THE buck has been doing a lot of stopping this week. On Tuesday, the Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson said that the buck for the mess over police funding stopped on the desk of minister Mike Penning, and on Wednesday rugby coach Stuart Lancaster realised that the buck for England's poor performances in the World Cup stopped with him and so he resigned.

I was going to ask a reporter to find out more about this poor buck – a male deer, goat or rabbit – but that would have been passing the buck, so I did it myself.

It's an Americanism, from the days when poker was played by frontiersmen. A marker was passed around the players, indicating whose turn it was to deal. Because frontiersmen were rough, tough types, the marker was usually a knife, its handle made from buck-horn. Hence, as the buck was passed so was the responsibility for dealing.

The Oxford English Dictionary records that the phrase first officially entered the language in 1912, although most of us would never have heard of it were it not for US President Harry S Truman. He had a sign on his desk in the White House saying “The buck stops here”.

In his farewell speech in January 1953, he explained: "The President – whoever he is – has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.”

I’VE had a really kind response to last week’s column about the stray ginger cat that has been cynically lovebombing my wife in the hope of wheedling its way into her affections – and into our warm house.

I am hideously allergic to such horrible fluffy things, and we had compromised, keeping Roger the rooster and his harem of two hens – Flora and Nora – as pets at the bottom of the garden. But now Morris the cat has appeared and both Roger and I find ourselves in the henhouse, if not the doghouse.

Since last week, Morris and my wife have become increasingly inseparable. They sit and play together in the wooden-floored dining room – the only room Morris is allowed in – and I caught them sweeping up the leaves together. Her friends have been calling round specifically so she can show off her new conquest.

Roger, who has recovered from his dose of bird flu after having £56 of dog antibiotics syringed down his beak, is not too pleased with this turn of events. In truth, he’s rarely pleased with anything and is always venting his displeasure with an angry stream of clucking invective. Now he no longer rules the roost, and he stands at the closed back door, peering furiously in at the cat rolling carelessly around in front of the radiator.

Whenever Roger sees his chance, he sneaks his harem in through the door to raid the cat’s bowl, and makes outraged noises about the luxury of the food he finds in it. I hope it’s not chicken.

The love-in took a surprise twist when Morris was whisked off to have his ginger pom-poms removed – the vet apparently remarked on how well endowed he was – to prevent him from spraying his territory. Morris seems not to have minded this indignity. In fact, he is such a calculating cat that I'm sure he drew up a list before lovebombing my wife: for – radiator and food; against – lose testicles. He decided it was worth it.

And he returned home from surgery with a present, which made Roger angrier still. It was a "catnip cockerel".