Sherlock Finale-Destiny Calls

Athos, Porthos and Aramis are a no show. Off swash buckling somewhere else no doubt...and it is a while before the window of  opportunity opens.Not speaking figuratively. Meanwhile I'm there counting those dratted magpies and jackdaws and blue tits and great tits and scratching off my days of incarceration on the wall. My kitty litter leg has disappeared but sharp pains and unexpected twinges now accompany my every move. My shaved flank is beginning to show stubble and night follows day seemingly ad infinitum while I'm cooped up here in the back hall... Then it happens.

There's a visitor staying and Mum is getting a bit distracted and one morning she forgets to close the window after her daily airing the cell caper. This is it. I mentally conjure up the most daring leap I can imagine and with a hop, skip and jump I am airborne. I hear a screech from the kitchen when she spots me dashing through the flowerbed, under the fence and out into the big wide world.

My trajectory comes to a sudden end when I feel a sharp pain in my back leg. I roll up into a ball and wait. Overhead I can hear them cackling.  A mob of them, an ambush. With my back to the fence I try to stave them off but they can smell my handicap and are in for the kill. It begins with the non contact swoop but progresses rapidly to beak snapping, pecking, dive bombing through to full frontal attack. Everything you've ever heard about magpies is true , they'd snap the tail off you.

Luckily our neighbour Rosy hears the din, storms into the fray and sweeps me up in her pinny.

Before you can say jack rabbit I am back in my cell and happy to be there. You could say I have found my forever home for sure...

                                                                POSTSCRIPT

So dear reader, I come to the end of my saga.I recovered completely in time from my injury. Well maybe there's a hint of a limp in my catwalk stride. But no more going walkabout for me. I content myself now strolling and patrolling between number 39 and 45 of our road. Between Mick's Barbecue Grill and Rosy's herbaceous borders, Dermot's back garden wall and our own overgrown flower bed. Plenty of action to keep me on my paws....at least for now...

Copyright 2023 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved