Rod Liddle takes issue with Wilbur’s grieving owners who want a change in the law to impose restrictions upon creatures such as snakes. What we really need is a new citizen’s right to defend ourselves against the feline menace
It’s been a grim summer for news, all things considered, what with Afghanistan and flying pig flu and the rain and now Harriet Harman squatting over us all like one of those terrifying smallpox deities the Hindus have. So I thought I’d share with you a story which, in the midst of this gloom, cheered me up enormously. It is the story of a little ginger and white pussycat called Wilbur, who lived in Bristol with his owners, Martin and Helen Wadey. Martin and Helen loved Wilbur a lot. His purr was, according to Martin, ‘like a dynamo’. He was the family pet and suitably adored.
Anyway, one day Wilbur set off in pursuit of that familiar and engaging leisure option for our millions of domesticated cats — killing wildlife in a neighbour’s garden and then taking a massive dump in the middle of the lawn. Off he went on his pitter-patter little paws, over the fence, across the flower bed (pausing briefly to urinate on a rose bush) to check out what creatures he might harry to death — look, over there, a vole scampering with fright beneath the hedge! Or that fledgling mistle thrush obliviously looking for its mum. Wilbur thought about it for a moment, then devised a plan of action: start with the thrushling, then have a dump just by the patio and finish up spending a bit of time tracking down the vole — worth the effort because they’re endangered, apparently. But then Wilbur caught a first whiff of something quite unexpected; a rich, exotic, luxuriant smell he did not recognise — beguiling and yet somehow carrying a sleek, sinuous, harbinger of danger.
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