rabbits

Our Ginger is rediscovering his inner hunter.  He was not waiting in the corridor outside the bedroom this morning, nor was he sitting by the cat food dishes for his breakfast, or asleep on a dining chair or in his current favourite cardboard box, or any of the other places where I'd expect to find him when I got up.  I was rattled enough to make a quick tour round the garden looking for him, though looking for a cat that is not leaping forward to be found is a fairly futile exercise.  Our Ginger did not come rushing up to greet me, but as I returned to the house I suddenly saw him there ahead of me, sauntering towards the front door from the direction of the concrete.

As soon as he had eaten some breakfast I heard the rattle of the cat flap as he went out again, and he stayed out patrolling the garden for most of the morning.  Our Ginger is not normally a morning cat, and so much activity before lunchtime is almost unprecedented.  This afternoon while we had our tea he sat staring fixedly into the prostrate yew outside the conservatory, and going through a great pantomime of trying to see around the yew to the far end of the lawn without being seen, though peering out from our vantage point inside the conservatory we couldn't see that anything was there, and presently Our Ginger came to the same conclusion, gave up and came and sat on our laps.

I don't think he has actually caught anything today, but he is making a sterling effort.  Meanwhile the Systems Administrator managed to knock off two young rabbits yesterday that were feeding on the top lawn and in the rose bed.  My last wildlife camera footage of that bed showed up to two rabbits at the same time, but I don't know if it was the same two every time or if there are many more than two living in that part of the garden.

Over in the sloping bed that runs down the garden's southern boundary the rabbit situation is dire. Despite my best efforts with Grazers they have nibbled down whole patches of Viola odorata, chewed the top half off clumps of bulb foliage, and reduced the emerging leaves of the Omphalodes to stalks.  No room in the house directly overlooks this bed, so the SA can't easily cover it with the air rifle.  I have a nasty feeling that these might not be the same rabbits that have been making free in the rose bed, and if the SA can't shoot them then we are dependent on Our Ginger's efforts, unless we can think of something to bait the rabbit traps that will actually attract rabbits, while not appealing to birds.

Meanwhile, the great ginger hunter is now spark out, sprawled over the arm of my chair and snoring.