Cats? You're lucky you don't have weasels

Like any serious writer, I spend much of my working day staring out of the window. It is a surprisingly demanding occupation, and one which the ignorant can sometimes mistake for torpor or daydreaming, but it offers the occasional non-literary reward.

For example, while "limbering up" for this piece, I have been watching a protracted, grisly drama unfolding some 10 yards from my window. A weasel has caught a baby rabbit and, as I write, is dealing with it in a manner that would prompt Tony Banks to pass legislation against it.

Having immobilised its prey, it scampers off, hides down a hole nearby and then peeps out, as if to say "Ooh, I'm really scared of you" before returning to dish out more torture.

It is amazing what the hours spent in creative window-gazing can reveal. A few weeks ago, in west London, a pair of blackcaps came visiting – an unusual sight in the capital, particularly since they normally migrate in winter. The following day, I saw a comma butterfly. A comma, on 12 February, in London! I'm sure I don't have to tell you how strange and rare that is.

Because the animal activity outside my window is so fascinating, I find myself taking the side of Ginger, Widget, Jazzy, Mushy and Gizmo in a case that has doubtless been the talk of Worthing this week.

The five of them, who are cats, apparently like to meet with a few friends in the garden of Miss Pamela Mass and use the fine gravel which she had thoughtfully laid down as a feline convenience.

Miss Mass tried to fight back. Slug pellets were scattered and somehow they became embedded in meat. Ginger was found in a convulsive state and soon Miss Mass was on her way to the local magistrates' court, where she was found guilty and obliged to pay £400 costs, plus £140 in veterinary fees. According to her owner, Ginger is still confused, falls off window-sills and has what the vet calls "loose wires in the brain".

Of course, many would argue that confusion, falling off window-sills and loose wires in the brain are part of the feline condition, and I admit that in the past I have complained about the terrible toll cats exact on wildlife, on one occasion suggesting that they might replace the brown hare as prey of choice at coursing's Waterloo Cup.

But I see now that, where I have the weasel (which has now killed the baby rabbit, by the way, and is perversely taking it down a rabbit hole to eat), those families in Worthing have Ginger, Mushy, Widget and the rest.

Unlike dogs, whose moment of annual humiliation is about to take place at Crufts shortly, cats – even the communal crappers of Worthing – are slinky representatives of the wild in our domestic lives and yet also curiously in touch with our emotional and spiritual inner lives.

An ex-cat of mine (we're no longer on speaking terms) responded to human stress in the household by shedding the fur around her rear end. Various ruinously expensive remedies were tried, but the bald bum remained. Only when I moved out of the house did the fur return within a matter of weeks. Fleas, the vet had said, but the cat and I knew better. She was communicating to me in her own way, through a campaign of passive-aggressive fur-loss.

These are mysterious matters, and I hope that Miss Mass will discover the joys of watching the wildlife, or slightly wild life, that gathers on her gravel.

In the meantime, my own local drama has taken a new twist. The weasel has gone and the mother rabbit has returned. She enters the burrow – then backs out. Repeatedly she tries to get home, only to be confronted by some unspeakable horror. I tell you, it's sheer Stephen King.

terblacker@aol.com