Duckers & Diving: Paws for Thought?

THIS week our intrepid columnist catches up with an old friend who has paws for thought after seeing the fur fly.

Blood everywhere … savaged by an irate pussy … that’s the latest fate of agricultural correspondent Ben Browning.

The turkey expert who once drove a gaggle of geese through the City of London for a mobile phone advert has recently acquired two cats, one tabby and the other black.

He has named them Maggie and Scargill in honour of the Miners Strike protagonists.

These are feral cats, trapped and brought in from some dairy farm where about 30 run wild. The object is to keep down the rat and mouse population which have been eating the corn fed to the Duckers turkey and other such beasts reared at Browning Towers in Abbots Bromley.

So Browning gets home somewhat worse for wear from the recent excellent bash to celebrate the second anniversary of TheBusinessDesk.com.

To find the cats dropped off for him and still caged up.

Apparently the technique to try and get them to accept their new home is to leave them caged for some while so they can hopefully acclimatise, then let them loose to explore a locked shed and then to allow them their freedom … and hope they don’t do a runner.

So there is Browning attempting to examine the little blighters, accompanied by son Rupert.

The time is 3am.

“Rupert wanted to be there when the cats arrived,” said Browning. “He just didn’t reckon on it being 3am.

“He was holding the torch and trying to shine it in the right place.”

But sadly not quite in the right place.

And, in attempting to get a hold on one of the fighting furies Browning’s hand got the most fearsome scratching.

Browning, who likes the odd bet, is now running a book on who gets the upper hand between Maggie and Scargill and the four dogs, labradors Horace, Dorothy, Florence and cocker spaniel Charlie – the boy likes to keep up with the Royals.

“At the moment I think I’m going for the cats,” he quips.