My Suki cat was restless, she wanted to go out into the soft night to see who had been in the garden and to hunt for the woodmice. She is too scared to go out during the daylight – too easily seen with all her white fur. In the night she can ‘stalk’ in the silken shadows and the velvety gloaming [with street lights and security lights it is never pitch black in our suburb],and Friday night was calm, mild and moonlit.

She wears a collar with two bells, to warn wildlife and this also lets me know when she is back at the front door – she shakes her head to rattle her bells so that I will hear here and come and let her indoors. She rarely goes out for more than an hour or two at the most.

On Friday night however, about half past eight, I heard her bells outside the window AND a squeaky/screechy sort of noise – from a bird of some kind. Blackbirds often sing in the night in the spring [streetlights again] and occasionally I have heard Oystercatchers flying over at night and calling but this was different. I went outside and Suki was sitting at the foot of the bay window, but heard me come out and started crossing the path to the front lawn. I heard the noise again immediately that Suki stated to move, I looked up to the top of my newly polled* Sycamore tree straight at a Tawny Owl – only 4 metres away! It was ‘screeching’ away at Suki –as if it was giving the cat either a row for disturbing her hunting or directions on where to go to flush out the mice for the her!
(* the tree trunks are about 95 years old but have had all the branches chopped off at the top. – every year it grows small branches up to 5cm in diameter, and every Autumn they are cut off again to give a pillar effect)

I went back inside for my camera but by the time I came out the Tawny Owl had moved to the top of the street lamp, and the light interfered with the camera so that I could not get the Tawny Owl to show up on the camera at all. Suki by this time had headed out onto the pavement and was walking up the road – under the Tawny Owl’s perch, towards the neighbours gate [they have a yew tree and the dropped berries attrach the woodmice at this time of year]. As Suki moved along the Tawny Owl watched her every move – ignoring me.
Once Suki disappeared through the neighbour’s gate, the Tawny Owl flew off without the slightest sound, over my head and down the garden into the velvet blackness. Suki returned to the house about twenty minutes later, perfectly happy to go and have some munchies and then settle down for a sleep at the radiator!!