Monty update

You may have seen a recent post on the subject of Monty the Mouth (or read here) ... he's a two to three year old semi-feral feline who patrols the neighbourhood, permanently on the look out for a free feed and a warm bed.

This spring has turned into a feathered nightmare. Since the birdies started hatching he's brought a succession of playmates home.

Last night for reasons I'm in no state to go into the Fat Bastard and I had a very brief and terse conversation when he got home late and drunk from the pub. A couple of moments after he'd headed up the stairs and to his room Monty fell through the cat flap with a bird clamped between his jaws.

I shrieked (yes, I admit it) and he spat the thing out onto the carpet just the other side of the doorway into the living room.

As mentioned in my previous post the 'friends' I've found and cleaned up have previously been dead, but last night's was all to obviously breathing and twitching. So I wrapped some paper towel around it, cradled it between my hands and gave it a bit of a look over. Clearly young, barely breathing, eyes clamped shut, minimal tail feathers, wings at odd angles. Gently I set the wings in a 'normal' position and waited for stress to take its toll ... and waited and waited and waited.

The poor thing wouldn't turn up its claws. If anything it seemed to be gaining some strength. (All the while Monty's sitting a few feet away wonder what the fuck the mad woman is doing with his toy). After a while I begin to get cramp in my legs from kneeling, cradling this feathered scrap so I start wondering where I can safely put it until morning. I settle on the box room which has a small radiator that stays on all the time. I put the bird, still wrapped in kitchen towel in a wicker basket by the radiator, close the door and cross my fingers before going to bed.

This morning after Fat Bastard went to work I went into the box room expecting to have to gather up and dispose of a corpse. But no, there the fledgling was, perched on the edge of the wicker basket, alert, dry and nervous. Of course me blundering in sent it scuttling for a dark corner so I had to spend ten minutes or so cornering the poor thing and trapping it with a shoe box. By this time it is clear that it is older than I'd first thought but younger than it needs to be to survive on its own.

So I box it up in the shoe box, perch that above the radiator (to be sure that it doesn't die of cold) and go off to work at the charity shop.

Tonight when we all got home the first thing I did was go up to check on the fledgling. I brought the box downstairs so that the rest of the family could see it and the damn thing wasn't in the box although the tissue paper I'd enclosed it with had seemed to be intact. I went back up to check that it hadn't fallen out and hidden itself in a dark corner but it wasn't there.

I have had to conclude that it managed to clamber out onto the window sill and launch itself outdoors. I have had to conclude that its might well be the corpse the Fat Bastard had to clean up this afternoon before coming down to the shop to meet me.

Yes Monty today brought another friend home to play and its remains very much fit the description of last night's refugee. If only the ungrateful little bastard had stayed put. Some birds just don't know when they're well off.