Regular readers may remember this columnist agonising last year over whether we should get a cat. It’s the sort of cutting-edge commentary you will have come to expect from me. At the time my wife, enabled by two enthusiastic children, was busy WhatsApping shelters and presenting the family with slideshows of unbearably cute kittens. I knew I hadn’t a hope.
The motion carried and I had to satisfy myself with standing in the wings like an opposition politician warning everyone about the price of cat food and the prospects for the fabric of our new sofa.

I’m glad to report that Sammy has slotted into family life quite easily. And why wouldn’t he, given his living conditions now surpass about three quarters of the humans on the planet? And as his waistline has expanded to match my own, we’ve come to get used to the ebb and flow of Sammy’s life, and come to accept Sammy’s mild indifference to our affection as some sort of repressed feline love.

Then last week, while sitting on the sun lounger out the back, basking in our new Mediterranean climate, I watched him go to work on the tree in the middle of the garden. There was a nest up there with some seriously cute-sounding birdies. They’d hop down to the garden wall every now and again to sing us a song. The reason I say ‘was’ is because they are no longer with us. The culprit is Sammy the Cat, who I watched over the course of an hour commit a small genocide and wipe out a whole generation of birds.

Every instinct said intervene as I watched our chubby tabby drag his well-fed torso up the tree branches in search of prey. I kept shouting at him to stop, praying he had some understanding of English or indeed any respect for me at all, given the hours I’ve worked in the past year to keep him in Whiskas 1+ Poultry Feasts in Gravy, twelve pouches to the box.

But something I read from David Attenborough years ago made me pause, about how the nature documentary crews must never interfere, that you film the wildebeest calf and you do not save it. Nature isn’t being cruel, it’s just that Sammy needed a brunch after the large breakfast I squeezed out of a pouch for him and it just so happened little Tooty and Tweety were planning on doing some flying lessons that morning.

So I stayed on the lounger and let the wild kingdom proceed, and it was horrific, two little birdies barely out of the nest, destroyed in front of me by a cold killer we got in to teach the kids about caring for animals.
And I’ll say this for him, there was nothing rushed about it. He gave that bird a good ten minutes, letting it away, allowing it the odd hop of hope, before the paw came down for the last time. And you thought what Argentina did to England was cruel?

It’s far too dry to fry

The country itself, meanwhile, is officially too dangerous for sausages. Tesco pulled disposable barbecues from every store last week after the Government asked nicely, what with wildfires burning in Killarney National Park and up the Wicklow mountains. West Cork’s own Christopher O’Sullivan, Minister of State for nature and heritage, called the disposable barbecue an absolute scourge and praised Tesco for its leadership, surely the first recorded instance of a Clonakilty man thanking a British multinational for taking food away from Irish people.

The water situation is more serious again. Uisce Éireann says supplies across the State are on a knife edge, a six week conservation order is in force across the east, and there is talk of overnight cutoffs in the capital. There are fines of up to €5,000 for non-essential use and a hotline where you can report your neighbours, which is reportedly popular amongst those who miss the cut for Liveline.

Eight hundred years of proud resistance, entire ballads devoted to the fate of informers, and we’re now invited to ring a number to squeal on Nelly next door for power washing the patio. For What Died the Sons of Róisín?

Nothing Compares

In other news, the National Wax Museum is having another go at Sinéad O’Connor. You may remember the first attempt, withdrawn within days in 2024 after a national outcry. It was a likeness so far wide of the mark that visitors were checking the plaque for guidance. Nothing compares to you Sinéad, visitors said, especially this.

The museum’s owner, Paddy Dunning, said at the time that the piece didn’t meet their high standards, and in fairness to the man, he was the last person to record Sinéad’s music before she died, so his heart was in the right place.

A new version is promised this very week which, in the current weather, is brave scheduling from a wax perspective.

Herself

We lost Brenda Fricker last week, gone at 81. She was the first Irish woman to win an acting Oscar, for playing Christy Brown’s mother in My Left Foot, and she spent the following decades being gloriously unimpressed by the whole business, turning up as the pigeon lady in Home Alone 2 and generally trying to avoid the limelight.

Dublin was due to give her the Freedom of the City, so at least she heard what she meant to us while she was still here. She also delivered the finest sentence ever spoken about being Irish abroad: 'When you are lying drunk at the airport you’re Irish. When you win an Oscar you’re British.'

Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.