Daisy the hunter

Despite the continuing grey pall of cloud (which is now becoming very tedious - I'd rather have rain or gales I think) I managed quite a few photos today: autumn leaves, late flowering meadow crane's-bill and the odd fungus. But choosing the blip has become a family affair, and the boys wanted me to post my photo of Daisy.

Our extended family includes three sons, two dogs, four cats and assorted toads. Daisy was born on a farm in Lincolnshire about five and a half years ago. The boys and I went to choose a kitten to replace a cat which had unfortunately been run over. Needless to say each boy fell in love with a different kitten, so we ended up with three!

Daisy is friendly to all humans, and very playful but is the scourge of the local mice and vole populations. She doesn't really like to eat them, so brings them into us and trades them for cat biscuits or milk, a habit which has also been picked up by one of her sisters. Quite often they are still alive, and so get released back into the garden. Sometimes they are hurt, and would not be able to survive in the wild, so they join our tank of field mice - numbering about twelve at the moment. They are very cute to watch and seem to thrive in captivity.