Prowling Amber exposes Incy Wincy

Ex-feral cat Amber has had the whole house jittery for the past few days. The dogs take her teasing - she jumps out at them from ambush, she winds her sinuous tail around their noses until they sneeze and she smacks them if they dare to sniff at her.

Her juvenile behavior never bothers them, but when she goes off into a trance, it worries them, probably because it makes no sense. While cats and dogs are known to be sensitive to things mere humans never notice, this was strictly Amber's "sense" we were all following.

Amber's trances are random and varying in length, so when she suddenly broke a prolonged "staring at nothing" trance and started prowling the house, she had a curious audience.

Molly was the first to start following her, then Bonnie the exuberant Pomeranian joined the silent snake of animals moving randomly from room to room.

As Amber and her entourage came back into the living room for the third time, elderly Sassoon heaved to her feet and joined the expedition. Jack Yorkie would probably have joined in too, if he hadn't already snuggled down for his afternoon nap.

As I joined the end of the conga line, we ended up in the bathroom, where Amber stared at the three toilet rolls, which presumably she had played with earlier and left spread across the bathroom floor, then she jumped lithely onto the side of the bath and stared in.

Curious, I pushed through the three dogs blocking the bathroom doorway and moved to stare into the bath.

Nothing to see! Then, as Amber shifted slightly, I watched as a large spider tiptoed out from under the shelter of the bath shelf and stood irresolute, as if aware of being watched.

Once again Amber shifted slightly, as if getting ready to pounce, which sent the spider scuttling back under the ledge.

Running my hand over Amber's head in thanks, I went for a glass and sheet of paper and returned to remove the arachnid from its illicit occupation of my bathroom.

Leaving it outside on a bush, four animals and one human carefully checked the bathroom for webs or the rest of the family. About six centimeters in size, it was a harmless common house spider. But it had to find its own house, not take over mine, however cold it gets.

Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays.

gnoyce2009@gmail.com