Simon's Cat - a Dedication

I love the Simon’s Cat cartoons on You Tube – they are charming. But living with cats has its moments and so I dedicate this blog not only to Simon but to all cat owners in the knowledge that they will understand where I am coming from. Two nights, one ongoing saga told by three different souls.

The first night
Bella the Collie says: So here I am, very much top dog and asleep in my rightful place. Now I am a very tolerant pack commander but I cannot understand why the second in command insists on being infested with these stupid felines. Honestly, the fuss they cause at all hours when I am trying to get my much deserved sleep. Last night was a prime example. I dealt with it by giving the second in command a dirty look and told her: your problem – you sort out. I then went back to sleep.

Me, the poor human says: Bloody cat won’t let me sleep! I go to bed circa midnight knowing that Leo is out on the prowl but the kitchen window is open and he can use the dog door in the passage. At some ungodly hour I am woken up by this hysterical meouwling outside my window. On goes the light. Bella raises an eyebrow at me and goes back to sleep. I go to the window and explain nicely to Leo that because of the external scaffolding (that he is standing on), I cannot open the window wide enough to let him in. Cat carries on yowling pitifully. I go downstairs, open my study window and call him. He doesn’t appear but the yowling gets louder. Go back upstairs, cannot see Leo. Go back downstairs – he still hasn’t appeared. Room is cold and so am I. Go back upstairs. Leo is pawing at my bedroom window. I explain again, not so politely this time, that I cannot open the bloody window wide enough. Go downstairs you feline idiot, I bellow. Cat is now turning purple, so am I. Go downstairs and close the study window. Go back upstairs. Open window in spare bedroom. Cat appears. Looks at me and then says no, I don’t think so. He dithers half in and half out the open window. I am now seriously cold. I lean over and assist Leo in taking the “in” decision by putting my hand firmly under his butt and catapulting him into the room. Takes him a couple of seconds to regain his composure and then he trots downstairs. I go back to bed. Five minutes later, Leo is in my room meouwling at me. On goes light, I get another black look from the dog. Leo and I go downstairs and I open the kitchen for him. He tucks into a meal. I go back to bed - finally.

Leo says: I just cannot understand the fuss. My human possession can be so stupid sometimes, she just doesn’t get it. Here I am protecting the property all night and what do I find? I need to come in for a meal and I am bloody locked out – how rude. This is just not good enough so I call my possession and ask politely to be let in. She just stands there in the middle of the room, barefoot and scantily clad, waving her arms at me and babbling incoherently. I ask her again – please open the window. It’s that simple – just open the window. Next thing she disappears. I hear her clattering downstairs which is of course none of my business and completely off piste. I wait patiently for her to return. Which she does but still doesn’t open the bloody window. Now I am getting a little fed up with this game of charades – I am cold and hungry. She is shouting so I start shouting over her, in the hope that she will finally understand what I need. By gum! Would you believe it, she disappears again. More clattering downstairs. This is getting silly and I am now very annoyed. Suddenly she gets the message but she opens a window about 10 metres away. Oh well, better than nothing. I go and check it out and woa! Never been through this window before. Not sure about this – could be dangerous. Better have a think about what to do. Then suddenly, don’t know how, but I am in – some rocket behind me appeared mysteriously and projected me into the room – knew that window was suspicious. Oh ok, all safe so now I can get breakfast. What the hell! Someone has closed my kitchen door. Only one thing for it – need to inform possession. Upstairs again. Why did she go back to bed in any case? This is not the time to sleep. Sleep time is when the sun is up not when its dark. Not sure she will ever get this right. Thank goodness that stupid dog stayed out of the performance this time.

Second night
Bella the Collie says: Ruddy feline is at it again. Oh well back to sleep.

My version: Cat won’t let me sleep! If I don’t get a decent night’s sleep soon I am going state side.

Leo’s version: Ha! Have spent whole day sleeping. Now its time to show my human possession how much I appreciate her. So first offering is a shrew at 1am– a bit small but my possession thinks its elephant nose is cute. Well, what a bloody performance - on goes the light in the sleep room, possession, again scantily dressed, running around the room after the shrew. I had to intervene, things were getting ugly. I grab shrew and what happens? - possession chucks me and the shrew out the sleep room and slams the door. Clearly she wanted something else. I leave the shrew to scuttle under the sofa and out I go – I really need to please my possession. 2am - now I have something that I know will please her but what the hell - the door is still slammed shut. I have to get in, so I go to huge effort with the rat in my mouth. I climb up the honeysuckle creeper and squeeze in through the top window. Present my possession with this amazing gift. Well what a bloody performance: on goes the light again in sleep room, possession says YUK (or a word that sounded like YUK) and grabs rat with hand covered in a tissue. Then what thanks do I get, she dumps my toy in the dustbin in the water room adjacent to the sleep room and slams the door between the two. So now I cannot get to my rat – possession might be through with rat but I was just getting warmed up, they such fun – they make this cute squeaky noise when you toss them in the air and they last longer than the shrews. Only solution – out I go again. Get lucky at 3am, bring possession a really cool mouse. Deliver it to her bed side but I am puzzled. Why has my possession got her head under the pillow and what is that sobbing noise?

Food chains and feather fiends

It’s official with irrevocable proof that I reside right at the bottom of the food chain here at the farm. Some months ago I did a pilot test to see if we could raise quails for eggs, meat and sale of point of lay hens. I ordered three dozen fertile eggs off the internet and when they duly arrived by Royal Mail, wrapped in bubble pack and intact, I put them in the incubator. After eighteen days nothing had happened so I thought, oh well there goes another idea. I switched off the incubator and prepared myself to chuck the eggs out. The first one I lifted out however felt heavy and full, so I put it on the kitchen scales where it clocked in at a massive total of 8 grams. To my astonishment as I was looking down at it, it wobbled and gave out a loud cheep where upon many of the other eggs still in the incubator responded and started tapping and cheeping. In other words, the chicks were telling me in no uncertain terms to stop interfering with nature and to butt out of their forthcoming lives. Just under half the eggs hatched over a period of 2 days and these little yellow and cocoa coloured bumbles bees knew exactly how to get on with the job of living and growing. And boy did they grow! – like topsy as we watched. Interestingly they were totally self-sufficient from the moment they hatched. They took instantly to their chick crumb feed, knew where their water was and in general crapped in only one corner of the brooder. After 6 weeks, I felt confident enough to sex them and was disheartened to find that I only had 3 hens. This 75:25 male to femaIe ratio I established is normal for the bird world so I got on with the job of feeding the boys up for the table. At 9 weeks they went off “down the road” as our dear neighbour says when acknowledging where our meat comes from and they returned a few days later neatly packed in trays ready for either freezer or oven. This left us with 3 females and two cock birds (one stayed on by accident since I had not yet refined my sexing skills) and happily the hens have started laying eggs which are not only in great demand because they are delicious but they also represent the second phase of the quail project. But here comes the food chain bit and my rather lowly stature therein. One of hens is a feisty little thing. She clocks in at about 300 grams and I can easily pick her up in one hand so she’s not exactly the most terrifyingly huge creature. Nor do quails have scary sharp peaks or claws. Nevertheless, this little girl gets muchly bothered if her food bowl runs low and attacks me when I dare open their hutch to refill it. First time it happened I got such a shock I nearly fell over backwards. Now I have got wise to it. The other day I was feeling particularly put upon so instead of sacrificing my hand, I opened the hutch and glared in. There she was ready for battle, feathers puffed out. I squinted at her and shouted, “I have just eaten one of your brothers and very delicious he was too!” I did feel a little better until I realised that George the Romanian builder and Sean the English carpenter, currently doing some work on the farm, so happened to be in ear shot. I looked up to see them stare at me, exchange knowing looks between each other and then wander off in opposite directly shaking their heads. Round three to the little quail.

Hysterical Shouting and Screaming

Until recently, my experience of guinea fowl had been limited to a brief indirect encounter when I was about 8 years old. A work colleague of my father’s invited him to a trout fishing weekend in the Eastern Transvaal and for some reason my mother elected not to join him. This meant I was allowed to go with him. The weekend party was made up mainly of adults and save for one, I was in the minority. The only other member of the group my age was a pasty hysterical boy called Colin. Colin was known for almost incessant noisy outbursts, tantrums, screaming and tears. My most vivid memory of Colin was his face - red and blotchy, tears and snot-caked as he let rip emotionally about whatever was worrying him that moment. And there always seemed to be something worrying him. Colin’s behaviour might have had a lot to do with his rather unusual family circumstances. His parents were both on their second marriage (to each other) and each brought from their previous relationships, three daughters all in their late teens which meant that when Colin arrived he essentially had seven mothers under one roof. This may have explained his rather unique perception of the world and constant state of hysterics although I can think of a number of advantages of being poly-maternally endowed.
Throughout the weekend Colin and I studiously avoided each other. I found his emotional outbursts embarrassing. I had no idea of what he thought of me and nor did I care.
On the last morning of our weekend, breakfast commenced without Colin and I must say it was rather pleasant - peaceful and relaxed. Not to last of course because half way through, Colin burst into the kitchen totally hysterical, screaming and crying. Eventually the group managed to extract from him what the problem was this time. Colin appeared to have gone wandering across the veld on his own where he came upon a guinea fowl hen on her nest of eggs. She did what any self-respecting mother-to-be would do and defended her budding brood by setting up a terrible screeching racket and attacking Colin, giving him the fright of his life.
I was totally unimpressed. I remember glowering at him over the breakfast table as he sniffled into his cornflakes muttering “if I had a .22 you all would be eating guinea fowl now” and thinking what a prat.
Fast forward 44 years and when James and I went to buy some Southdown ewe lambs, we came across an aviary which contained a number of guinea fowl chicks. “Oh please take them”, said Susan, “I don’t have room for them and they are very cramped.” James said no. Susan, her daughter Gussie and I packed the 11 birds into some boxes and we drove home, the sheep in the trailer and the birds in back of the car. I emptied them into a hen coup and let them get on with life. Five keeled over immediately and kicked the bucket. The remaining seven survived. After a couple of weeks, I let them out of the coup, saying ok guys goodbye, convinced that they would take off, never to be seen again. Not on your nelly. They stayed, integrated with the hens, moved into the hen’s lodgings and generally began taking control of everything they encountered.
That was 9 months ago. Today they rule the roost, moving everywhere an almost solid group, a spotty hysterical Doctor Doolittle’s push-me-pull-you. Fully grown they are big birds, far bigger than the cochin hens and that is saying something. They are somewhat prehistoric looking with their elaborate spots, their turquoise faces and almost bald crenulated skulls covered in a mere hint of odd tufts of bum fluff. To top this weird attire, they sport bright red wattles, the large wattles identifying the males.
And they know that they are imposing, taking great delight in collectively chasing cat Leo in through the kitchen window. He tries to regain composure by settling down in the safety in a patch of sun in the dining room near the glass French doors only to find the seven guinea fowl leering menacingly in at him from the outside. He clearly doesn’t want to lose face for a second time in quick succession so he pretends they don’t exist. He turns his face away from them and by the process of cell osmosis attempts to inch away from them in a way that belies his intentions. They continue to peer in at him tapping their beaks on the glass and chattering incessantly at him. He looks slightly green around the gills.
Once the cat has been firmly put in his place, the birds then go to sit on the farm gate facing the street. They are quite happy to perch there for hours, again chattering nonstop and much of Hawkley Village has witnessed them sitting there like the vultures in Disney’s jungle book. But then I drive up to gate, returning from home from wherever. I press the remote control to open the gate and it begins to slide to the right. The seven guinea fowl give a shout of alarm and being to shuffle to the left. The gate continues to shift to the right and birds, as they begin to run out of perch space, continue to shuffle to the left until of course the bird on the far left falls off with much shouting and before he reconstitutes himself in the driveway. The gate continues to open, shifting to the right and the remaining birds shuffling in tandem to the left until the next bird falls off the gates and so it goes. The first time this happened, the building contractor from across the road stopped work and watched the process, open mouth before he collapsed laughing.

People had warned me that guinea fowl are very noisy but are great watch dogs. Ours, people noted are the calmest most chilled birds they had ever met but hysterical shouting and screaming is par for the course with guinea fowl. The birds know me and my voice, they follow me everywhere – even across the fields when I am doing my sheep rounds. They allow me to put them to bed at night and even let me medicate two who were injured when a sheep hurdle fell on them. I thought I had them sussed but they continue to surprise me. Bob came to scan the sheep last week and we kicked off early – before I had let the hens and guinea fowl out their coop for the day. Melissa let the birds out while Bob and I got one with the scanning. All was well until the guinea fowl came round the corner and into the barn where they encountered Bob in his black water-proof waders and with his odd looking sheep scanning trailer. The birds took one look and decided in concert and very shrilly: we don’t like this! They went absolutely bananas and set up a screeching racket that was blood curdling and ear splitting; the noise painfully amplified in the barn. The two dogs scattered. Bob stared at me in alarm and mouthed above the chaos: “I have never heard anything quite like this ever before in my entire life.” After about five minutes of screeching which seemed like eternity, I managed to calm the guinea fowl down after which they decided “Oh ok, he’s alright” and they settled on the barn gate to happily watch Bob complete the sheep scan.

As we approach the spring I am aware that the birds are fully grown and about to go into their first breeding season. I pity the two girls in the group, nature conspired against us and the gender ratio is not good. I am told that once the hens are sitting on eggs, I must do everything I can to locate the nest and remove the eggs (our incubator is due to arrive any day). This is because the hen will refuse to leave her nest and will therefore be fair game for the fox. That would be sad. Be careful, came the warning, when you approach the nest, the hen is likely to set up a furious screaming match and is likely to attack you. Yes I know, I said with a wry smile, I have had experience of this before. Irrespective of its gender, I think I our first guinea fowl chick born to Scotland farm will be named Colin.

Apologies to Leo

Leo is our neutered tom cat and he is more like a combination of something out of the Wizard of Oz and Jonesy in Dad’s Army – don’t panic, don’t panic. He is the lion who needs a dose of bravery and even the vet in Johannesburg called him a Dorothy. Big and little things alike seriously faze him out and he exudes a lack of confidence which merely works against him. Even the guinea fowl have sensed this and there have been terrible scenes in which Leo comes flying in through the kitchen window, eyes wide and tail bushed out with half a dozen noisy spotted birds in hot pursuit. They seem to chase him just for the shear amusement of watching the reaction.
Like the time when we got him and his mother out of six-months worth of quarantine and brought them back to farm. Leo took one look at Labrador Oscar and decided the dog was going eat him. The cat disappeared up the chimney. We coaxed him out but he was still not having any of the dog and I never thought it possible that a cat could spend a whole week living on top of the fridge. But then amazingly he suddenly decided that he was not a ready Lab meal and Leo came down to resume a relatively normal live at the farm. But the operative word is relative.
The thing is Leo also has a very odd relationship with food. He actually doesn’t know what it is. Put any range of tasty morsels in front of him and he merely sits there looking vaguely offended and confused. He only eats dry cat pellets. But he does this with alacrity at least twenty times a day and purring loudly in the process. This of course means that the bowl has to be constantly replenished and if for whatever reason we forget to do this – immediately – twenty times a day – Leo will witter and perform, dashing and darting under our feet in a manner guaranteed to cause a frightful accident and someone to nearly break their neck.
It was recently during his many visits to his peanut bowl at two in the morning that I noticed he had started talking to his food. “That cat seriously needs counselling”, I remember thinking but being snugly tucked up in bed, I didn’t go and investigate. Until three night ago. Being restless, I decided to present myself at his side and what a bloody shock. There was Leo sitting in front of his bowl which had been invaded by giant slugs. These things were so huge I could actually hear them crunching and scrapping at the cat’s peanuts. And not only were they in his bowl, there was a whole load of them having a party on the work surface. No one will believe me or the cat, I decided. So I went to fetch a camera.


After preserving them digitally, I then had this great idea. I recall reading that one fool proof way of catching garden snails is to leave out a bowl of beer. The story goes that they find the smell of lager irresistible and climb in only to drown – very happily. So there I am in the early hours of the morning, in my bare feet, pouring the giant slugs a Bittberger and wondering if they would prefer an Amstel.
We do say that at Scotland Farm the inmates run the asylum but I formally offer Leo an apology. He is not barking mad talking to his food. He was telling these revolting pushy things to sod off out of his beloved cat peanuts.
The beer lark failed miserably so the next night I exacted my revenge and went into the utility room armed with the salt sellar. No more slugs. Odd though, Leo still talks to his food….

Life According to Pinto Bean

I have often read accounts of how the sheer will to live has resulted in people and animals surviving extreme and appalling conditions and the stubborn refusal to die was cited as a primary reason why survival was the only outcome. Conversely, although less documented because it doesn’t make a heart-warming story, when there is no will to live, death follows pretty quickly.
In lambing, I have now seen both. We knew that we would be subject toxoplasmosis which results in abortion or deformities. The only laboratory in the UK failed to successfully make the vaccine that we needed so we braced ourselves.
A pattern swiftly emerged mainly among the ewes expecting twins. The first lamb was born weak and very small. The second followed shortly afterwards, either dead or unviable, usually not lasting the first 8 hours. These lambs had that look in their eyes which said I don’t want to live. No amount of warm colostrum tubed into their little tummies, infrared lamps to keep their body temperatures up, antibiotic injections to fight infection or indeed attentive and caring mothers pawing at them to encourage them to stand up and suckle could reverse the path these creatures where on. And there were seven of them, hell bent on leaving this life. I reconciled myself that I had done what I could and my intervention was not going change things. The exception was little Pinto Bean as she has been named.
She was so tiny at birth she would not have been able to reach up to suckle even if she had been born with the strength to do so. And she just reminded me of a little bean. Her first 12 hours where horrible and any other personality would have decided that life was literally not worth living. But not Pinto – she was hell bent on surviving, she defied all odds. She was a definitely a toxo baby, her twin sister didn’t survive the night. Then Pinto’s mother decided to reject her and not only to turn her back but to trample on her and head butt her across the pen. Each time this happened, little Pinto would meekly struggle to her feet as best she could, bleating piteously before apologetically trying to approach her mother only to be sent flying across the pen. I allowed this to happen only twice before I whisked her away, wrapped her in a towel and settled down to watch TV with her in my lap. If she going to die, I thought let her at least know the comfort of a surrogate mother for a couple of hours, holding and accepting her. After about half an hour, I felt her stop shivering and she tentatively began sucking my finger. The antibiotics were clearly working and I managed to get 100ml of warm milk into her. Although she remained desperate for a mother - she tried to suckle the Labrador and the Collie and I even caught her eyeing the cats and hens, Pinto was on the mend. Her second trauma was when I tried to get another ewe to adopt her. We had a healthy single born and after donning gloves, I collected the birth fluid and rubbed all over Pinto before offering her to the new mum. The ewe wasn’t having any of this and Pinto got head butted across a pen again. Again I scooped her out and this time used a towel not to keep her warm but to wash off all the slime before taking back into the house to watch some more TV.

Pinto is now a month old. She has just clocked in at 10kgs and is an authority on international developments as reported by the BBC.
I am definitely her mother and I still give her a bottle twice a day but she has been integrated into the flock since I really want her to know that she is a sheep. At meal times I take her bottle into the field. As I call, she answers loudly and comes bouncing up to me before butting my knees in search of the teat. She then drains her bottle without pausing, her eyes closing in delight. Odd that I can differentiate her call from all the other lambs. The other night as I took my leave of her, I said “Bbbbyee Pinto”. Mom, you are spending too much time with the sheep, said Cameron.

The Flesh House

No matter how many books you might read about a topic, nothing can ever prepare you for hands on experience. I learnt this when I produced my son. I had a refresher course in this lesson with our lambing. The books are all full of neat diagrams of malpresentations and prolapsed uteruses. They show you how to tube a lamb to ensure that initially the colostrum and then the milk reach the lambs’ stomachs and did not go down their air passages. They show pictures of all kind of horrible things that go wrong with lambs – watery mouth, scouring, joint disease and so on. But they gloss over what to me was possibly the most challenging. None of the books tell you what to do with a dead lamb. They all say just dispose of it. Err right, I know I have to dispose of it, but how? And we had seven of these situations.
As ever, our dear neighbours came to the rescue. They showed me where dead lambs need to go and all dead farm animals for that matter. Thus this blog is dedicated to those kind wonderful people at the Hunt who do a job most foul and are still kind, considerate and caring.
You have to put the dead lamb in a black bag and the sooner you get it to the Hunt the better for obvious reasons, especially when we lambed late and the weather had already warmed up considerably. Leave a dead lamb in its bag for a couple of days and you will know all about it. The drive to the Hunt is a classic countryside meander through pretty villages along leafy B-roads. Nothing untoward except just before the left hand turn into the Hunt driveway, I pull over. I apply a finger-full of Vicks Vapour Rub to my top lip and inhale deeply, allowing the pungent smell of camphor to clog my senses. The courtyard is nothing out of the ordinary, until you get out of the car and the smell hits you, even over the camphor sludge just under your nose. I once read an article written by someone who worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War. His job was to clean up and he said: “If the world’s decision makers could experience that smell of death, there would be no more wars.” It is an indescribable smell but so cloying , it gets into your clothes, your hair, so that long after your escape, you can still smell it.
Now, once in the courtyard and having met the smell, you then still have to dispose of your black bag. Invariably there is no one around who might help – they are busy sorting out untold ghastly things so you have to deal with this one your own – which means opening the door of the flesh house. This is the room where everything is brought and you have to be brave to open that door. I watch shoppers in the meat section of Waitrose and its hits home just how these people have no idea about how meat gets onto those fridge shelves and what can go wrong in the process. Yes, they will say, we all know about abattoirs – its all very quick and efficient. I agree but at least the smell there is fresh and the flesh is healthy. But what about that sheep that keels over in the fields and lies there for a few days before the farmer locates it and brings it to the Hunt for disposal? Nothing quick and efficient about that except for the rigor mortis and the maggots. So I brace myself and I open the door. I place my black bag on the floor close to my feet and try not to look around the room, try not to inhale. The scene caught in my peripheral vision defies description. I focus on the black bag, say goodbye to a lamb who didn’t make and then I back the hell out of there, ensuring that the door is properly latched closed.
I drive away more affected than I care to acknowledge, back to the farm and look forward to seeing the healthy lambs bouncing around the fields, confirmation of the circle of life. The smell follows me. Later I cook supper and find I cannot face what I usually eat - a toasted cheese sandwich does just fine.

Quietly Saying No

Three ewes left to lamb and the ladies have been magnificent. Done it all themselves even to the extent that they have cleaned up afterwards. Only two, interestingly from the same blood line and same father deserted their lambs. It was like they didnt realise that this was a) something alive that needed assistance and b) was their flesh and blood. So we have (so far) two pet lambs called Pinto and Bortelini. Now Southdown lambs are not the prettiest of young - British understatement, they are bloody ugly with their Dennis Healey eyebrows and hairy knees but they are very appealing. So the two little motherless beans have to get fed from a bottle and I am now making up lamb formula milk by the bucket full because by gum these little things can eat. In making up their feed, I have to measure the dried milk powder out accurately and mix it with the correct amount of water. If not, we run the risk of seriously upsetting their lamb stomachs and this is not ground I wish to cover.

So every day I have to measure 100gr of milk powder for every 500ml of water. Now I have a great set of electronic kitchen scales. But they do need silver iodide batteries which I bought off the internet since this struck me as the most painless way to do it. The batteries arrived and it said on the packet "Made in China". My heart sank because it is my experience that things with this wording stamped on the packet tends to be unreliable, throw away rubbish.

Well, I forced my cynical unkind thoughts out my mind and embarked on my milk powder weighing career. Sure enough after day 3 the scales began to play up - the electronic read out flashing randon numbers and clearly not weighing properly. I sucked my teeth because this was a product that until coupled with suspect batteries has for years behaved in an exemplary fashion. A change of batteries (from the same pack) brought some but not lasting improvement.

I was suddenly reminded of that horrific human baby milk case in China where the manufacturers caused the death and serious illness of scores of babies by augmenting the milk powder with heavens knows what. I froze mid task and grabbed the bag of milk powder dreading that I was going to be faced with the same "Made in China" curse and the thought that maybe my lambs were going to suffer the same fate. To my relief, the lamb milk is manufactured in good old Yorkshire so all I had to worry about was the correct weighing.

But it got me thinking. I have not counted accurately but I reckon in any particular day or shopping expedition every second or third item I see on the shelf has been made in China and imported at great cost to our balance of payments. And all too often the product is total rubbish. Well, without becoming militant or fanatical about it, I have decided in my own quiet way that in future I am just going to say no. I am going to read each and every label and if it says "Made in China", I am going to put it back on the shelf. Further if I cannot find a product that is made elsewhere, I will just jolly well do without.

Perhaps if enough like-minded people begin doing the same, then the owners of the big famous brands who have outsourced their manufacturing to $1/day labour in China might begin to appreciate how they themselves are undermining the value and reputation of their brands.

In the meanwhile, I can hear Pinto Bean bleating for her Yorkshire milk. I will not keep her waiting.