The hall, stairs and living room resembled the aftermath of a frenzied pillow fight, feathers littering the floor and every surface, but sadly, this was the fallout of an altogether bloodier fight.

For some cats, no amount of food, gelding or domestication will dull their natural predation, and one such creature inhabits the home adjoining ours. With his humans away this cat's natural instincts often spring to the surface, when his habitual stalking of the local birds takes a deadlier turn.

Deadly isn't quite accurate, as he rarely kills his victims. A dead bird makes for dull sport after all. Twice in recent months, the trail of feathers has led to a dazed, but very living bird crouching beneath the furniture. On both those occasions, remarkably given the number of feathers shed, an open doorway and restrained cat resulted in a bedraggled bird making good it's escape.

This last bird - for the third time a blackbird, such is the fate of being hatched a ground-feeder - was not so lucky. I found it, beneath the Victorian chaise-longue - a sick creature caught up in its own short horror story - sitting bright eyed but broken winged, fully alive, but totally doomed. That right wing hung from its shoulder ragged as a beggar's shawl, while its left leg stuck out beneath it like a spilled bundle of sticks.

I carried it to the back step, beneath the open sky, but apart from a sharp bird-shriek of fear and pain, it made no attempt to fly away. It was clear that wing could never again lift even the whisper-light body of that bird. Left alone, that blackbird's best hope would have been a fox, but at 3 o'clock in the afternoon all it could look forward to was a slow and terrifying cat-inflicted death. The was only one thing to do - it was unavoidable.
Wrapped inside the pages of this morning's local paper, I carried it to the bottom of the garden and laid it down upon a paving stone. I have a heavy iron-headed mallet, I use for masonry work - I prayed that my aim be true and made one swift blow.

In death that frail creature seemed to have grown even lighter still, it's passing marked in blood inside the local news - The victim died from a single blow to the head. The killer is believed to be a local man.