Last evening there was an almighty crash outside and Bill ran out ahead of me to the back yard.

“It’s just a possum,” my brother said, pointing to the possum hiding in the roof of the carport, “he knocked over the basket on that shelf.”

“How cute,” I responded.

“Yes, but you don’t want them living in your house – they carry diseases,” he answered.

I remembered the possum that used to come most nights to our house at Gumdale when we were children; he used to sit on the meter-box under the window sill and wait for his bread and jam. Nobody worried about diseases in those days, all the same, I took Bill’s word for it; and of course, you wouldn’t want one actually living in your roof and clattering around – they are quite big animals.

Bill went back indoors to find the humane possum trap (if caught the possum might be sent on a trip to Gumdale, which is still a bit bushy even these days). My phone rang and I sat down on a garden chair to take the call (well, it was a chatty conversation). After a short while I noticed a golf ball come whizzing out from under my chair, between my feet on the concrete and up towards the grass – it went so fast that I thought it was a ping pong ball at first. Lily the chubby cat (three of us are feeding her at present) came bounding from somewhere behind me, caught up with the ball and sent it back and forth, up and down the concrete floor of the carport. All that extra food has given Lily lots of energy.

What a surprise when I went out to feed the chooks and the magpies this morning! I surveyed the scene beyond the back door and realised, with some satisfaction, that our Lily is an extremely clever cat for, quite obviously, she has developed her own form of the French game of Petanque (Boules) – see the photographs and judge for yourself. To think that if the possum had not knocked down the basket of balls from the shelf Lily would never have discovered her talent. Perhaps the possum and the cat played Boules together all night long? Lily is a tad lethargic, yet hungry, today. Or maybe I’m talking fanciful balderdash?