BECKY SHEAVES

Up close and personal, this one had a body that was much smaller than a mouse. He had a funny little squashy face and ears so round and fine, you could see right through them

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AS I have described in these pages before, our new (ish) cat Cleo has turned out to be a savage huntress. I have grown accustomed to her bringing in live mice, shrews and voles to the house. I'm not saying I'm used to it. Such rodent visits still make me shriek and beg for help. But let's just say when I meet a tiny creature skittering about the kitchen, I'm not entirely surprised.

However, things took a turn for the weirder the other day. I awoke early in the morning to a message on the family group chat from our youngest son, Will: “There is a bat flying around the sitting room. I have shut all the doors and left the cat in there to do its thing.”

I was not the only one appalled by this. “Not cool,” came the reply from one of his older brothers, with a chorus of “Poor bat” from his other siblings. And that, for me, was an understatement. “Bats are protected creatures!” I remonstrated. “You should have opened the windows and put the cat out.”

Downstairs I went, to find the cat relaxing on the sofa. The bat was nowhere to be found. After a fair bit of searching, the family consensus was that it must have flown up the chimney. Until, three days later, my husband John moved his keyboard (he's a musician among his many talents). And there underneath was a little dead bat.