Life and near-death in the pond of despair

Oh God. She’s done it again. Bear – the lazier, greedier, more ruthless of our cats – has a hobby, and it is murder. Infant mice, butterflies, dragonflies; there is no creature too beautiful or too vulnerable to escape her casual violence. Does she think she’s patrolling the perimeter, or bringing us lunch? Who cares; her prey certainly doesn’t. When she makes her special victory cry (mmrrrOOWWW) and sashays in from the roof-terrace with another victim held delicately in her gnashers, I praise her, pet her; she is, after all, simply obeying her feral nature. Then I catch the tiny frightened creature with a firm yet soothing scoop of my ha —

OK, no, this is a lie. I can’t deal with rodents, dead, alive or in between. Small wounded creatures of any kind spook me: the crooked leg, the racing heart. So, despite my natural inclination to live alone in solitary genius, I cohabit with two mouse-rescuers who, when I shut them in the kitchen and run away, instigate retrieval protocols. I, in return, barely complain when I open our wardrobe to find a shoebox, containing a pomegranate seed, a square of chocolate, and the arguably convalescing mouse. But lately, Bear’s beat has expanded to include the pond, and now we have a problem.

Do you own a pond? You should. Come on Grandpa; get with it. Haven’t you been to a garden centre lately? It’s time to bother with wildlife, and you need to invest: solar bat-cameras, sustainable bamboo hedgehog-shelters or, for those who really care, the Highgrove House Bee Hotel (£295, for pre-order). But, to earn serious nature-nurturing credentials, you need water in your garden.

The winter I first moved into this flat and cleared the rich shag-pile of ivy, bramble and fox-gifts in my half of Mrs Downstairs’s garden, I discovered a central patch of mud perhaps 4x2m. Even I realised it was too shaded for a lawn, marginally too small for donkeys; still, it was land. Did I not want to be a true custodian of the soil? To encourage, nay tend, my fellow creatures? I’d miraculously found on the street a galvanised-steel dolly bath which, even more miraculously, I hadn’t yet stuffed with my usual foolproof combination of garden-centre bargains, spindly seedlings and disappointment. Inspiration struck. I’d build a pond.

We’ve all watched Scandinavian crime: digging even a tiny pit in frozen soil takes patience, which I lack. After eons, I’d had enough. Obviously I’d pre-filled the tub; dragging it over to the inch-deep recess nearly killed me. Too exhausted by my good deeds to do any research, I trusted to Mother Nature, repurposed a plank as an amphibian escape-ramp, and waited for the stampede. The years passed. Nothing; nothing; nothing.

Year 4: I invest in costly oxygenating plants, balance them feebly on bits of brick, watch the water turn muddy and the plants rot.

Year 5: I steal a water-snail from a lake: also RIP.

Year 6: My girlfriend, a vegan, races upstairs with exciting tidings: we have tadpoles! We are parents! For weeks she harvests rainwater, keeps the tub carefully topped up. At last I break the news: they’re mosquito larvae. She renames the tub the Pond of Despair. I await her comeuppance.

Year 7: I’m faffing about in the raspberries when something moves. My God: a toad, or possibly a frog. Or possibly frog. Vast excitement; photography; frequent visits. We name her, or him, Geronimo. Joy unbounded.

Year 8: Geronimo’s back! We love her/him! I buy her more plants; they do not survive. Yet she seems happy, with her quivering nostrils, her grey-green beautiful skin and unblinking eyes. It’s OK, Geronimo; don’t feel rushed to reproduce.

Year 9: Nervously, we await the reappearance of Geronimo. The weeks pass. No sign. Then, jubilate! She/he’s back! One small issue. Geronimo is in the mouth of Bear.

And it keeps happening. Over and over, Bear swans in to the kitchen with a long, rubbery leg dangling from her jaws like a careless spaghetti-eater; she hasn’t yet managed all four, but give her time. She plops Geronimo on our bedroom floor triumphantly ; awaits applause. And we all scream. It’s horrible. Geronimo lies there, webbed toes akimbo, bloodless, apparently dead. My loved ones rush to the rescue; I’d do it, obviously, but sadly I have a subsequent engagement. They restore a now-wriggling Geronimo to the Pond of Despair. And Bear pads calmly downstairs, to put us all through this hell again. This can’t go on. My/our/Geronimo’s nerves can’t take it.

This week, despite the heat, my girlfriend has been constructing a cat-repelling protective dome from chicken-wire, with a Geronimo-sized hidden exit, which Bear will definitely not find, oh no, absolutely not. She claims that the revitalised Geronimo keeps popping up to see what she’s up to and winking at her. Which, by this stage, I can believe.