Jj is for Jottings 42.  A Feline Intruder.

The other morning, when I went to give the alpacas their breakfast, I found a strange (i.e. not one of ours) cat crouching in their feed trough.  It was half dark, so I didn’t see it properly, apart from the fact that it was a dark colour.

A few days later I heard the chooks all clucking loudly in their pen before I had let them out.   When I went to investigate they were looking very uneasy, but I couldn’t see why.  Then I discovered that a hen who was in a pen by herself had flown out of a small space in the netting over her pen.  When I returned her to the pen she seemed to be looking around nervously, too.

The next morning at 4 am I opened the front door to let in some cool air, and there was the cat at the bottom of the front steps.  Two hours later it was on the back path.  My cats had no interest in breakfast – they had obviously been peering at the cat out of the laundry window and Shikha wanted to Get Out And At ‘im!  Shanti was interested, but decided to stay on the inside of the door because, she told me, Her Brother Is Bigger Than She Is.

Later, one of the hens was really carrying on, leaving me in no doubt that Something Had Upset Her.  And of course, there it was – that cat, just on the other side of the fence.  Actually Shikha was not far away and he didn’t seem at all cross, which was surprising.  Seen in daylight, it looked like it had began as a dark grey and then changed its mind halfway and decided to become a tabby, ending in a very striped tail.  Anyway, it ran off – for about 1 metre – so I went round and chivvied it.  It ran through the pond area and over the fence into the back paddock.  Unfortunately for the cat, I had given the alpacas some green prunings not long before, so they were all in the vicinity.  Geisha gave very determined chase, and it just reached the fence and slipped through before Geisha reached it!  Geisha got a big round of applause from me (I’m sure she didn’t have a clue what I was doing or why), and I hope the cat thinks twice before coming back and upsetting my animals.