Wildlife Delivery...

Yesterday, I noticed that both cats were staring intently at the bottom of my bookcase. I guess that a mouse must have escaped their clutches. Both Miaowrini and Furretti have lost interest in it now, so either the mouse has died or it has escaped somewhere else.

This afternoon I was chatting on the phone to a friend of mine when an awful racket was heard in my kitchen. Both of us knew exactly what the cry was: Miaowrini was dragging a bird in through the catflap.

The bird succeeded in getting away, but the cat managed to catch it again. I approached, towel in hand, in order to effect a rescue, and Miaowrini, unwilling to relinquish her prize, promptly left through the catflap, the bird still firmly clamped between her jaws.

Two minutes later, she was back - the bird still in her mouth. It was raining outside, and Miaowrini doesn't like to get wet. The bird got away again, but got caught up in the net curtains in the kitchen, and I was able to use a towel to calm it down. I carried the bird to my bedroom window and let it fly out. It flew off quite strongly, and I saw it alight at the top of a tree across the street.

I didn't have time to take a picture, and the bird didn't have a yellow beak, but, having looked at a few pictures I suspect that this latest capture was a young blackbird.

My mother advised me to shout at the cats to discourage them from bringing wildlife home, but that would be mean - they're only doing what is natural... added to which, there is a part of me which is actually rather proud of their hunting skills...

Now, if only I could train them to bring me a steak...

The Careers Teacher Never Told Me This Was A Possibility...

I feel somewhat cheated. I didn't know that "cat scientist" was actually a career option.

I've just watched yesterday's BBC Horizon programme on the Secret Life of the Cat. Enjoyable, though I think that I'd have preferred to see more footage from the cat-cams and surveillance cameras and less of the humans. Finding out about the way the data was being recorded and analysed was interesting, for about five minutes. Listening to people talking about their cats was interesting for another five minutes. Watching people looking at data about their cats was definitely not interesting...

The programme was entertaining, but didn't really throw up any major surprises. I was interested to hear that the cat "solicitation purr" (the purr designed to attract human attention) hits the same frequency as a human baby's cry.

Unfortunately the programme itself is only available on iPlayer for a short time, though there are a few clips available on the BBC web page... There is also a review (far more favourable than mine) on the Daily Telegraph's website.

Watching Paint Dry...

Actually, watching the progress of the chapel of the Vocations Centre at Whitstble is fascinating. Fr. Stephen Langridge has done great things since he has been Vocations Director, and the Southwark Vocations Blog is well worth reading.

It is encouraging to see that there are many young men who wish to give their lives to God in the priesthood. It is important that we support them with our prayers - financial support wouldn't go amiss either.

If you haven't been following the progress of the chapel (there has been other work in the Vocations Centre as well) then here is a quick shot of the chapel near the start of it all...

And now (well, the stencils for the inscription are up)...

More Blessings...

Having made their First Holy Communions in May, three new recruits have joined the team of servers at Blackfen. The Senior MC believes in getting them to do different jobs as soon as possible - which means that there is no lengthy period of being junior torchbearer for six years or so before progressing to senior torchbearer... (yes, I'm exaggerating, but only a little!)

This does make for a steep learning-curve, especially if we are short of more experienced servers, as happened today... The two new torchbearers would be "on their own" without anyone to copy, so Jonathan took them through their paces before the Mass started...

The new acolyte was able to copy the other acolyte, but I suspect that he was finding the candle just a little heavy... well, it was almost as big as him!

It is a tremendous blessing for the parish that we have so many young boys keen to serve the Mass, and it will be interesting to see how they progress over the next few months...

There are a few more photos on my Flickr page.

A Blessing For The Parish...

At Blackfen we have just concluded our celebration of the Forty Hours, or Quarant' Ore. This is where Our Lord is exposed in the Blessed Sacrament continuously over three days (it may not add up to exactly 40 hours.)

Zephyrinus has an excellent summary of the running order. We are really blessed to have the Forty Hours as an annual event (we started it in the parish in 2009.) We used to have it in October, just before half term, which meant that I had the holiday to recover and get my sleeping pattern back on track. Unfortunately October is rather a hectic time at Blackfen, and Fr. Finigan decided that he would move things to the summer months... which is why it is only seven months since our last Quarant'Ore.

Because we end the whole thing on the Saturday (and I don't work on Saturdays), I try to stay to pray overnight on the Friday. It is difficult to explain how wonderful an experience it is to pray before the Blessed Sacrament in the early hours of the morning - even though I wasn't the only one present, it felt as if it was just me and Him... and the time really flew by (except for that bit between 6:30am and 8am which lasted forever.)

Being in possession of a particularly fallen nature, despite being in the presence of the Almighty I get distracted rather easily. I couldn't help making comparisons between the experiences of night-time adoration in October and in June. October, unsurprisingly, came off rather unfavourably. It's colder, for a start. This means that sitting still for any length of time is rather arduous. The heaters being switched on full causes the candles to burn down and gutter in rather odd ways, necessitating several changes during the night (hassle) and much wax removal from stuff afterwards (more hassle.)

Dawn arrives much earlier in June, as does the dawn chorus. Those birds make one heck of a racket at 4am. I'm surprised that His Hermeneuticalness manages to sleep through it, and it occurred to me that he might appreciate the loan of my two kitties...

My attention was caught by a knothole in the wood by the Communion rail. As the daylight levels increased, it gradually dawned on me (*ahem* sorry - couldn't resist!) that the knothole was actually a spider. A very large spider.

I watched it for a bit, and then had visions of it crawling up my leg when I went to Communion. I wasn't too keen on that idea, and so decided to take action. The judicious application of a hymn book soon sorted the problem (I deliberately used a hymn book as it has a plastic easy-wipe cover, not because I thought the spider would die of fright when confronted with Colours of day or If I were a butterfly!)

There was only one other person present at the time, and she appeared to think my action was eminently sensible.

The cats were not amused by my overnight absence, and made their displeasure known in no uncertain terms. When I finally arrived home (after a very good lunch) I discovered that a dead pigeon had been deposited on my sitting room floor...