Another little visitor!

Yesterday was an interesting day  and I couldn't decide what to call this blog entry. 'Another little visitor' was one option, or perhaps, 'Double trouble' or maybe 'It was one of those days'!  Any would have summed up yesterday morning!

How about this photo then, any ideas what this is?

 I'll give you a clue. It is woolly on the outside and fleecy in the middle.  Still guessing?  Well the next picture is easy.

Hmm, looking very cute, definitely a 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' one. I am talking about the cat by the way, she loves being carried around like this by eldest son.  However, we know better and are convinced that Suki, is really a baby tiger in disguise!

A mixture of stripes and spots, so perhaps a cross between a tiger and a leopard, although actually they are Bengals.

Anyway to get back to the story, Suki helped to peg out the washing as usual. Well she thinks she's helping by sitting on the garden table and watching me!  The next thing there's a streak of greased lightning and before I could barely turn around she was across the garden, over the fence and up next door's cherry tree, followed by screeching from the birds and a great flapping of wings.  The birds escaped - but only just!  Suki likes to collect feathers and brings them home. Fortunately for the birds they usually only lose the odd feather!

The birds obviously had young around as they continued to squawk very angrily and Suki would not leave them alone.  Not even the treat box could tempt her so in the end I turned the hose on!  She doesn't really mind water but does object to it being aimed directly at her!  All safe, or so I thought.

A little later younger son announced that there were a few feathers in his sister's bedroom and that both cats were staring intently.  Sure enough, having shut the cats out and after a spot of hide and seek, we knew there must be something, and we eventually found a juvenile sparrow hiding in the mystery object.  You could only just see the tail feathers.

Did you guess what this was?  You will when I show you the whole thing.

A lovely thick, soft mitten!

Now you might be thinking that with the bird contained it would be an easy job to release it.  And, yes, you would be right except that there was then two 'helpers'.  Now the cats are not supposed to go out the front of the house, so as my son carried the bird out the front door I was following and not paying full attention to what I was doing in my efforts to stop any followers.  Any guesses what happened next?  I managed to close the inside door (yale lock) shut instead of the porch door which has to have a key to shut it.  So there we were one bird rescued but now my son and I locked out!  Now we all know that teenagers are never without their phones but... he was still in pyjamas and the phone was inside the house!  You had to laugh really, and then to cap it all, although not injured, the bird was in shock so didn't fly away and who should appear having gone out the back door and over the fence? Samba, the other half of  my 'double trouble'!

Just in case you are wondering, I left my son and the cat in the porch, used a neighbour's phone to ask my friend to bring the spare key, and the neighbour took the bird into her garden.  It would be safe there as the cats stay well away from her dog and luckily the dog only chases four legged creatures!