We are being engulfed by the moronic inferno of the internet

Well, thank the Lord there were no cctv cameras around when I caught Mr Tibbles in my garden a few weeks back, before the whole furore began. Luckily, I read about Mary Bale and surreptitiously took down the mini-gibbet and buried the remains in a small trench behind the pond, before the Facebook maniacs had a chance to get on the case.

The cat had been doing its usual stuff — crapping on the lawn, eating wild animals, urinating in my daughter’s sandpit — before it was unfortunately snagged in the wooden peg and wire snare I had laid by the hedge. It was subjected to a brief trial, of the sort you might receive in Cuba or Burma, before being marched to the centre of the garden swinging by its back legs and subjected to due process: I even put a suit on for the event and sang a brief requiem, by Fauré. I swear there were two woodmice sitting nearby knitting as the sentence was carried out, cackling away to themselves. Declining in numbers are woodmice, so a rare moment of cheer for them.

A day or so later I noticed a little paper ad pinned to the trees along the road asking if anyone had seen Mr Tibbles and with a number to ring if we had. There was a photo of Tibbles playing with a ball of string, but it didn’t do him justice. Oh, I’ve seen him, I’ve seen him, dear neighbour — and if you had kept control of him, he wouldn’t be in the place he is now: he would be crapping in your garden instead. Maybe I should let my almost-teenage son clamber from garden to garden, taking a ‘dump’ (as he would describe the act) wherever he pleased, firing air-rifle potshots at the nuthatches from the centre of each lawn and sinuously rubbing his body up against female houseguests.