Oh, Humbug

The Bugglecat never came in on Monday night, or since. Emails to the elderly physicist in the mansion opposite the garage reveal that The Beast of Girton has struck again.

That bloody fluffball has killed all their ducks (who have co-existed peacefully with multiple cats for years) and is now terrorising the resident cat, a gentle and nervous Birman.  I can only hang my head in shame and promise to put a collar and bell on him (again) if I can ever manage to get hold of him.  I've also offered to provide them with a supersoaker ;-)  Wish me luck as I head down the road with a cat carrier and an apologetic expression later this morning.

He can't be properly lost as he's been seen there during days when he was coming home at night and scoffing down cat food.  At the time I thought that meant he hadn't been hunting.  Should have realised it meant he'd been hunting birds instead of bunnies.  He's never figured out how to get the feathers off.  Now the birds are all dead, he's back to bunnies, hence not hungry enough to come home.

Buggled off

The Beast of Girton is on walkabout.  Lock up your poultry.

When I went to collect Humbug from Thorndyke he wasn't there.  He was definitely there most of last week (when he was still coming home at night) and on Monday night (when he wasn't), but not last night.  They're sure because their own cat was out for several hours last night, which isn't possible when Humbug is around to bully him :(  Also there were lots of cute little bunnies hopping about unmolested.

Worried that poor Humbug, having failed to find food and shelter with the nice physicist, had wandered further and got even more lost, I've been tramping the fields, strictly private no entry tracks and farm buildings in the area.  No Humbug, but some interesting conversations.  It seems Humbug thinks nothing of crossing the parish boundary into Cambridge at least as far down as the Traveller's Rest.  He's a regular at the little business park behind there.

In many ways this is reassuring.  We know he was confirmed alive and well on Monday night, and that he knows his way around a much wider area than previously thought.  So if he's not coming home, it's probably just because he doesn't want to.  We'll just have to accept that he is a Cat (or possibly Muppet) Who Walks Alone and he will come back when he is ready.  So I'm much less anxious and doomy.  But I miss him!  We all miss him.