Visitors and Intruders

I may have given up on the sun but I'm still clinging to the summer in terms of the food we've been eating. We're picking tomatoes from the garden every day, and have a bounty of sweetcorn, salads and broadbeans from the farmer's market for this week.

This weeknd was all about the soft fruit. This pile of plums disappeared in two days.





I came across this recipe for Vanilla Honey Peach Butter and couldn't resist giving it a try.

It's pretty good, and 4 punnets of peaches gave me 7 medium sized jars so I've been sending every visitor, of which we've had a few this weekend, home with a jar.

We ate it on freshly baked blueberry and lemon scones with thick cream when my parents came to visit. This type of thing may have something to do with why I'm struggling to fit into last summer's dresses.



My parents were visiting so that my dad could help us solve a little problem we've been having recently. A big black cat has been coming in the cat flap to have a munch at the buffet laid out for our two. He's quite bold - last time I found him in the kitchen he took a long look at me, ate a few more mouthfuls of biscuits and sauntered out. You'd think that my two would be able to deal with the situation, seeing as it's two against one and everything, but apparently not. Mia Cat hides under the bed and stripey cat wanders the house dramtatically yowling for an hour after the intruder leaves.

Fortunately we're not the first cat owners to have unwanted visitors and a solution exists. This cat flap scans the microchip and only lets those cats that are programmed in through the flap. It has all sorts of other fancy functions that I don't know how to work, like locking everyone in after it gets dark.

To eliminate the possibilty that authorised cats will be followed through the cat flap by an unauthorised cat, it only unlocks for a specified period of time after scanning the cat, after which it locks again. Fine in theory, except my two appear to require longer than the maximum time period allowed to determine that the new door, which beeps and has flashing lights, is safe to go through.








Consequently much of my weekend has been spent going back and forth to the back door to let cats in. They're on their own today, so they have to either speed up their decision making process or spend the day in the rain. And according to stripey cat, getting wet is even worse than big scary intruders.

Location:London,United Kingdom