Together ROH & MOL commissioned Monty Python’s Terry Jones and composer Anne Dudley (musical director of the forthcoming film of “Les Miserables” starring Russell Crowe) to write an opera based on Edward lear’s whimsical limerick, “The Owl & The Pussy Cat”. The result is being performed on a boat passing along London’s canals, with forthcoming performances at Graham Street Gardens on Sunday July 29th 2012 and Mile End Park on Tuesday July 31st, free to all-comers.

You can listen to the podcast or read all about the venture by following the links below, but what caught our ear was mention of an extraordinary piece of film on YouTube featuring… an owl and a pussycat. To quote The Guardian newspaper, Jones says he was inspired by the online film depricting the chummy real-life antics of a cat called Fum and a barn owl called Gebra. “The owl flies over the cat dangling a mouse and the cat tries to grab it. Then there are shots of the cat rubbing up against the owl and being pecked.”

Click above to view the clip… though we’re not convinced it’s a mouse being dangled by the owl but rather, its jesses. And we’re in two minds about some of the contents of the clip itself too, though the relationship between the cat and the owl is something quite unusual to behold so is worth a look.