Lots of badger activity at the moment – the poor pine marten turned up at 4am one night to find that every single nut had already been consumed by badgers which had been coming and going since about 8pm.

We are very slowly making our way through the huge jar of Jelly Beans I bought R for his birthday which you can see in the background. Neither of us are fond of some of the more esoteric flavours so we have to go careful to make sure that we don’t accidentally eat the ones we don’t like. I suspect that J will be left with all the liquorice and aniseed ones, just like he was left with the bounty bar chocolates out of the heroes box at Christmas.

No sooner had we taken it out of the box than Schrodi colonized it. He didn’t quite fit into the moulded polystyrene shape but he did his best.

This is not the only weird box the cats have gone for (bearing in mind the old motto – “if it fits, I sit”). A few years ago now I bought my mum a reproduction of the famous Egyptian bronze cat, and once it had been removed from the packaging, Schrodi inserted himself into the cat shaped indentation where it had been – it did not look comfy!

Christmas cooking is coming along apace, I’ve done my mince pies and sausage rolls now. I also made some saffron roast potatoes for the weekend (V and A are visiting) – they looked lovely but the saffron I bought from Amazon was very disappointing (no taste or flavour and if I wanted yellow food colouring I could buy it more cheaply than £8 for a little box). I’ll need to try a specialist supplier and see if I can get the real thing.

A bit of a nicer day today and not testing (Hurrah!) so I might try to get a better walk in this afternoon – but it is dark at 4:30pm now.

1am Live mouse.
2am Live bat. We thought at first it was another mouse but then we got a better look and it was a squeaky and annoyed bat. R caught it in a T shirt, wrapped it up and had it out the door before I got a proper look at it, but it flew off which was a good sign.
3am Dead short-tailed vole. Left in the middle of the hall as a special gift to remember the night by.

So Schrodi just goes to show that a fourteen year old cat is still a mean hunter when he puts his paw to it. Normally though he just brings in one a night – we call it his “Catch of the Day”.

However, the cats do set it off because they pass close to it coming out of their flap, and this has alerted us to a behaviour we didn’t know about.   They sit, often for long periods of time at night in front of the bird feeding area.  At first R and I thought that their hobby was badger watching and that they were interested in our striped friends (whether wanting to be friends with them or wanting them to go away who can tell), but then R worked out what they were doing after he saw Schrodi pounce on a mouse that had come out to feed on the spilled nuts (he brought it alive into the house two minutes later).

So the cats’ hobby isn’t the rather exotic “badger watching”, it is good old simple mousing.

Click the picture to see the video

Fearing that he was either fighting with another cat or was being attacked by a fox, I ran outside (in the interests of modesty I won’t state what I was wearing at this point, but suffice it to say it was good that it was a warm night). Outside the screaming and dragging noise was much louder. I ran to the edge of the wood and called for Schrodi but to no avail, and after about 30 seconds the sounds died away. By this point I had been joined by R with a torch and we were both desperately worried that Schrodi had been attacked, but when we went and got our cat locator, we realized that he was actually down in the village. But to put my mind at rest, I went to find him, while R tried to persuade Tora out from hiding under our car.

I found Schrodi just outside the village (minus his collar but that’s a different story) and much against his will, carried him home. So the strange noises were nothing to do with either of our cats, because one had been inside, and the other had been half a mile away. R then had the bright idea that something might have been recorded on the webcam. Sure enough, when we looked, about one minute before the noise started there was the scene on the video above (click on the picture for the video). We are 99% sure it was the two badgers tussling with each other and yelling (or whatever the noise badgers make is called) as they crashed through the bracken.

This was a big relief as at least we didn’t have to worry about a mystery animal, but I can’t say after that adrenalin that I slept very well. Particularly as Schrodi then brought me a mouse at 4am.

So not sure if the badgers were fighting or mating (apparently badgers can mate at any time in the year).

At about 4am, Schrodi decided to complement my mother by bringing her a present of a large, live (and very lively) short tailed vole. Neither of them proving equal to the task of catching it (R’s normal technique of dropping a T-shirt on top of it having failed), I had to come to the rescue and immediately caught it (ok – I must admit that I was lucky and it snared itself between two cables for long enough for me to catch it). It then bit me extremely hard through the finger as I was taking it outside to let it go.

So time for another shaming for Schrodi. The background to the picture is my bed with the bottom sheet on, but no duvet, as he moved there when I was halfway through making the bed.

c. 1:30am Heard muffled meow from hall. Knew this sign of old so dashed into hall. Small shrew is on floor apparently dead with Schrodi standing over it proudly. Touched it lightly and it shot off under the bureau obviously not even injured. Went back to bed. This was rodent one and we haven’t seen it since.

c. 2.00am Another ‘Mummy come and look at this’ noise from S. Shot out again and managed to catch a largish short tailed vole and put it out the front door. Went back to bed. This time have difficulty getting back to sleep as charged up by this time.

c. 3:00am. This time no meow – just a banging noise. Stagger out for a third time and S is chasing a field mouse round the hall. After five minutes I can’t catch it and go back to bed resolving not to get up again whatever he catches. Then the noise starts – thump, crunch, meow, bang etc. etc. I stand it for about 10 minutes but just can’t sleep for racket and worrying about how poor little thing is suffering. Out for a fourth time and he has it cornered in the vestibule. Stuff him out into the hall, close the inner door and open the outer one. Manage to usher mouse outside.

6:45am. Wake up bright and bushy tailed ready for the day (or not). In fact have to get up as have a report to write. Directly outside my door is yet another mouse – dead and stiff.

R thinks he will eventually run out of prey. I hate to disabuse him of this, but I’m pretty sure that in our garden four rodents, whilst not conducive to a restful night’s sleep when introduced in a domestic environment, are a very small drop in a very large ocean.