Yesterday evening just before darkness fell I was of disturbed by an ear splitting shriek from the garden followed by a low whining sound, the racket continued accompanied by much scuffling and in the end my curiosity got the better of me and I got out of bed, went to the window and looked out over the rapidly darkening garden.
There in front of me on the lawn was Twiggy, back arched and with her tail doing a passable imitation of a Christmas tree. She hissed, fizzed and spat like a firework, she was quite a sight.
The cause of all this fury was cowering amongst the tall herbaceous plants, it was a large fox, quivering with fear and whimpering so pathetically that I ordered the cat to stop bullying the poor creature forthwith.
Dark as it was I could not make out at first which of our foxes it was that Twiggy had taken exception to, usually she does not mind there comings and goings at all, unless of course they choose to sit in any of her favourite roosting places in which case they need to look out. Pa had only fed the foxes a few moments earlier and Twiggy would normally watch them eat with all the interest of a student on nature. So what on earth was wrong this time?
On the path between the two animals was a chunk of meat, I knew that the cat would not be interested in the food as the meat which we had for dinner was cooked with a good deal of garlic which she hates. No they were not fighting over that. All the time twiggy kept up her caterwauling and the fox , not knowing what to do remained glue to the spot, Twiggy in a temper can be intimidating to say the least. I was totally baffled and was about to go dawn stair to sort them out when around the corner came another fox, our own tame male fox and all at once he pounced upon Twiggies adversary , rolled him over a couple of times and for a while all was fur and teeth.
By now I realised what had caused the trouble, with the extra light from the living room window I could now see that the other fox was not one of ours, It must have smelled the food and come in to the garden to grab a snack and met the terrible Twiggy.
With the interloper chased away our handsome dog fox took the piece of meat and jumped the fence in to the orchard where the other food had been placed, soon our vixen and her cubs were eating their evening meal and as usual Twiggy sat on the fence watching with interest.
If ever you hear people telling stories of cats being eaten by foxes don't you believe it. I think these stories may have begun when a fox was observed either carrying off of eating a cat killed on the road by a car. Twiggy strolled in to the house a few minutes later as if nothing had happened.
Tonight she is pretending to be a cute little kitty, after last night I know better!
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