Finding your Cat in the Dustbin?

Set up a close-circuit television to monitor your car?  Finding your pets in the dustbin?  Chances are your don’t live in a tough area nor is it environmentalists and animal haters.  What you might have is a problem with your neighbours.

Now I’m not saying that this is the case with Darryl and Stephanie Andrews-Mann, owner of both cat and CCTV that have become famous this week.  I simply don’t know.  But being of a Catholic and Irish background and growing up in East Anglia during the 70s, my family had its share of such nonsense.  From being ignored, having music left blaring next door while the neighbours went out on a nice day, plants trampled in the front garden and the neighbours on the other side wedging the guttering so that the water ran in our direction then sending a letter threatening legal action, I’ve pretty much seen it all.  It is not for nothing that my mother invested in a Doberman pinscher when I was three years old.  Lovely dog it turned out to be but I still remember it swinging me around the back garden by the back of my trousers despite my terrified and doubtless pitiful cries.

As for the trampled plants, my mother buried some wooden planking studded with two-inch nails.  Strictly illegal of course and she was advised not to do it again by Gordon, a sympathetic local copper.

It worked though; after that the daffodils were left in peace.

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