We had been living at our new house for several months before we first noticed the large, black cat hanging around. I wondered who it belonged to, as there are few houses near us. But it was wearing a collar and looked well fed, so obviously wasn't stray or feral.
It made only occasional appearances, but would sometimes sunbathe in our garden, happy to receive a pat and a stroke.
But the recent cold snap brought a dramatic change in his behaviour. Believe me, if you go to draw the curtains at night and find
a face pressed up against the window, eyes staring at you, it is an alarming moment … even if they do turn out to be feline features.
The cat stood outside the back door for hours at a time, miaowing for our attention. "Go away, you don't live here," I would plead, consumed by guilt.
Every time we opened the door to go in or out, he was there. He managed to duck past our legs a few times, and seemed suspiciously confident in the house.
We rang the letting agents to get contact details for the previous tenants. Yes, Charlie was theirs. Apparently Milden was not to his liking, so the stubborn moggy had made the three-mile journey back to his old home, presumably using his built-in cat-nav system.
They had retrieved him six times already, and were at a loss as to what to do.
So it seems Charlie is now an honorary member of our household, no matter what we or his actual family have to say.
Luckily, for such a disloyal animal, he is proving very friendly.
BABERGH'S crackdown on Sudbury's short-stay car parks may have helped free up spaces for shoppers, but I don't think it's done much good for shop workers.
The move has only highlighted the fact that the town does not have enough parking spaces, shifting the problem from short-stay to long-stay.
Here at the
Free Press it has now become the norm for staff to rush out of the office every three hours to move their cars elsewhere. Not because they had previously been abusing the limit in the short-stays, but because it has now become very difficult to find a space in Sudbury's long-stay car parks at 9am.
Perhaps we need another rule. If you aren't staying all day, the car park by the Kingfisher is off limits! After all, there is no point in shoppers coming to town if there is no-one there to serve them.
I HAVE to get something off my chest. Whenever the plans for Belle Vue Park are mentioned, part of the land is continually being referred to, by the council and others, as "the old swimming pool site"
or "derelict".
For those that are unaware, it is actually currently a BMX park, popular with many teenagers. There may have already been plans to shift it elsewhere, but please don't pretend the site is not already a useful public space.
