing us little presents from the garden, one a day, some dead, some still alive. We know we have to praise her for these -- important cat psychology -- and oh, she loves the attention. By now, however, I wish she'd just leave the mice alone.