Last night I shut the cats in the laundry/bathroom before bedtime. They promptly did a bunk as soon as I opened the door to go to the loo. I concluded chasing them was probably cause too much excitement and that I can leap out of bed if required during the night. So off to bed. First thing Sebastian did was leap onto the bed, get thrown off, leap up again, get thrown off, and the retreated to the hall where he set up camp outside my door. Smidgen came to bed as per normal, and Esther presumably stayed in the loungeroom as she normally does too.

After trying to dig holes in the hall runner to make it more comfortable, Sebastian retired to the loungeroom and put himself to bed on Shadow's day bed (Shadow being comfortably snoring beside my bed by this time). And so the night passed without event - amazing!!

This morning I was up early as I had to clean the bank. This left me with the dilemma as to what to do with Sebastian. Eventually I decided to just shut the cats in safety, and leave Seb with Shadow - after all it was only for an hour. I decided to take them for a long walk before I left so as to wear Seb out = big mistake. Previously he had been happy to lounge around after his early toilet run. After the longer walk (interrupted by a passing hare) he was all hyped up and so I expected trouble. But no. No scratch marks on any doors, silence on my arrival home and two dogs fast asleep indoors.

This was all getting too good to be true, so I decided to test my luck by bunging them both in the back seat of the car and just driving the short distance to the Andover turnoff (on the principle that I could walk them back if it was not successful. Shadow camped in the middle of the back seat, very upright and self-conscious. Seb hung his head over the back of the seat  near my ear looking cute. Stopped. Opened the car door, forgetting for a moment, and Seb launched himself out the driver's door in one fluid motion, under the door and off. EEK! Fortunately I had the liver treats with me and he responded to my calls (after making me sweat a bit as he headed off down the middle of the road). Shadow sat patiently in the back seat while all this was going on, waiting for me to open the door for him. So we went for a bit of a walk along the cycle track and then back to the car and home. The return journey they were more relaxed together, and getting out of the car was not so traumatic for any of us.

We have had a few more walks today and it seems Seb is indeed housetrained which is good news.

In the mean time i have baked a loaf of bread since I seem to be running low and have no money for the rest of the week. I will probably bake some more tomorrow. This is using up some bread mix for the breadmaker which is now redundant due to the advent of the stand mixer, so hopefully it tastes OK. I suspect it may have too much salt as I forgot it would be pre-salted.   It's moments like these my stockpile of pantry goods comes in handy. Some veges from the garden, some meat from the freezer, some fresh baked bread, icecream with rhubarb or failed cherry jelly (which makes a lovely sauce for icecream) - what more can a girl want!

Lit the fire as it was quite cool and now it is fairly mild so the fire is redundant.

Sebastian clearly learned bad habits where-ever he was before he ran away. If found on furniture, instead of leaping off looking embarrassed, he simply curls into a tighter ball and tries the 'I'm too cute to throw me off' look. Sadly for him it doesn't work with me. He can not understand why the cats are allowed on the furniture and he is not - he walks over to each of their chairs, rests his chin and stares at them, and then gives me a filthy look before retiring to his bed, lol.