The other month I bought a budgie, for the sake of my scrapbooking. I’d just taken delivery of a lovely one-off Club Scrap Kit entitled “Pets”; and despite the fact that I’m already the pawed owner of two cats and that there was some excellent cat paper in the kit; I needed to use that birdie engraved paper.

No, really. I really did – I had to match that paper.

Besides, my daughter who was coming up to the tender age of 18 months, should have her own pet, right? And if it matched a paper for a potential scrapping layout, then all the better…right? In fact, excuse the pun, but I was killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

It was an opportune moment the day before a Bank Holiday weekend, as my man-around-the-house and I had both taken a day off work to spend together. I therefore utilised this god-given “right-time” to force him into a shopping expedition to the local garden and leisure centre. He thought I was just going to do my normal trick, and lead him “unbeknownst” towards the large crafting section they have there. Instead, an hour later, we walked out with a large cage, all the birdie mod-cons one would want, and a green boy budgie. For a while it had been a toss-up whether I decided on a yellow, white, blue or green budgie. The pet section girl trying to grab my new pet from the back of the cage couldn’t quite understand my mutterings about photogenic-ness, or matching of papers. I wish I’d taken the club scrap paper in – or at least a colour selector wheel, or some small matching embellishment.

During the drive home, the budgie received the name “Buddy” because we thought our daughter might easily be able to say that one. She can, by the way. Birdie, buddy and budgie appear to be an interchangeable and blendable word in the vocal repertoire of a toddler.

Buddy the budgie arrived in-house and took up prime surprise position in the corner of our dining room. His sparkling white new cage gleamed with my anticipation. When my daughter was later brought home from nursery, he would be there to surprise her, and I would get those photos for the layout.

It’s funny how scrapping plans can be so easily scrambled by life, isn’t it? An hour after Buddy’s arrival he appeared to have calmed down and was really taking to his environment. In fact, he was chirping happily in his cage, and I realised we might take a while to get used to the newest noise level in the house.

Enter one cat.

Actually, it must have been more like a rocket launch of one cat. Rocky the Cat, a little feline dynamo of bird / frog / mouse / spider-killing power must have come moseying in the back cat-flap and then heard a birdie INSIDE! Upon hearing this nemesis she then must have flown around the dining room door, and launched herself onto that darn birdie without even looking for it first. The end result was a cat cartoon-like flattened against one cage side in mid-air. And then, in cartoon-slow motion, the weight brought the cage down to the floor on top of the cat. SPLAT!

After the crash, I leapt up in time to find one cat flattened and pinned to the ground by a cage with the birdie flying around on top. Once the water/seed/feathers mess had been cleaned up, and budgie calmed down with a draped towel overtop; we realised that the cat had done a disappearing act.

Rocky the cat has never gone near that cage again. In fact, for a month she wouldn’t even come downstairs. It was the best way to shock-tactic a cat out of eating another family member that I’ve ever found.

Unfortunately, with all of the excitement and cleanup work required, by the time we fetched our daughter home, I’d completely forgotten the photo opportunity. There was great excitement and joy to meet the budgie from her end, but Buddy was just down-right annoyed by our family by then - and for a budgie, managed an impressive couldn’t-be-bothered attitude.

He’s not done anything relatively exciting ever since. I can’t get him to talk - not one word; he once got out of the cage – which is when I learnt that apparently my man-around-the-house had a hidden (until then, that is) fear of touching anything feathery-that-flies; and he refuses even to get excited about fresh fruit, or play with any of those expensive toys. Buddy is a bit of a duddy, really.

But one of these days I’m going to get a photo of him, and I’m going to use that paper, because he’s such a good match. You can understand that, can’t you?