I should know better

Not much to report here. Bad weather in January has stopped most activity...

Except for the annual invasion. The sleet comes down, the mice come in. Why shouldn`t they look forward to a warm winter like everyone else? It`s their equivalent of flying to Florida for three months.

Not house mice - I never see them. Field mice - tiny reddish guys with long tails and very little fear of people. They sit up on the kitchen table and look at you with shiny black eyes, all innocence - "I just popped in for a snack". They eat neat round holes in bags of dogfood. They store food in all sorts of places, such as winter boots. They have to go.

So it`s war on fieldmice, and the dogs are enthusiastic volunteers.

The other night one came into the living room and shot about like a tiny fur bullet riccocheting from one corner to another. The bitches became very single minded in the chase, with Tamara assuring her son Merlin that this was absolutely What You Do when faced with rodents - indeed running screaming about the room was de rigeur. Every time the quarry shot under a chair or table, a row of Papillon noses were thrust under, sniffing so profoundly that I was amazed one of them didn`t inhale the tiny thing, facing me with another huge vet bill - "to removing rodent from nose, £500".

Unfortunately there`s no winning this war - there are millions of the little illegal immigrants just waiting their turn in the woods and fields, shivering in the rain and pointing out the lights of the cottage to each other - "there, that`s the promised land, flowing with milk and honey - well, lots of Tesco dog food anyway."

Nothing else much to report. Shelby liberated a large tub of Flora and went head first into it, coming up with a happy greasy mask and necessitating a lot of emergency deep cleaning with baby wash and a sponge...I think his wrinkle is still a bit oily. But his cholesterol level must be really low.

Shelby takes no part in the war on mice. His tactic of staring the intruders down with enormous stern eyes cuts no cheese with them.

And so far they are the only things in the house that he has shown no interest in eating.