Sting in the tail as new arrivals give jealous cat some paws for thought

SO FAR, the score is one Waterford Glass tumbler, two plates and a cereal bowl.

All sacrificed in pursuit of bluebottles. The good news is that, in every case, the bluebottle died. It’s just that if I had belted them with a rolled-up copy of a newspaper, it would have been a lot cheaper.

Sparky, the stripy kitten, is the bluebottle hunter. She’s not much bigger than a mouse, so has postponed paw-to-paw combat with rodents. Bluebottles, however, can be knocked down from a window and treated like a stunned mouse on the floor, although when they recover and fly out of the danger zone, it comes as a hell of a surprise to Sparky.