VT - my kitty raven eats rubber snakes, he's not at all afraid of them. There are several around the house (relic of an old Hallowe'en costume) and he plays with them. They turn up in the most ridiculous places, usually in my bag when I'm at choir practice or once in my coat pocket whilst I was looking for my rail ticket...

Dave, the sympathy card is well known to kitties - our old b&w tom Max did his cruciatus ligament a mischief (dropped from a height of 2ft and landed like a brick) and spent a week limping and being molly-coddled. I'd have to lift him on and off the sofa, help him up the stairs, help him in and out of the catflap and watch him limp pathetically around the house, wailing occasionally. That all stopped the day I carefully helped him off the sofa, nursed him down the hallway, through the kitchen and eased him out of the catflap for him to go and ablute... only to look out 5 mins later to see the little bugger bouncing around after butterflies. What made it worse was that when he saw me watching, he immediately started to limp again!

We're presently being visited by a ginger squirrel-tailed tom, a big black bully (Raven's evil twin) and a set of half grown kittens that I helped out back in August, consisting of a ginger and white, a tabby and white, a ginger and a tortoiseshell/white (calico). The squirrel tailed and the doppelganger have been overnight visitors, the others are still wary but have been seen sneaking biscuits.

They'll move in when they feel good and ready.. that's how we got the Shopkeeper!

LTS