A Local Thug Exposed.

Today we were back to the plain grey skies once more. This evening walking home from Pilates the wind had dropped and it felt relatively warm.

Nope, this is not our new cat but a thug that has been terrorising the local cat population. This morning there was a photo on the local village FB page with no end of comments from people whose cats are being constantly bitten by this Tom cat. Owners are having vets bills of up to £500, one cat can't walk because it was bitten on a joint and others are showing signs of stress and not wanting to go out. This was the cat that Speedy fought with and broke his tooth which cost us £250 at the vet. Having read all that this morning I went outside and there he was sitting on the drive wall. I double checked and he matched his mug shot on FB. I had thought it might live a few doors up but apparently their ginger cat has been neutered and gets on with other cats. One comment thought he had been abandoned a while back and was going in through cat flaps and stealing food. Now that the scope of his reign of terror is exposed I think that either the Cat's Protection people will be called in or local cat owners will club together and get him neutered anyway. Far cheaper than paying out all those vets bills.

Good news for us! The builder came round this morning to talk about the details of the porch. The original porch was one of the first things to be taken down as it was horrible with the door at the side, and its replacement will be one of the last things to do on the house. It might only be a matter of weeks, or maybe a bit longer but the end is in sight.

The original porch. Yuck.

After the builder left I went down to the zoo to complete my renovation of the old wooden planter. It's not very big but it took me four hours to dig out two muck buckets of soil (and still more left,) plus one muck bucket of roots. I tried hard to remove all the couch grass roots and the bamboo as I know they would grow back in an instant. The remaining bamboo runner got painted with root killer which was the best I could do. Then, because the plywood sides of the planter were in a state of collapse I propped up the insides with oddments of wood. A very rough repair but then the whole thing is not going to last more than a year or two anyway. Once all that was done I replaced the soil and planted a clump of pheasant grass that I had brought from home and finished off with some ground cover sedums from our rockery. At least it is an improvement over the couch grass and bamboo that was there before.

And since I only took photos of the Thug today here are a few more of the fishing lake from Sunday's walk.

The dam that holds the lake waters in.