Cat flap or Scilly Isles? Silly question

Romeo, as a pre-teen cat in Maryland

There's turf torn up in my back garden; the consensus is that a badger did it. I quite like badgers, with their striped heads and pudgy brown bodies. I have thought of them, since we moved to England, as sort of like distant cousins of the raccoon, one of my favorite woodland creatures in the U.S.

Not anymore. This morning, the carpenter arrived to install our cat flap. This being an English house of brand-new construction, it isn't three-foot-thick stone walls holding up the roof, but it is four-inches of concrete, then about six inches of air space/insulation, then framing and board and hand-applied plaster.

Not anymore. At least not right next to the french doors leading from our living room to the deck, from which we can see a great deal of the Tamar Valley (thought not the river itself, hidden by rolling hills), the edge of Dartmoor and Brentor, where a 12th century church (St. Michael de Rupe) perches right at the peak. There is now a hole in the walls through which our cat, if he desires, can exit to have a look at the Tamar Valley and Brentor. I don't think he'd be interested in the church, being, like all cats, something of a heathen.

Badgers: There's a reason they're called badgers
But there is the badger problem. The carpenter told us badgers are nowhere near as cute as they look. They'll attack cats and dogs. Oh my. Mr. Cat--real name Romeo--is a lover, not a fighter. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe our wussycat will dash in his cat flap rather than confront a much larger fellow with fangs and racing stripes up the side of his head. Mr. Cat, having been an indoor/outdoor cat for most of his life in rural Maryland, has been an indoor cat now for about 15 months. When we lived in the flat in Tavistock, he could have gone easily out a picture window to the car park, and thence over a wall to other folk's gardens. But if he got around front, he'd have been at the mercy of cars at the top of West Street, where they flew by hoping to get a good space to park before anyone else did. Especially on Friday nights when the young people were eager to bend their elbows at a few popular music pubs. So we never let him out and he got used to it.

But since we moved into the house, he can more easily smell the fresh air. And he hears the birds chirping in the hedgerow that forms the western boundary of the garden. He'd quite like to taste an English robin, I think. When I went out to water some new plants not yet assigned a permanent place in the garden (and awaiting a sunny day for planting for my benefit), Romeo stood up on the french doors and piteously yowled. I know he wants to go out. Badly. By afternoon today, he should be able to. The wonderful carpenter is making a nice little vestibule for the cat in the wall behind the cat flap, with carpet on the bottom. I shouldn't wonder if Romeo asks for a lamp in it sometime. We've already discussed having the carpenter create a little awning, about 18 inches above the deck, over the cat flap so Romeo can sit out there and watch the rain. He loved to sit in the bark mulch behind the plants under our very wide eaves in Maryland and watch the rain. But this is a three-storey house, and the eaves are too high up to protect him.

What we do for love
Yes, it is nuts. We could have had a nice trip to the Scilly Isles for what this cat flap is costing. But this is England, where people are barmy over their pets. Do we need to pretend to be sane Americans about this? Do we need to soft-pedal our devotion to our domestic critters?

Not anymore.