Home guard

He looked sternly at me and my dog as we walked past but didn't flinch even as much as to unfold the curled paw. I like these  confidently territorial cats that guard their own pitch or look impassively out from net-curtained windows. They are the upholders of an old tradition: the common or garden free-range moggy who may or may not catch the odd mouse but nevertheless expects a punctual dish of cat food on the mat and a place indoors when the weather is bad.

In this recent article the writer Esther Woolfson highlights some of the dilemmas and pitfalls of the human/pet relationship: the environmental impact of their food and their faeces, the way in which we have shaped and distorted their bodies according to our desires, the imbalance between those creatures we favour and those we don't,  our urge to invest them with emotions and attributes we can't prove they possess (and yet we  extol or blame them nevertheless) and the distinction between those we regard as food and those we claim as friends.

Friends who adopted a pair of donkeys from a sanctuary had to undergo instruction about their care and sit a test before they were allowed to take them. I wonder why we don't all have to do the same, whichever animal we take responsibility for?

In her first book Corvus Esther Woolfson wrote about sharing her home with a rook and other wild birds. Well worth reading.