All a bit disturbing last night, just as I was about to pour myself a scotch whilst Bethany had gone to sleep and Alison was on nights an almighty racket broke out outside. I soon realized that a couple of dogs were barking nearby and it quickly transpired that they were fighting down my drive outside the front door. My first thought was to hope that Bethany didn't wake and gently tapped on the inside of the door to see if that would achieve anything: it didn't. Not wanting to open the door to two fighting dogs my next pathetic attempt to break things up involved half filling a vase with water and pouring it out of the window onto, basically the pavement, as I couldn't see anything. It was just after this that the outside security light revealed that they were fighting over what was now a dead cat and so called the RSPCA. By the end of the call the fight was reduced to one dog toying with its prey and that got bored soon after leaving me with a dead cat on my doorstep. On being told that they may require the body for evidence I left it for a couple of hours until around 11:30pm when no one had got back to me when I put the body in a bin bag believing the wife wouldn't be best pleased to step over it in the morning.
   This morning (or yesterday morning now) proved frustrating as I spent half the morning on the phone trying to find someone who wanted a dead cat. After calling the RSPCA back to find out what they wanted me to do with the corpse they eventually returned my call after contacting a local officer to tell me that they would not need it as this had been an isolated incident and to call the council to dispose of the manky moggie. This I duly did and after explaining my situation was transferred to the relevant department where I repeated the events to be told "I've never had a cat before" and was put on hold whilst she contacted something called Street Team or Street Clean. Several attempts later she apologized for them busy and promised to call me back when she had spoken to them which she duly did shortly afterwards. However, she informed me that they were unable to collect the cat as it was in my drive and not on the street and they weren't allowed on private property. I said that my drive wasn't very long and I could easily place it on the street but this was not satisfactory as I had already informed her of its initial location. As thoughts of wondering how I could get in touch with the cat woman and her wheelie bin I could hear the background chatter in the office whereby they came up with the compromise solution that they would inform the collection team that I had found the cat on the street and had bagged it up and left it just inside my drive. After all this the collection team promptly came 5 1/2 hours later.