My friend from school, eons ago, came for coffee today. We’ve kept in touch since school (1965 – 1972!) and see each other approximately every 2 months or so. Love her to bits. Always jolly, always elegant and fab, always fun.

Anyway, today was a bit different. Hubby had spotted our cat spending a lot of time waiting, absolutely still, by the shed. Something was moving under there, and it was bigger than a mouse. We were very worried it might be a rat, or even a nest of rats (ewwwwww!), but couldn’t really see.

While Cas and I were drinking our coffee outside, as it’s been such a beautiful sunny day, we saw what it was. It had come out from under the shed and was sitting boldly eating my plants. A very small baby rabbit. The cat was most surprised, and decided not to attack it, just to watch it. So cat and rabbit watched each other.

I wasn’t terribly impressed that it was eating my plants ravenously. Even the flowers, not just the leaves.

So I spent most of our coffee morning on my knees, in case I frightened it, catching it. I fetched the carrier for when we take the cat to the vet. I fetched a carrot and a couple of cabbage leaves, ripped them into small pieces, and left a sort of trail.

Eventually, after a couple of hours, I actually managed to catch it. It screeched like a baby and wriggled like billyo, but stopped when it was inside the carrier. There were two small bits of cabbage leaf in there and a stump of carrot.  Turned its nose up at the carrot, but ate all the cabbage leaf!

Then I schlepped round all the neighbours from whose houses a baby rabbit could possibly escape and asked them if they’d lost one. No joy. Then I phoned the vet, who said to bring it straight round and they’d scan it to see if it was chipped.

So I did. It’s a wild baby rabbit, probably a female, and very healthy.

No sign of any mother rabbit, or any other baby rabbits. The vets had given me the phone number of a small animal sanctuary, and to cut a long story short, that’s where the baby rabbit is now. Any more that appear, and that I can catch, will go straight there. No more schlepping round the neighbours.

Wild rabbits are a sort of grey/brown colour, like hedgehogs. Tame rabbits are usually, I have discovered today, white, or black, or grey. The vet did suggest we could keep it – no thank you!

So that was that sorted.

When I woke from my afternoon ziz, I decided to have a go at installing Windows XP on my laptop. I’d put a 500 Gb drive in it, which worked (sort of) in the RipNAS. Well, it didn’t work in my laptop. So I put the old 160 Gb drive back in the laptop, which has Lubuntu installed on it. Well, Windows XP wouldn’t install on that, either. So I have bought a copy of Windows XP for no discernible reason. Grrr. However, the upside is that the laptop is still quite happy running Lubuntu. I suppose that’s ok.

The reason I need access to Windows XP is that I have knitting software called Knitware, which I need to design myself a top to knit in Bergere de France Coton 50. And you can’t install this program in Windows 7 (which is what I have now on my main pc). You have to faff about installing it in XP, then copy the installed files into a particular folder in Windows 7, get a Borland Database Engine file, and generally fiddle and faff.

In the end I booted hubby’s pc into Windows XP and sorted it all out in there. Now it’s working fine in Windows 7 and I’ve designed the top, worked out roughly how much yarn I’ll need, and will get it tomorrow. I will definitely need to do a tension sample though. Further exciting instalments as the project unfolds . . . .

And for now, I think, that’s it. So many adventures in one day. Let’s hope tomorrow is calmer, and I don’t find more baby rabbits eating my plants. Cute as they are, they can ruin your garden.