Kittens!

I was going to write more about insects today, but that will have to wait... The cats have had kittens!

They were obviously trying to communicate something to us yesterday. The black cat (male) in particular was very vocal.

We had a storm last night - this area is renowned for electric storms apparently. This morning it was still raining, so I did a walk around to check everything was water proof. As I passed the four au pain (bread oven) I heard the squeaks of the new born. The cats had used a cardboard box (appropriately marked "fragile") on the top of a spare display cabinet. We gave them a basket and a better cardboard box. The weather has turned cold again, so we hope they will be OK. There are two black kittens - like the father (in the photo) and one grey like the mother. We can't keep them though - we will put up a notice for visitors.

Strange creatures

This is one of the insects we keep in the vivarium. It is a phasmid - the stick insect family. These are very easy to look after - they eat bramble leaves and generally hang around upside down pretending to be bits of leaves. When I open the door to feed and water them they sway a bit - as if in a breeze, but otherwise they don't move while anyone is looking. They have a tail which looks a bit scorpion like - to put off predators who see through the dead-vegetation disguise.

We have five - all females. Apparently they don't need males to reproduce, they can lay eggs which produce clones.

The eggs have a bit which is attractive to ants. The ants take the eggs to their antheap, eat part and discard the egg. When the egg hatches the lava look and act like ants! Once they leave the antheap they take the adult form and pretend to be dead vegetation...