Cats. I have just one cat left having had one euthanised last week. When we moved to this house some sixteen years ago we had just the one cat, this one. At that time we permitted him to access most parts of the house but had to stop this practice once we had other cats who hunted, we didn't want mice running about upstairs.

Sparky remembered his previous freedom and it has been the devil's own job stopping him bolting through an open door at the drop of a hat.

Now he is an only cat once more I have allowed him his previous freedom and he is SO confused. However, he is taking full advantage and as I type he is sleeping in the hall, in the draught! Normally he will head for the nearest box or newspaper left on the floor.

Strange creature.

Tell us your cat/dog stories.

ClaraSue, my Shar-Pei mix, is now 6 years old. Out of all the dogs I've had in my lifetime, this one is the strangest/funniest one ever. One of the things that sets her apart from others is that she loves coffee. It doesn't make a difference if it's black, with cream, sugar, cold, hot, or decaffinated. She loves it and will carry on with these stranges growls and deep throated moans until she gets a little bit. I asked her veterinarian if she could have some and he said it was ok in small amounts. So I bought her a bowl that's used for coffee only, and when she starts with her morning routine of sounds, she gets a few tablespoons. And she only carries on like this for coffee and only in the mornings. If I have a cup at any other time of the day, she couldn't care less.

Your talking about not wanting mice upstairs reminded me of this story - I don't know if I have told it here before.
My house is quite old, and we do not have screens on the second floor windows. They just open to the air. Our cat had a habit of bringing in her kills through the window and leaving them on the floor of my daughter's room. This is bad enough if they are dead, but even worse when they are not.
One day she jumped through the window with a mouse in her mouth. My daughter yelled, and the cat, startled, dropped the live mouse, which immmediately took refuge in the huge mess that is Suse's room. We closed the cat in there with the mouse for several hours, hoping she would catch it, but no luck, there were too many hiding places. So, I shut myself in the room with her, and closed all of the windows but one. I started moving furniture, trying to flush out the mouse. When it appeared, the cat, who was watching this enterprise closely, pounced, and caught it. I swept her up, put her out the window onto the roof, and slammed the window shut. Mission accomplished.
Four days later, we were outside doing yardwork (it was fall) and I looked up at the lilac bush that reaches to the portion of roof outside my daughter's window. There, on the very teeny tiny top twig, was a mouse, holding on for all it was worth. At the foot of the bush sat the cat, watching.
She must have dropped the mouse again, when I put her out the window, and it got away and had been clinging to that twig ever since. I figured that a mouse that had survived so much deserved to live, so we shooed the cat away, and I got the mouse down with a broom handle, and let it scamper off.

Two years ago we had to convert her to an inside cat, as our town had recently gotten a cat bylaw, where people are allowed to trap free roaming cats if they are bothered by them. Our neighbour threatened to do so, so we had to close up the cat door. Muffin did NOT take to this kindly. Last spring, that neighbour moved, and we have a couple of young guys living there now, who couldn't care less if the cat orams around. So, we reopened her cat door. She celebrated by, a few days later, killing and bringing home a gopher. Now, this is a twelve year old, diabetic cat, quite the sickly old lady. The gopher measured about ten inches from nose tip to tail tip, and must have weighed a pound!

Heck, I hope she killed it! Some of my cats used to bring home rabbits, alive and dead. I found one bunny behind a bookcase in my sitting room, not nice and it was terrified.

As for laws, our laws here in Jersey specifically allow cats to roam, you cannot take action against a cat digging in your garden and spoiling your plants. The best you can do is use pepper or other repellents in your garden or spraying with water, nothing more, you must not harm the cat. Also it is your responsibility to keep other animals out of your property, not the owner of the animal to keep it confined - so if cows get loose it is just tough if they get in your garden and eat your plants! Yes, this did once happen to us, they got in and ate the vegetables.

I have just received the following email from my daughter, I found it amusing.

We went to speak to the other neighbour of our noisy neighbours yesterday evening and he mentioned he had a cat. I thought this might be the pretty puss as I'd seen it going towards the house, and asked and it is. Oh, say I, he comes into our house - I've found him upstairs a couple of times. He's lovely though, say I. Neighbour looks shocked and says, I get that too, a three legged cat. Ah, I say, that would be ours! It seems that they go and visit each other! They don't seem to mind each other much, obviously to the extent that they tolerate each other in each other's house!

Agony, your story of the mouse reminds me of the time my husband was cleaning out our aviary. We used to store the bird-seed in a bucket with a sealed lid. One day, Maynooth popped open the lid and out jumped a mouse - we have no idea how it got in a sealed bucket in the first place. Anyway, the mouse jumped about two feet straight up and quick as a flash, Maynooth caught it in mid-air - that man has amazing reflexes. And there he stood, holding the mouse, not knowing what to do next. My cat Tibby sauntered over so naturally Maynooth gave him the mouse. I was laughing so hard. I told Maynooth that the cat was supposed to catch mice for him, not the other way round.

Several years ago, we invested in a "cattery" - it's like an aviary built on to the side of our house. The cats access it via a cat-flap built into our laundry door. The cattery allows our cats to go outdoors but they are contained and cannot roam the neighbourhood. We had to get the cattery because we were unable to keep our neighbour's cat out of our yard. It kept beating up Tibby who was an old cat by then. The neighbour refused to keep her cat home and refused to accept the fact that her cat was causing a problem. Rather than having ill-feeling in the neighbourhood, it seemed the best solution to get the cattery. In the year prior to getting the cattery, I spent hundreds of dollars on vet bills because poor Tibby kept getting abscesses and other injuries related to next door's aggressive cat. Since getting the cattery, we have not spent a cent at the vet except for routine things like immunisation. So as far as I am concerned, the cattery was a great investment - it paid for itself within a few months with the money we saved on vet bills!

After we got the cattery, our neighbour got rid of her cat. It turned out that other neighbours were also having the same problem and she got lots of complaints. But I don't regret getting the cattery!

I only had one dog growing up, and no cats. Meaghan was a Scottie and a bonnie lass she was, too! Cornered a possum in the backyard, chased and caught rabbit or two, and slept on open phone books whenever she could find them. She chewed rocks as a puppy and hated water. She wasn't that strange, though. Just Scottish.

Now, I've just gotten a dog, Mina. She's a mutt, with Lab, Rottweiller and German Sheperd, but mostly Rottie. She's lovely, 7wks old, and is the most laid back, sweet-tempered dog I've ever met. She's a perfect match for my young daughter; just ornery enough when Katherine wants to play, but not so ornery that she's ever nipped her, and she calms down fast when it's time, and the two of them have learned quickly when to leave each other alone. However, I've only had her a week, so aside from every cute puppy thing in the world, she hasn't done anything funny yet.

And the mouse story reminds ME of a story. When I was growing up we had an in-ground pool in the back yard. This pool had a "pool sweep" device that floated on top of the water and made it's way along the pool-edge sweeping debris toward the filters. We also had a neighbor who must have had a dozen cats, all free-roaming, who'd invite themselves into our yard, the ultimate insult to Meaghan, proper Scottish lass that she was, with the proper Scottish temper, too. But I digress. These cats would frequently chase mice into our yard, and keep on with the chase until the cat caught the mouse or the mouse ended up in the pool, where the cat couldn't get it. About twice a month we'd find dead mice in our pool. Except for one early fall morning, close to when we usually emptied the pool. It was chilly outside, but the water was heated to a pleasant 80 degrees F. We let Meaghan out and she promptly ran to the poolside bristling like a boar, and making the most amazing set of noises that only someone who's known a Scottie can imagine, and there, perched atop Herkermer (as we fondly called the pool sweep) was a dark brown/grey pompom. Alright, so it wasn't a pompom, but it LOOKED like one. It was a sad, wet little mouse, who'd fallen in the pool and found it's way to Herkermer, climbed up and waited, huddled and shivering in the cold morning. My dad felt so sorry for the mouse, and figured that any mouse who could save itself from drowning had earned it's life, and, with us restraining the irate dog, fetched it out of the water with a broom and deposited it safely under our shed.

Well, well, Sparky is coming out of his shell now that he is an only cat. For most of his life he has never made a sound other than purring, presumably so as not to attract the attention of the bullying Henry. Now he miaows for his food, in fact he is becoming quite demanding after years of hiding away. He sounds so funny, it is a very poor effort, sort of scratchy, presumably since he hasn't done it very often. Ah bless.