You know the day doesn't look good when the cat chooses to barf its breakfast into your computer keyboard. Not only does it look revolting, it's very hard to get the little bits of the crunch out from between the keys, and as for the remnants of rabbit flavoured jelly chunks, well, the least said the better. Try having a serene working day after that.

I did have a friend who, some years ago, took her typewriter to be repaired and was outraged when told it would take a week. The rather sniffy typewriter engineer informed her that they would need to 'diagnose the problem' before repair could even be attempted. To which she replied that the problem didn't need diagnosing because she knew exactly what was wrong, and that was that her cat had been sick into it that morning. Who knows what the superior engineer thought of that. But she did get it back in 24 hours.

I often wonder if the animals plan these things ahead. I mean, why would the old boy jump up on the computer chair if he didn't have some plan in store? It could have just gone outside, or got back into the nice warm cat bed by the radiator. But no, it chose to leap up on to a swivel chair - and whoosh. It's an inbuilt SNAFU designer.

I've noticed lately that every afternoon the old ginger boy makes his way upstairs and into the spare room, where he has managed to learn how to open the sliding door to the under-bed storage. Now known as the under-bed cat bed. How does he know it's afternoon? Even though the clocks have gone back he still goes at the same clock time, but in theory he should go an hour earlier, shouldn't he? Has he also learned how to tell the time from the clock? As he's not the Einstein of the cat world, it's unlikely.

Maybe he takes his cue from us. When we've had lunch, or to his eyes the second feeding of our day ( but about the fourth of his - ever partial to a snack), does he know that now is the time to head for his private hidey hole shut eye? We always know where he is anyway, by sticking our heads round the door and listening for the tell-tale snores, in case we ever think he has gone on the missing list.

Is a bad day for cats when we open the wrong packet/tin/box without thinking? Are they just fancying chicken, and then we give them rabbit, or tuna, or salmon, or another of the wide selection of taste treats that we lug back from the supermarket? Mind you, with our Big Girl - she just stares at the crunchy food box on the shelf, or towards the cupboard if she wants a tin or packet, so we do have a hint as to her preference of the moment. The old boy just hoovers the lot up and then returns it to a place on the carpet that's hardest to clean - like the fringe of a rug. Hard love, but we do tend to remember not to give him that again.

Still, I suppose that is our lot when we chose to allow ourselves to be the house mates (well, lodgers more like) of a couple of furry tyrants. And our fault because we like it.

(c) Thelma Mitchell 11/2004