And what about the felines in our midst?

All this furious activity on civil liberties recently has meant that I’ve not mentioned very much about Lady Voledoomcat, the feline resident of The Grannary. She’s just about 13 years old now, a reasonable age for a moggie, but still has a spring in her step and a claw in her paw to catch the unwary.

One of her favourite, if less-active, pursuits is to sneak into the spare bedroom when neither myself nor herself are paying enough attention. If she can achieve this just as the two of us are haring out of the house to get to work in the morning, all the better. And this will be the consequence:

Cat under a duvet

Lady V came to us as a rescue kitten. She was about seven weeks old when we got her. It was a little heart-wrenching to take her from her mother, who was also up for re-homing, but we felt it would be difficult to re-home an adult cat as well as a kitten. She slept the first night downstairs in the parlour, but, being a softy, I took her back up to bed with the morning tea and toast. And there she stayed all day until we came home, snuggled down under a fold of the duvet until we came back to offer her companionship, amusement and something horrid out of a tin. So, she’s always had a thing about getting in under duvets, although strangely enough, never when we’re under them.

Always a cat for the stretched-out legs, as she approached the last of her pre-teen years, she discovered and adopted a new position on the lap. She would alwys just lie straight out with her head on her paws, but now she has decided that she must turn her head to the side and rest it on a knee. Perhaps she just likes the way it fits under her chin; who knows.

Even more recently, she has discovered the pleasures of the writer at the keyboard. Now she will spend ages sitting in the diminishing space between my tummy and the desk and look up adoringly at me. It’s all terribly sweet, until she decides she has to drool over my chest. Then all sentiment must fly away and the cat must chase to find it elsewhere.