A busy day in the court of The Queen B

The Queen B is having to do some quite serious resting now, after what seems to have been a really very exciting and tiring day in her court.

As if the spring chorus of birds twittering isn't enough to make her nearly distracted, including one small bird actually landing half way down the Pyracantha inside the garden to tease her (it just escaped), she had the extra special thrill today of seeing a squirrel pottering around in her domain.

As far as we know, this is a first: there are plenty of squirrels nearby, but this is the first time we've ever seen one right on our patio, although I suspect it's the same one that I saw a couple of weeks ago, climbing onto the first floor balcony of one of our neighbour's flats in order to get at the bird feeder that was hanging there. Convenience food for squirrels.

Boudicca's reaction was an initial double take: standing in the middle of the living room, staring out of the closed patio doors; a sort of shake of the head and dramatic blinking.

Then she hurled herself at the window, muttering something about there only being "one bushy tail allowed around here!"

At this, the squirrel spotted her and, suitably chastised, took flight over the fence.

She ran through to the bedroom to check from that window, and then back to the living room.

She's not much bigger than a squirrel, but size isn't much object in The Queen B's world. Perhaps it's a result of naming her after the legendary English warrior queen who gave the Romans a spanking, but she's quite happy to take on bigger critters than herself.

A case in point is Basil.

Basil lives in a little block next to ours. One female human constitutes his entire staff, and she's pretty dismal at the job too, leaving him outside for long periods of time.

Basil is rather large – and very soft. He stands in the carpark behind our garden and cries. And indeed, there is something about him that makes me want to give in and call him, using my best Prunella Scales as Sybil voice from Fawlty Towers. He only wants attention, food and slightly better staff. Occasionally, he feels so desperately in need of this that he'll struggle over a couple of fences to come into our garden and sit in front of the window, hoping to be allowed in.

Boudicca goes beserk. And if she has the opportunity, loves nothing better than to chase this cat, almost twice her size, right back over the fences. Remarkably, Basil's memory seems to be rather short term, since he never seems to recall the last time his furry ass got clawed as he scrambled for safety.

So, all in all, it was an exciting day. One can quite understand why she needs to put her paws up now.