Serial killer in our midst.

Mini me one has long pestered us for a pet. She is particularly keen for us to have a cat (well a kitten, but she is aware that they grow up into cats).

Me? I'm not a cat person. I looked after one once and it got fleas, gave them to me and still hissed at me. It never said thank you when I fed it and it stunk the place out.

And don't get me started about loyalty.

Today we were in a large bookstore in the city centre and mini me one picked up a book about a cat who had six owners and had six dinners every day (personally I think the cat owned six humans but that is a matter of perspective). I asked her if she still wanted a cat. Of course she did.

But when we got home things changed ever so subtly. Two weeks ago, I tweeted about having a pigeon in my wheelie bin. Of course, I wasn't admitting to a similar incident to the cat in the wheelie bin episode. I had returned home from work and found a dead pigeon in our front garden (as a side point, is it just round here or are pigeons in general getting much bigger and fatter?). I immediately disposed of it so as not to distress the rest of the family who were due back shortly after me.

I assumed that the pigeon had just died. I mean, they must do sometimes. I don't remember ever seeing a dead bird (other than when our pet budgies had died) that wasn't roadkill before. But they can't all become kamikaze just before they die, so they must die somewhere. I just assumed that one that had landed on our roof had just keeled over. I thought nothing of it until yesterday when mini me one spotted another dead bird, this time a sparrow, in our back garden.

Now one is an accident, two is a coincidence, but when we got back from town this afternoon there was a third, two metres away from the second. Now that isn't co-incidence. That is a crime scene. It seems that the recent windy conditions have dislodged our bird feeders to the ground, making any of our feathered friends very vulnerable to our local moggy.

Mini me one has now seen the other side of kittendom, and is going off the idea of having one of her own. Of course we did have the "it's a natural thing for them to do. it's what they would have to do in the wild" conversation, but she is a lover of all wildlife and doesn't want to see any more death.

So now, all we have to do is put the feeders back out of reach of the prowler, and if possible, persuade it that it doesn't really want to be in our garden.

Anyone got any lion poo?