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It was the attentive cat looking out through the back door that first drew my eye to the grey squirrel. Even though its head was hidden, and therefore it could not see her, she knew that there was no point in dashing out through the cat flap

-crispies and exclaimed that there was a fish on the floor.So there was. About 15cm long, slim and silver with reddish fins and tail. What? There can be little doubt that it was one of the felines that brought it home through the cat flap, but how?I'm now left wondering

the pig deliberately throws out tasty morsels to attract squirrels for an early morning gossip. The cats spend all day long waiting to charge out through the cat-flap after them, but always to no avail.When I first saw the jay, it startled and flew up

, I stressed. So long as the cats did not see it, it would find its own way back to some suitable shelter.Despite our pond housing a successful smooth newt colony, we have never had frogs breeding in it. They do climb into the water, and one year we

tasty had somehow got wedged in it. I've cleared out plenty of chicken bones from our gutters over the years, dropped there, I think, by crows who have raided gardens where titbits have been left out for cats or foxes.Then it was the jays, three of them

's as high as a squirrel's eye hereabouts.I have to admit that we've been feeding the squirrels recently. My five-year-old delights in chucking out walnuts and peanuts through the cat flap. This has had the side effect that the squirrels have become rather

the glass, expecting to find one of our cats, and one of the neighbours', head to head, tail and hackles up, bleating at each other in top voice, but can't see anything. So I step outside and am met with a caterwauling that could break breeze blocks. I can

of wildlife down there. The Rye is a tad bigger than my back garden, so I can usually find something different.The first thing we see is a fox, loitering about the 'cat house'. As we reach the impenetrable front garden I can hear it walking about in the deep

dung is a bit messy because it is so runny. Sheep and deer dung is tough and fibrous. Cat and dog dung can be a bit ripe, but fox dung is, to my mind, the most difficult on the nose.Nevertheless, I always take the opportunity to examine what the fox has

in them. Never enough to cause a problem by them coming indoors, but enough to occasionally catch a startled rodent face looking up at me as I dump out the next consignment of banana skins and potato peelings. It gives the cats something to chase other