Putin – or Rasputin as he’s known when out on the town looking for a hot date, is an expensive intruder.  Because I’d hoped that Zig would be coming for the summer when I bought the cat flap, I got a large one so that the dogs could use it too.  The only one I can find of similar dimensions costs over £90.  Then there’s the cost of having Eloise microchipped.

However, it certainly is very much needed.  I left the flap unlocked last night and Putin invaded the house at 6 o’clock this morning.  I heard a horrified yowl from Eloise and knew what it signified immediately.  Putin was halfway up the stairs when a naked Z leapt out at him and he shot back down again, down the passageway, through the kitchen, into the back lobby and out of the catflap.  I grumpily locked it again, made tea and took it, with muesli, back to bed and read yesterday’s papers that I’d been too tired to finish last night.

The good news is that Karen in the next village will take any bantams I don’t want and doesn’t mind if they haven’t been sexed yet.  So I’ll keep the four oldest ones, as two of them have already been promised and they’re all pretty, plus the white one that is living in the greenhouse, because she won’t be easy to catch, and let her have all the rest, about a dozen (it’s actually thirteen, but one of them has a bad leg and I don’t think she will survive – it seems to be a congenital dislocation or something similar).  When the remaining five are bigger – they’re less than a week old – I’ll give her those too.  If she really doesn’t mind cocks, she can have the four young ones plus the daddy, but it hardly seems fair – they aren’t honestly worth rearing for meat.

I went down to the church this morning, arranged one basket of vegetables and another of fruit, then did two flower arrangements from a mixture of bought and garden-picked flowers and leaves.  I was brisk about it, doing the whole thing in about an hour.  But then it was decided to put one of them on the altar as the colours would show up better and I wished I’d taken a little more trouble – it looks fine but I could have done better.

I’ve started turning out the greenhouse, which has got quite overgrown.  But I lost enthusiasm after a while.  I’ll do more another day.  Unless I can persuade someone else to do it for me, of course…