Is that the best place to put it?

I've already mentioned that Potato and Eddy have an interest in the local wildlife or possibly, more accurately, a scorched earth policy.

Like most serial killers, the Perpetrators approach is to stalk and disable the victim, then drag it back to their lair for hours of entertainment before dismemberment and ritual display of entrails on the kitchen floor.

I know its grim but I don't make this up - I just come down to the carnage in the morning. Its only by comparing it to "The Silence of the Lambs" that demonstrates this side of their nature.

I probably need to go on record now as a cat lover and that I do my best to clean up the evidence so that the CSI Team have nothing to pass over to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Saying that, there have been mornings where 30% has risen before me and there are little chalk outlines of mice on the floor and the cats "would like to telephone their Brief".

Anyway, there is one local mammal that they will tackle but don't seem to finish off and that is the mole. There are a few occasions when they have brought home moles and then let the damn things go. On two occasions in the garden and once in the house. The one in the house was easy _ caught him up and released him in my local Doctor's Surgery garden - that will serve him right for the crappy diagnosis he failed to make when I presented myself with a Repetitive Strain Injury.

The ones in the garden, I'm afraid, had to go so Mole Traps were borrowed from Dad and set. I know there are people who will tell you that cheap, ladies perfume poured in the burrows and children's windmills or empty wine bottles stuck in the mole hills will make them go away - my response to this is "my @rse". If you want your garden to look like the Somme in 24 hours flat go with Charlie and the contents of your recycling bin. If you want dead vermin go with mole traps.

Why the cats don't like Moles I cannot tell. They may not taste very nice or perhaps they are just too hard. It could be a combination of the two. On thinking about it - if you consider humans who are involved in significant earth moving activities I would guess that a) they are "hard" and b) they don't taste particularly nice.

It could be option c) - Moles are a bit "Ninja"

Anyway - back to the point - once we had trapped the mole and examined the carcass it was time to dispose of the evidence. I could have consulted the cats but their method of disposal has already been discussed and I don't have the Psychological profile for their preferred dissection and ritual display approach.

So we buried it - and that got me thinking - How do I know its dead? What if it is a Vampire Mole? Isn't burying it the quickest way to resurrect it and allow it to DO MORE EVIL? If you think about it it is a bit like someone dying and deciding that leaving them in their favourite armchair is the best way to dispose of the body.

To me, burying dead moles is just plain WRONG. So when the bloody cats did it again TP and I skinned it and learnt that preserving a mole skin is an interesting Dad/Son activity.

Finally..................... when my nephew was about 4 years old he was stroking the family cat that was stretched out in the sun. I told the aforementioned Nephew that if it got much hotter the cat would unzip its fur, remove it like pyjamas and just sit there in its pants. .................. then a while later I told my sister what I had told her son and stood back as she charged off to the garden.

Post Script: Cats really do sit on your sofa in their pants - they just put their little cat suits back on quickly when they hear you coming.