It's been really quite cold here for the past week or so - I'm not complaining, because we like the cold weather, and it means that the house is full of cats.

Last night, all eight of the Tribe were in the living room with us, while we watched Cranford (you should have seen it, really you should - trust me on this). We had lit a big 9 wick candle and set it on the hearth, and Pepper decided it would be a warm place to settle if she sat on the mantlepiece.

No problem with that - until while settling herself, she knocked a box of matches on to the candle ... I didn't know I could move that fast!

This morning.

Under Mac's desk.

As dead as a dead thing, and the biggest yet; perpetrator unknown, but the usual suspects may apply.

That's all.

This is really nice - a cat mobile from a Danish company.

Kitty Cats
Click-A-Mobile™
Three small kittens playing with a little red ball. This mobile is suitable for cat lovers of all ages. Perfect hanging over the baby's changing table, as well as elsewhere in your home. Measures 55x35 cm / 22x14 inches by Flensted Mobiles Denmark.

More details here.

Mac, as in generally the case, rose from her pit earlier than me this morning to find a… substantial… gift from the Tribe in the study. Indecent burial of the sad remains fell to yrs. truly, but she gave me sanction to weigh the thing (once enbagged) on the kitchen scales.

At 8½ oz (240g), not quite up to the standard of January 2004's 9 oz beast, but not to be sniffed at, as it were. Our guess is that Ratboy was (ir)responsible, but neither he nor any of the others are letting on.

Unlike mice and shrews, rats don't seem to get consumed; Mac reckons this might be down to the lack of tomato ketchup. And buns.

I shouldn't have done it, I know. But I had to.

we awoke in the middle of the night to a thunderous crash - Pete very courageously got out of bed to investigate, and found the cats' water bowl, which normally lives at the top of the stairs, mysteriously located at the *bottom* of the stairs; without its water, of course, which was all the way down the stairs [sigh].

Pete said he had vaguely heard some scrabblings just before the crash, so we think that some unfortunate small creature had been brought in by one of the Tribe, and had taken refuge either under the bowl, or under the bookcase behind it.

and when things were back to what passes for normal here, and we were ready to return to bed, Aliss had taken up a position of eternal vigilance by the bowl - one that she adopts well, I have to say.

no sign of the creature so far, but it may have perished by now, of course.

for those of you who like to watch the Tribe in all their glory, we've had a bit of a reorganisation of the catcams.

gone is the MooseCam in the livingroom, because there's very rarely a beast on it; it's been relocated to the study, where there are now four cameras. It's where we spend most of our time, and at the moment, so do the cats.

this could all change in an instant, of course - and probably will.

apparently, all domestic felines are descended from a group of around five in the Middle East around 130,000 years ago, a study suggests. It says in the Daily Mail (I know, I know).

Researchers have traced the domestic feline family tree back to a small family of wild cats living on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates in modern-day Iraq.

more here, from the aforementioned "newspaper".

cats love prawns; they're known for it, aren't they ... but none of the Tribe have ever seemed that keen.

we cooked a prawn stirfry last night (with courgettes, red pepper, garlic, spring onions, some basil, just for the record), and one prawn didn't make it into the pan for some reason.

we left it on the worktop as a controlled experiment, and this morning it was still there. Most bizarre.

still, we know the koi in the pond in the garden like prawns (bit of cannibalism there), so we'll feed it to them.

this morning, when we got up, there was a mouse beside the bed. Dead, of course, but relatively intact.

a dead mouse, intact or not, is hardly an unusual event in this house, but in *February*?