Our cats are getting older, and, like us, as they age the range of things that they think is out to get them has broadened. Our old ginger boy, whose age in cat terms is almost equivalent to my own, now has a touch of arthritis around the back legs (ditto myself). Where he once leapt in a bound up on to the likes of the settee and the spare bed, he now scales them like a geriatric rock climber, using holds memorised over the years. I don't quite have this problem, but admit that now I can't get up off the settee with the lithe grace that I once showed. Or sometimes even in one straight movement. The black and white girlie ( who is now so fat she looks like a puddle at rest) was always a very nervous cat. When she first moved in with us (unable to bear the young children where she was previously living) she was terrified of any plastic bags. At the sound of a crinkle - she was gone. We reckoned she must have been trapped in one sometime. It took quite a while before she would even stay in the house when shopping was being unwrapped. Now she can do that, but you can see she has to steel herself to stay put. On the other hand, the ginger boy thought nothing was more fun than to hide in a plastic shopping bag and be dragged across the floor. You could tell from his face he thought it an absolute hoot. We used to have to be careful at Christmas or sweeping up garden leaves that we didn't sweep him as well. She thinks that playing with the stream of the garden hose is the most fun ever. She will jump over it, she will sit on the hose, and remain soundly dozing as you water right round her. If a drop should land on her, she will slowly rouse herself, give a delicate shake of a paw, and move regally away. At the sound of the hose being unrolled - Ginger boy is away through the hedge like a bullet from a gun. As far as I know he has never been sprayed, not by me anyway, yet he thinks it is out to do him no good. Of course, it might just be an average male aversion to water. Every Friday the dustmen arrive and the beeping as they reverse up the road is the signal for Girlie to rush through the cat flap and disappear to some secret hideaway down the garden. Ginger boy just turns over in his sleep. I keep telling her that the dustmen have never, ever, harmed her in any way so she needn't run - but she just gives me an old-fashioned look that says that of course they haven't harmed her because she runs every time she hears them. Hard to argue either way really. The latest phobia that the old chap has developed involves the dark at the top of the stairs. He considers our spare bedroom to be his spare bedroom and snoozes there most afternoons. However, sometimes She will lay in wait on the landing and, as his head comes into view as he climbs the stairs, delights in landing a surprise 'POW!' on his poor old noddle. In earlier times he could take evasive action, or whack back, but now the shock tends to knock him for six. So, now, he has taken to standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up, and yowling. We don't know if it is an -"I know you're there and I'm ready for you" call, or a - "Please don't whack me" yowl. Whatever it is, we now have to go up the stairs ahead of him and put the landing light on, at which point he will start the laborious climb 'up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire'. All these are excluding the usual chores of having to stand shotgun over the feed plates in case Sparky shoots through the cat flap and yells " BOOO!", and moving the new curly fluorescent hose aside because after 3 weeks it stills evokes a "Lawks a-mercy" sideways jump from the Moving Puddle. I suppose as we all get older the list of things that have given us the jitters expands as our ability to evade them gets less. When we can't run as fast away from , react as fast, or even see as clearly what scares us - well, then we all need someone to turn on the light on the landing for us. I just wish our cats would learn to catch huge spiders on demand just to make it a bit fairer. (c) Thelma Mitchell 1995, 2002