It was evening & the last sunbeams of light cast strange shadows through the trees & across the quiet stillness of the countryside, forming pools of ghostly wanderings throughout the valleys. The lateness of the day spilled onto the country lanes & weaved in & out of the rooftops down in the village, the shadows darkening & lengthening with each passing moment.
A black cat sprang lightly & effortlessly off a stone wall & landed without noise into a patch of wild primroses & daffodils, then strode toward a barn-like building close to the thatched farmhouse. There, it looked around wistfully & stalked toward a hole at the bottom of a wall where it met the hay-strewn floor, before it paused & crouched down low & just watched & waited, not taking its eyes off the hole in the wall for a moment.
A slight scrabbling noise came from within the wall & eventually a bewhiskered nose appeared from the small hole. The cat remained motionless, but lifted its rear haunches just slightly & shuffled a fraction then dropped down again with its body a little closer still.
The activity from behind the wall increased & the scrabbling became tantalizingly louder. The black cat remained poised & calm, its eyes glued to any possible movement from the hole. A bewhiskered mouse suddenly decided to make a quick dash for the entrance of the barn & with legs moving fast, it scampered around the base of the wall, then shot across to the dimness of the encroaching night. As it reached what it thought was the apparent safety of the doorway, the black cat rose & flew after it with concentrated swiftness. The mouse darted to & fro trying to decide which was its safest escape route, but the cat was even swifter & used great cunning in catching its prey. With calculated speed, it pounced & using its paw in trapping the panicky mouse, it lashed out & caught the mouse with a swift motion of both mouth & paw, pinning it to the dusty hay & spilt seed littering the floor.
It now had the panting mouse in its mouth & holding it firmly between its teeth, the black cat crouched down low on the floor to further taunt the wriggling mouse, then almost let go to leave it free to rush back to its original hiding spot behind the wooden wall.
But the cat decided to hold onto its prey & played with the mouse, lightly tossing & shaking it between mouth & two front paws. By this time the mouse was not only very dead, but bleeding from its tortured body & quite still between the cat's paws. The cat by now, was bored with the whole business & decided to leave the motionless, bleeding body of the mouse in the middle of the barn floor. It then shook out a paw rather quickly, turned tail & strode off out of the doorway & sought the relative warmth of its bed beside the Aga in the kitchen of the farmhouse. It passed through the cat-flap toward the bottom of the back door & padded quietly over to the snoring Aga. There was a meal waiting in a bowl which was soon consumed after the cat had sniffed once or twice first, then crouched low to eat the contents thereof.
Then the black cat stretched out its two front legs, yawned & settled in a curled up ball on its usual homemade soft bed. Soon after, both cat & Aga were snoring as the night closed in & the whole farmhouse & surrounding countryside became silent under the moonbeams of a low, yellow rising moon above the old oak tree. The soft light emitted, shone gently in the night, glowing all across the small valley & fingered its shadows into the depths of the woodland & stealthily shone across the shimmering babble of a stream, meandering through the spruce trees. Old pine cones & needles littered the woodland floor & an owl hooted & cried out a message from a branch of a chestnut tree. Two badgers had crept warily from a sett nestled in a bank & proceeded to find food in their usual haunts.
Down in the village, three ladies had emerged from late bell ringing practice & formed together for a brief discussion of where the next Women's Institute meeting was to be held, then went their separate ways home. The moon now risen in the cloudless sky, shone all around the quiet village that cascaded down a steep hill, where the beams lit the pathway home for the ladies.
As the sun slept & the moon rose even higher in a darkening sky, the black cat by the Aga, snored on hardly moving, only to stretch out legs & body in a blissful acceptance of having nothing much more to think about for the time being but return to its slumbers. But unbeknown to him, there were further goings on & activity behind the hole in the wall of the hay barn.
The complete & overwhelming desire of his small bewhiskered temptations, was to escape undetected & unmolested, from their breeding nest & seek more, easy to acquire food. In the darkness & slow moving shadows of the cool spring night, where only a fox was unseen, slinking from a copse out over open fields, before it soon disappeared through a gap in a hedge, the black cat was completely unaware of the total freedom the mice were enjoying, scampering this way & that across the hay-dusty floor with spilt seeds in amongst the straw of dry wheat.
The moon dipped low & hid behind a streak of grey-blue clouds, moonbeams lasting no more over the rooftops & across the babbling stream. There was heard, the faint cries across the quiet countryside, from a crow cawing out of a beech tree in the churchyard. Smoke drifted up over the thatch of a stone cottage halfway down the High street. It wafted lazily into the brisk air of the spring morning. In amongst the daffodils & cow parsley, a little light frost clung & sparkled in the early morning sunlight.
By the Aga, the black cat slowly stirred & stretched out fully, before it stood on its black furry legs, then ambled over to the cat-flap & across the pathway leading to the barn. Birds chirped loudly, singing spring in the old oak tree, the sunrays filtering through the doorway of the wooden barn door.
As a farmer's son nearby prepared for the morning milking, his black & white cows bumping each other as they wandered toward the parlor, the black cat made its way toward the hole at the bottom of the wall where it met the hay- strewn floor. It crouched down again, eyes fixed determinedly on any possible activity from the small hole, unknowingly & unaware that any appearance from there, would be a long wait.
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