Panic on the streets of Winchester

The Silver Fox's tale of his tawney counterpart's nocturnal visit reminded me of my own late-night encounter with the wild. While it wasn't a dark and stormy night, it was 3.15 am -- and PJ was in LA -- when I was awoken by the sounds of repetitive thumping. Thinking it was kids playing football against my fence, I looked out of the window, ready to shout and wave my stick at them. No kids. Okay. Perhaps I'd managed to trap an animal in my garden shed when putting my bike away. An invisible animal, of course -- well, it was 3.15 in the morning and I wasn't thinking particularly clearly. I decided to head downstairs to get a better look out of the kitchen window, opened the bedroom door, and realized the noises were coming from inside the house. Eek!

Bravely, I made lots of noise, turned the stair lights on, and figured I'd given any half-way decent burglar plenty of time to make an exit. No such luck. There, at the bottom of the stairs, was a fat white cat -- paused in the process of flinging itself repeatedly against our cat flap ... which was set to "open" coming in, but "locked" going out. Oops. Kitty fled into the front room to hide under the dining room table, I tried to calm my rapidly beating heart, and I then reset the cat flap, allowing my visitor to flee past me and back into the safer world outside.

It took me another hour to get back to sleep -- 20 minutes on the cross-trainer has nothing on being woken up by a cat burglar at 3.15 for raising your heart's BPMs.