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whatsoever, and tolerated because of his age, the dirty old man. We'd be eating dinner, hear a
groaning noise and realise that Pierrot was under the table happily rubbing himself up against
a chair leg. It was, needless to say, quite off-putting. The rescued kitten, naturally curious
anyway, just stared at him with a look of complete disdain on her face, like a rich woman in
a fast-food restaurant: fascination and disgust in equal measure.
The next day I had decided to repeat my 'get up early and do some work' folly only to be
greeted by Junior, our horse, standing, snorting at the lounge window, and another massive
puddle of doggy arse-vomit in the hall. Junior had broken through the fence (the part that
hadn't yet been electrified) and had decimated one of my precious apple trees. He looked de-
cidedly peaky, which served him right frankly, but I took him back to his stable in the pouring
rain while Natalie dealt with Toby's mess; a fair deal I thought.
Then Natalie found another three kittens.
We rang the local Animal Rescue Centre, the SPA, which apparently isn't at our house as
I had begun to believe it was, and were told that they couldn't take the kittens because we
live in the wrong
département
(county, that is); but make sure, they said, that we get them all
sterilised, including the mother if we found her. Sterilisation is very expensive, they added.
Thanks, keep up the good work.
One of the local vets, taking something of a harsh line, said that the cats had to be 'removed'
or we would be overrun in the next few years by in-bred moggies. How do we do that, we
asked? You don't want to know the answer - and anyway we'd run out of bin bags.
The hunting season was due to start the following week and I really couldn't see them sur-
viving the carnage that is created by local
chasseurs
and droves of middle-management types
coming down from Paris for a couple of days, all blasting away at anything that moves.
Samuel hated it so much when we first arrived that he went charging into the field with his
toy lightsaber, ready to kill them all, and I had to go chasing after him and bring him down
with a rugby tackle while pheasants plummeted to the earth around us.
I had to go back to the UK for a couple of days to work, but I made it very clear that on my
return I expected the kittens to have moved on. I wasn't interested where they went, but a line
had to be drawn, I said. Enough is enough, I emphasised. No more animal adoptions, I said,
'Unless' - and I made this absolutely clear - 'it's a billionaire bloody unicorn.'
Who was I kidding? Natalie and the neighbouring farmer's wife, Dominique, were deciding
what to do with the kittens when a car pulled up and asked what was occurring. Now, whether
he was a cat lover, a good Samaritan, a madman or just plain hungry I don't know, but he
took one of the kittens. And then there were two. Natalie and Dominique decided between
themselves it would be safer to move them. Move them into my house, as it turns out, until -
and I quote - 'They can be re-homed'.
I mean really, do people think I'm stupid or something? Samuel and Maurice had already
named the two 'temporary' newcomers Fox and Stripe, and taken one each to look after. So
