Kitchen sink dramas 7

A flapping on the landing and a shower of paint flakes disturbed my packing for Wales. The Esher sculpture and the papier-mâché pigeon suspended in the stairwell were swinging wildly to and fro'. No sign of the cat. Had Buddy finally leapt in irritation at one of the artificial birds and plunged down two floors? No, there he was after all, in hot pursuit of a very live and very frightened pigeon that must have slipped in through one of the velux windows in the bedroom. I hastily shut the cat in the study and the pigeon in the kitchen-sitting room and opened the windows on both sides of the house, but the terrified bird flew repeatedly at speed against the glass, first on one side of the room, then on the other. After several violent crashes it was so stunned that I was able to pick it up and place it gently on the roof over the bay, where it remained all night. I thought it was beyond help and expected to recover a little corpse in the morning, but the story had a happy ending, as the pigeon flew away over the rooftops when I took a look outside to check on it.