The other morning Mabel was missing  (she had slipped into the garage the night before and been locked in) and this morning Mack did not appear at the kitchen door.  I went back into the house to clear out the ashes from the woodburner and when I returned Mack was standing forlornly with a long, trailing, yellow piece of string tangled around his neck.  I bent down to untie the many knots and as I released him he slunk away, coughing, into the cat barn. I followed Mack and Mabel to the barn to give them their cat biscuits and fish.  There I found the evidence of what must have happened.  We keep two boxes of cat kibble on a shelf in the cat barn.  One is closed and the one we are using is open.  Next to the shelf is a hook where we store some of the baler twine.  Mack (greedy fellow) must have realized that one of the containers of kibble was open on the shelf and jumped up to get it.  In the process he got caught in a piece of twine and then couldn’t extricate himself.  I found the kibble spilled on top of the metal chest in which we keep the potatoes and once I had cleared it up, I moved the string to the other side of the barn.  Will Mack learn his lesson?  It remains to be seen. Mabel is looking very smug, sitting on top of the old filing cabinets.

When I had finished feeding the chickens I found Mack by the animal water buckets, slaking his thirst. He probably has a rather sore throat. Poor old Mack.