I don’t often feel obliged to comment on the news, or highlight a particular item, but this article about police overreaction made me want to scream.

“Ray Markham said footballs had been flying into his garden for years but when one smashed into his greenhouse last month he refused to return it.

The 68-year-old, who lives next to a policeman in Cubbington, said he was then arrested by four Warwickshire Police officers for theft of the ball.”

Legally the man was probably on shaky ground, for refusing to return the ball. By demonstrating intent to permanently deprive, I guess it was technically stealing. (I sure wish I’d known this as a kid - would’ve saved me a fortune!) I would argue though, that breaking his greenhouse was criminal damage and the ball was evidence. The fact that the ball had been kicked into his garden several times previously showed a certain recklessness as to whether damage to Mr Markham’s property might occur.

Regardless of the legal aspects of this, which I suspect can be argued either way by lawyers, the fact remains that a moral wrong has been committed here. If someone accidentally kicked something through my window and broke it, I would have to cheerfully thank them for doing so and return the item that was accidentally launched through my window. I don’t think so!

As a child, I had a very clear idea that if I broke something, I would have to pay for the damage to be fixed, not go and demand the ball back! Ye gods, what chutzpah that would have demanded!

This example of police heavy-handedness, and, dare I say it, misuse of police time - which is, I believe, an offence in itself, has not endeared the Police to me.

This story would have been equally of note, however, had the neighbour not been a Police officer and simply been an ordinary citizen who called the Police. I suspect though that an ordinary citizen would have been ignored, and not received the attention of four Police officers.

I have to record this momentous occasion: Mogret has let us sleep in! It is now 9am, and I woke before her.

I do hope she’s not broken. She was miowing last night as we were trying to sleep, which isn’t normal for her. She’s purry and friendly this morning and isn’t giving us any clues.

Philb thinks she may have knocked herself unconscious in her attempts to catch a woodpigeon yesterday, but I just don’t know.

Strawberry,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

Owing to an impulsive plant-purchase, we are currently cultivating strawberries.

This is the first of the crop, and hopefully there will be plenty more to follow.

This strawberry was the nicest strawberry I have ever tasted: it was very juicy, deliciously ripe and had the most amazing flavour. All other strawberries will now be found inferior, I fear.

Rest easy, I am not temporally displaced, this is not an Easter reference. I merely found myself musing on the sudden insertion of both into my life and wished to comment thereon.

For the previous seven and twenty years of my life, I had remained blissfully unaware of the abundance of rabbits that grace almost every green place I visit. It is but a matter of months since I first became aware of such things, but now it is as if I have become strangely attuned to their presence, as I can detect them wherever I happen to cast my eye. I find also that it never fails to fill me with uncommon delight.

For the same length of time as I had been unaware of the rabbit population at large, I had also been largely ignorant of the pleasures to be experienced when immersing oneself in bonnets. In short, I am currently reading my way through the works of Jane Austen, with almost unalloyed delight.

I have so far, this past week, read Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility. I have but recently begun Northanger Abbey, yet already I find myself vexed and unable to continue reading: it is endlessly apparent that the author is excessively sensible of her audience, and addresses them regularly and in a most familiar manner. I find that this distracts from the enjoyment I might otherwise be deriving from the work, and arouses great distaste that she is so forward in her speech to me; I much prefer not to be reminded with annoying frequency that I am reading a work of fiction.
The offence began almost at once, with an advertisement from the author in the opening pages. I detected a certain air of petulance about the complaints that the publishing of this work was so long awaited as to render the contents obsolete and quaint. I wonder what her thoughts would be on learning that her works are still admired some two hundred years later. Maybe this would have stilled her angry pen and therefore rendered me less irritated with her manner.

Before I married philb, I shared a house and a life with another man, and a varying number of cats. Victoria Elvina, the eldest, was a regal, totally-black lady who ruled the household with an iron paw. We lost her in 2001: found her lying on the ground outside, having died some time during the night.

Her daughter, Myrrah, was a tabby and white cat of very little brain, and a timid personality. It took her three years to decide I was Not Monster, and not long after I left to decide I was Monster again. She died last week, of cancer, and I mourn her loss. She was a spoiled Madam of a cat, with a most unsettling start in life: she was one of two litters that Vicky was carrying simultaneously, with the wrong litter being born first. She was the only survivor of both litters, and both Vicky and her were nearly lost. She was often called ‘miracle’.

Myrrah

My ex is now left with two cats - both of whom were my fault. Talen, the eldest of the two was a cat with two mothers, as he lived with two queens, one of whom had lost her litter and was helping to raise the other’s. His name is taken from a character in the Elenium, by David Eddings - a boy with two mothers. Admittedly, my Talen isn’t a thief and an artist.
Talen

Cobweb is the survivor of the pair of kittens we adopted in 2001. His brother, Puck, was hit by a car at the age of 6 months

Puck is the sleeping white kitten, and Cobweb is the black kitten. They were so named because at the time, I was living in an old (AD1697) cobwebby house and the night he arrived, he kept hiding in corners and coming out covered in cobwebs. It was then very difficult not to call his brother, a little imp who got into everything and everywhere and generally caused chaos, Puck. They were two halves of the same cat, and Cobweb was devastated when Puck was killed.

I will miss Myrrah, for her tantrums (think a feline Violet Elizabeth), her pretty nose, her fearfulness and her purr.

Exeunt omnes,
originally uploaded by Purplekitten.

Random Cat is now a regular visitor to this restaurant: waiting outside the back door in the morning, and sauntering idly to the food bowl of an evening. Once he has eaten his fill, it’s off over the gate again, to do whatever a tom has to do during the day.