The cat, purring loudly, sniffed the food, picked up a chunk of white meat and put it on the floor beside the saucer where she began chewing greedily. Albert, who was black and white, was jumping up around Carol’s ankles, yowling. ‘All right, all right,’ she said, flicking her long grey hair out of her eyes, ‘yours is just coming. I’ve only got one pair of hands.’ She put another saucer of food beside Victoria’s, and Albert set to with gusto. Carol grinned and gave them both another stroke. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘Good kitties.’ She turned to the chicken carcass on the white plastic workbench, tore the rest of the meat and jelly off the bones and put the scraps in a big blue plastic dish. Then she went down her narrow hallway to the small sitting room at the back of the house, opened the glass door and placed the bowl on the grass by the compost heap. She knew that at least two wild cats came to her for food but there might be more. And the foxes and the odd badger would polish off any leftovers.
