Valerie Pollard - legend

The latest name on my long list of heroines.

She was apparently so fed up with neighbourhood cats using her garden as a toilet and/or thoroughfare, and probably fed up of them terrorising/decimating the local wild bird population, that she installed barbed wire and spikes to prevent access.

For this heroic, selfless (for who really wants to look out of their window on a prison-camp landscape?) act she has been pilloried in such august publications as the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. She refused to speak to the press but was branded as 'cat-hating' by the Mirror, which is about as logical as assuming that a visitor to London who locks her car is anti-Cockney.

Valerie's neighbour, Bea Upton, had complained to the RSPCA about her entirely justified defences and told the newspapers that they were preventing "Tiggly" from living 'a normal happy free life'. Good Grief! You have to have serious misgivings about somebody who gives their pet such a demeaning name. You can almost forgive the unfortunate animal for wishing to spend as much time away from home as possible.

But no, frankly, if you can't keep your pet under control DON'T LET IT OUT!!!

What about the rights of Valerie to have a normal happy free life working in her garden without the risk of getting toxoplasmata-carrying cat shit on her shoes and hands?

And what about the rights of the local bird population to live a normal happy free life? A study conducted in 1997 estimated that domestic cats in the UK killed 27 million birds and 57 million mammals in a 5 month period. There isn't much chance of a normal happy life if it's been prematurely terminated by a non-native predator.

Dogs are not allowed to roam freely; why cats? I have every sympathy with the RSPCS's objectives but in my opinion residents should have every right to deter or terminate trespassing animals with extreme prejudice by any appropriate means, whether it's a rat, mouse, pigeon, cat or dog: they're all vermin if they are causing a nuisance to you.

So Valerie Pollard you get my vote for setting a great example to all reasonable people. You rock!

In fact this should be a call to arms for everyone: open your eyes to this mass invasion by an alien  feline parasite! - which, let's be honest, owes its entire existence to looking cute when it's little.