We think our cat may need glasses.

While he can certainly catch the occasional unwary bird or even a geriatric mouse, all they have to do is stay still for a couple of seconds - and he has lost them. Or forgotten them, as his attention span is sadly not too long.

Recently, I was sitting reading when a movement caught my peripheral vision. There, creeping along the skirting board on all four tiptoes was a tiny field mouse . I gave a squawk of surprise, the mouse dashed behind my husband's chair. He shot up (he's OK with spiders, but doesn't like mice, he has a phobia that they are going to run up his trouser legs ) and the cat woke up and fell off the back of the settee.

When the cat got on his feet again he spotted the mouse making another desperate dash for safety, and a bell must have rung in his memory chip.

We were all on our feet now and the chase ended up in the kitchen, where the mouse did a frantic dive into one of my gardening shoes.
We spotted him, but typically the cat's brain messages had gone askew in the excitement, and he saw the dive go into the wrong shoe. My husband threw a tea towel over the shoe the mouse was in, and the cat took up a watchful position over the other one.

When we lifted the tea towel to give him a hint, he humoured us and peered in and then at us with a look that plainly said - "Ooh - you've got a mouse too, that's nice!". Then he resumed his vigil. Nothing would shake his belief that the mouse was in his shoe. We even tried using gentle force, but he wrapped his paws round the shoe, and clearly thought we were jealous.

In the end my husband carried both shoes out to the garden, and I carried the cat. We put the lot down, and shook the shoes.
The mouse leapt out and scarpered. The cat gave us a look full of compassion that said - " What a pity - yours has got away. But mine's all right..", and resumed his alert position with nose down the other shoe.

We gave up and left him to it. We think he fell asleep after a while.

(c) Thelma Mitchell 1995, 2002