I wrote the description of night time shenanigans, below, in an email to various family members. They'd like me to share them with you. To reap the full benefit :-) you need some background information:
- Sunny is our ginger cat. He used to care for Remy our Russian Blue by providing food (mice, rats and rabbits) for him, which he would announce by yowling loudly until Remy came running. Remy was killed on the road. Sunny misses Remy a lot.
- My father did recently accidentally chop through his foot with an axe (blocksplitter actually).
- Marc my brother lives in the Netherlands, and he has six children, the youngest of whom are twin girls just turned five years old. Naturally, his children speak Dutch.
>>
Saturday, 3 am:
Sunny comes in yowling vociferously. He doesn't stop yowling. He wants us to see this amazing, incredible thing he caught. We've GOT to come and praise him for his magnificent efforts. He is actually willing to DONATE this massive meaty gift to us, poor insipid humans whose diet is peppered with green things.
He doesn't stop yowling. The walls are reverberating with his half-siamese yowls.
Oh, ALRIGHT, I'll come look. I shamble out of bed.
Sunny's sitting on the rug with a teeeeny, quivering mouse.
He's caught a baby mouse, I call to John. John hoots with disbelief "A mouse? Is that all? With all that noise I was expecting him to have brought in a wombat!".
I peer at the catchling, grinning. I can just picture Sunny lugging in a wombat...
Nope, just a baby mouse. Maybe it was a hard mouse to catch, who knows.
A snort of laughter emanates from the bedroom.
The mouse scampers away and Sunny hoofs off after it.
I go back to bed.
Sunday night, we're in bed, asleep ...
2 am, Sunny comes in carrying a large, extremely cross rat and offers sweetly to give it to us, on our pillows. He's very modest about this one. "I brought you this small token of my esteem", he says, "Nobbut a stripling", he manages to squark, though his mouth is stuffed with rat fur.
I take a look and shiver. That's not a rat, that's a small yak, I think.
Well, that gets dealt with and we go back to sleep. But not for long.
Same night 3.30 am, my mobile phone rings .... rings out, then rings again, and then the bleep signalling a voice message.
Uh oh, says John, this might be your parents, maybe something's happened?
I'm thinking,
maybe Pap has put an axe through the other foot? Unlikely at this time of night but you never know.
I shuffle through the living room and kitchen looking for my phone. It rings again, briefly, then stops before I reach it, but at least that's helped me locate it. I look at the screen. It says "Marc".
I bring the phone back to my bedside table.
It was Marc, I say to a very sleepy John.
Well if he rings again I'll pick up. I hope everything's OK... Not much I can do at 3.30 am though ... I'll listen to the message in the morning.
At 5.30 when our alarm goes off, with some trepidation, I listen to the message. My furrowed frown quickly gives way to snorts of delighted laughter. I hit the replay and give the phone to John.
Here listen to this. His sleepy looks are quickly replaced with a huge grin, he shakes his head in delight and hands me back the phone.
The voice message is this:
[a five-year-old's voice, distantly]
"Ja, kijk, die knopjes ... drukken maar... "
[translation: "
Yes, see, those buttons .... Go on, push them ..."]
We've got lovely house guests at present, Erin and David from America. (Erin in her undergraduate days used to come here on holidays with Oceane when Oce was at university; David is her partner). The weather gods have been treating them to an interesting time! 
