I can’t believe how quickly the months roll by… In Greece, the humans say ‘Kalo Myna’ at the beginning of each month. August is usually the hottest and driest month and we’ll all be pleased to have a bit of cooler weather for September. But this month’s news, you wouldn’t believe it! We’ve had some strange animals here in my time – goats, rabbits, hedgehogs, pigs, chickens – we’re all quite tolerant. But now, there’s a young pigeon and they’ve given her a name – Mrs P!

It happened like this. A couple of weeks ago, a bird fluttered into our lavender field. Not a tiny bird, that one of us might have pounced on, but slightly larger and obviously in trouble. Of course, our scouts were onto it immediately – we take it in turns to patrol the area, and sent out a general alert. We weren’t very subtle and as soon as a group of us gathered around, trying to decide what to do, the volunteers were onto us and we weren’t allowed to have any fun. The bird was whisked off and put in a box to recover. It turned out that there wasn’t much wrong with it, except it was missing some wing feathers, so couldn’t fly properly. No one here knew what to do with it, or how to feed it, but there’s a bird hospital on a nearby island, so they asked for advice.

Now, they’ve set up a sort of big cage for her – they call it an aviary, so she can learn to fly. They even take her out every day for flying lessons. She’s getting better. Of course, we’re not allowed too close as she practises flying between two of our helpers. She’s got to be quite friendly and seems to recognise them. Maybe birds are smarter than I thought – but I didn’t think she was too clever, landing in the middle of sixty cats! At first, we all gathered by her huge cage, to watch, but we’ve lost interest now. She eats all the time! They give her muesli, cracked corn, some fruit and lots of water and she makes a big mess throwing it all around.

But tomorrow, these helpers are leaving. They’ve been here for eight months, so we’re going to miss them. They are useful to us now; they know just what we need. But guess what? They are going to volunteer at the bird hospital and Mrs P is going with them for specialist care. It’s been an interesting interlude – but after all, this is a cat rescue place, not a zoo!

Another one of our volunteers left as well, she took two kittens with her. We’d found them on the street without a mother cat and they had horribly infected eyes and sniffles. I didn’t want to get too close in case I caught something nasty. So, my mum is short of helpers now, until the next lot get here at the end of the month. Oh dear – more people to train to our ways. We had a nice surprise though, the helpers who had been in Paros came back for one night. Everyone had supper together and they made a big fuss of us all. But the food wasn’t much fun – they are vegetarians.

Thankfully Mrs P is a bit too tame to be released into the wild, so she’s staying at the bird hospital in Paros, where she’s free, safe, well-fed and has lots of friends.

Cheers for now – until the next time. Cuddle your cats! We do like it really, even if sometimes we act like we don’t…