"I can hear a cat" said the Webmaster as we walked past the neighbour's farm gate. Their dog was nowhere to be seen. It must be in the shed eating its supper.
A thin cat, mewing loudly, appears out of the gloom and squezes herself under the bottom bar of the gate.
"It's Mrs. Cat. She's got a mouse. She's going to follow us to give us the mouse."
"Keep walking. It will go home," says the Webmaster confidently. "Go home," he instructs the cat, gesticulating to indicate the direction in which he wishes her to go.
The cat hesitates and then continues to follow us. We can barely see her outline but her eyes glow amber in the light of the Webmaster's torch. When she sees we have stopped and are watching her she breaks into a run and chases down the lane to catch up with us. She has abandoned her mouse.
"Walk faster so she can't keep up" suggests the Webmaster.
"Don't be daft, she can run faster than we can walk."
"She'll get bored soon and go back. We can't have her following us all the way round."
We contine to walk on and sure enough the cat soon tires of following us and turns back towards home.
It is dark and we are walking quickly.
"Look at the amount of energy being wasted with all those lights." There are hundreds of orange and white lights outlining roads, sports grounds, industrial parks and moving vehicles.
"Maybe they are necessary. Look at that one. Do you think that needs to be there?" A single orange street lamp stands at the bend of the road curving over the hill and passed the locked gate to the car park.
The Webmaster's phone rings. It is a club member signing up a relative who has volunteered to run for the ladies team on Saturday. He has found an error with the email link. He has all the details, can explain exactly what happened and what error was reported. The Webmaster says he will investigate when he gets back from his walk.
Two minutes later the phone rings again. The email link worked from his desktop but not from his phone. This is very useful information and explains why the Webmaster had not detected it in his testing. As an old fuddy duddy he had not thought of testing on his mobile phone.
We walk on, a shorter walk tonight as we were late setting out and our evening meal is in the oven, ready for us to serve up and eat on our return. The Webmaster speculates as to the cause of the error with the email link.
Two cats wait for us to open the door. Mrs. Cat follows us back along the drive way. She doesn't come to the door but heads to the kitchen window. By the time we get inside, she is already there, waiting by her bowl for food. I wonder what she did with her mouse.