Siblings

My Beelzebub is a proper witch's black cat. Wide-eyed and lithe, she is my familiar straight from central casting. And she adores her mother: she is a one-woman cat. Strangers come to the door and she hides until they have gone. I come to the door and she purrs. She wakes me in the morning by putting her face close to mine and 'singing' - for all the world as if she is humming and purring at the same time. This morning, I glimpsed her shadow behind the curtain in the spare room as I left for work. "Goodbye," I said, "I'll see you tonight." She came out, yowling her response. She is a very vocal cat.

She refuses to be put in a cat carrier. When we moved house for the first time, I tried to put her into a large cardboard box. She repeatedly punched her way out. Then I nearly lost her up the chimney. Eventually, I was able to get her into a hessian sack and carry her on my knee in the car, talking to her all the time. On arrival at her new abode, she hid for a day and would only eat Yeo Valley yoghurt.

The contrast with her black and white brother Wombat is immense. They have had the same life experiences but they are very different characters. Whereas she is finely-built, he is a chunky man in the Bagpuss mould. Where she is shy, he is confident and gregarious. Where she is vocal, he meows rarely and has a deep, low, reassuring purr.

They both sleep on my bed at night; B at my feet and Wom curled in beside me. I used to wonder how it was possible to have more than one pet and not have a favourite. Now I know: they are very different but I adore them equally.

Twitchers

My pair are neither entirely house cats nor are they outdoor cats. Like an over-solicitous mother, I do not allow them to wander, but I do allow them to play in the garden.

My current home has a wonderful garden for cats. As well as clumps of long grass that I have missed with the mower, there are bushes to hide beneath, fences to climb upon and trees to bird watch. They are very good twitchers but that’s as far as it goes. Birds fascinate them but they simply cannot work out how to catch them.

It’s probably my fault; they do come from a long line of streetwise farm cats so it’s not their breeding that’s to blame. When they were kittens, we lived in a house with a garden that didn’t have the same bird watching and stalking opportunities. Moreover, there was a busy road near a school which is why they have never been allowed to wander the streets alone. After that, we lived in a flat devoid of a garden for a few months. Then, their sport consisted of watching a family of swallows that slept on the telephone wire and becoming over excited about two young pigeons that set up camp for a while on the windowsill.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about their lack of bird catching skills. They know how to stalk, how to hide in the undergrowth and how to shimmy between the blackcurrant bushes next door. I think they’d be able to manage a mouse if they found one, but creatures with wings elude them. It must be very frustrating being a cat.

Cat in the sink

Sometimes I think I have a Dr Dolittle-esque rapport with my animals. The Grey Mare communicates through body language and subtle nuances; my two cats are more vocal. I chat away to them all and am convinced they understand every word I say.

It would be fair to say that the cats understand me better than I sometimes understand them. Their obsession with the bathroom sink is a key area of confusion. Even if I have just filled their water dish, they will turn their back on it in preference for water straight out of the tap. They are such connoisseurs of what they drink, I reckon they’d be feline versions of Jilly Goolden if they could work the corkscrew.

However, their interest in the sink goes beyond drinking out of the tap. Wombat, my black and white man cat, is especially keen. If no water is forthcoming, he will settle into the sink and curl up in utter bliss. He has the choice of armchairs, a sofa and my bed as snooze spots (all of which he does utilise), but time and time again, he returns to the sink.

I think being contrary is a key component of being a cat.

Doe, a deer ...

I love to sing. I sing to my cats, I sing to my horse, I sing in the car. However, I don’t sing in front of other people.

Like most teenagers, I harboured the odd fantasy of being a rock star. I was even in a very short-lived punk band when I was 14. We wrote our own songs and used an old acoustic guitar as the bass. I was the singer; however, when you’re trying to sound like Johnny Rotten, you don’t need to be tuneful.

I thought that all I needed was a producer. I went out with one for a while; he used to wince and tell me it hurt when I sang, so I stopped singing. One radio station I worked at had regular sessions with a voice coach to improve our news reading. “It’s all about breathing from your diaphragm,” she said, as she made us read The Big Friendly Giant aloud, then lie on our backs and go “ohhhhmmmmm”. Once, I confessed to her that I wanted to sing. “Everyone can sing, darling,” she assured me.

When I am in the car, it’s: “Hello, Wembley!” I am currently radio-less and I have a long commute, so M&M’s greatest hits are bellowed out unaccompanied. At the moment, I have a penchant for The Levellers’ One Way, but Simon and Garfunkel, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground and my very, very favourite, The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, all receive the treatment.

But just as I hate people eavesdropping on my private conversations with the grey mare (the ones where I’m telling her she’s the most bee-ooo-itful horse in the world), I’d be mortified if anyone caught me singing unawares.

Rise and shine

Weekends and holiday are, for me, a time to have a lie in. As I get out of bed at 6.30am during the week, I think this is perfectly justified.

My dad rises at silly o’clock in the morning every day of the year to walk Labradors. He continually tries to make me feel guilty about “lying in bed all day”. As long as I manage to surface before midday, I think I’m doing OK; 10am to 10.30am is a good time to get up.

I can’t understand these people who say: “Once I’m awake, that’s it, I have to get up.” I don’t; I can roll over repeatedly and close my eyes and my ears against the cats as they try to persuade me out of bed with purrs and prods with their paws. It is very rare that they’re badgering me because they’re hungry; nine times out of ten, they have food in their bowls. They are, I think, just being awkward. “We’re awake so you should be too,” appears to be the message. Unlike them, though, I don’t spend the rest of the day lolling around and preening.

A couple of friends have been riding along the beach at 7am this weekend to avoid the traffic and the tourists. I would’ve loved to have gone too, but I just couldn’t drag myself out from under the duvet. However, I don’t have a choice about tomorrow’s early start: I have been press-ganged into moonlighting for the day.

Not for me, thanks

I am a Cancerian – supposedly the most maternal sign of the zodiac. I like the idea of astrology and agree that some of the traits do fit my vision of me: moody and emotional, a hard shell with a soft centre, a home lover. However, the maternal one leaves me cold.

I am not a mother and I have never wanted children. Perhaps that’s a white lie: when I was small I had a vague idea I would have a mini-me when I grew up – a small blonde-haired daughter who would adore me. But that wasn’t a phase that lasted long: I was a tomboy with no time for dolls.

Many of my friends have children. I am the godmother to one of them. When my friend told me that it meant if anything happened to her, I would have to take over the child, I blanched and almost backed out. Lucky, she is fit and well and the child will soon be old enough to stand on its own two feet.

My mother thinks I’m selfish for not wanting children. She says: “Who will look after you when you’re old?” I tell her I’ll look after myself, thank you, and it would be selfish to have a child simply to act as a carer. Knowing my luck, it would probably cart me off to a granny farm as soon as I started to dribble.

I am actually a lot better at relating to children than I used to be. In fact, I can deal very well with them by the time they reach nine or ten and can hold a conversation. However, I cannot cope with the screaming, tantruming, sick and smelly side of things.

I probably don’t have long to change my mind (which people always tell me I will), and the ticking clock is conspicuous by its absence. I shall stick to my cats and my horse, I think.

Guard duty, by Beelzebub aged three-and-three-quarters

The mother returned very early today from wherever it is that she goes all day.

“I’ve been sick,” she said. I didn’t know the mother suffered from fur balls too.

I sat on her knee and sang for a while, but it didn’t seem to do much good because she went to bed. “I think I’ve got a bug,” she said.

My brother Wombat and I ran around the house, ensuring there was nowhere for the bugs to get in. Wombat is fantastic at catching bugs – you should see him swipe a bluebottle out of the air.

I did my bit by making sure there were none on the dressing table. I didn’t actually mean to knock the vase over, but there are always casualties in a combat situation.

Once we had double-checked the house was bug-proof, we thought we’d better guard her while she slept. It’s just a coincidence that lying on the bed is also the purrfect place to bask in the afternoon sunshine.

Spinstering along ...

I am rejected and dejected. My ‘emergency husband’ has gone and got himself affianced to someone else.

OK, so we hadn’t been in touch for a while, but we had an agreement. He promised he’d marry me if I reached 40 and was still a spinster. I’m not there yet, but a girl has to think about her options at this stage in the game.

I emailed him and railed against him for reneging on his vow. “Anyway, why are you still a spinster?” he replied. “You’re lovely.” That’s easy enough for you to say, I thought. You're not going to marry me.

At the weekend, one of the wee girls at the stables asked me if I had a husband. “No,” I said, “it’s just me, the cats and the horse.”

“And do your cats love you like your horse does?” she pressed.

“I think so,” I replied.

That’s something, isn’t it?

Haunted house

My cats are so much happier since we moved house. They’ve always been a purry pair, but now you can’t shut them up. They seem very pleased with themselves - quite literally the cats that got the cream - and I don’t think it’s just because they have a garden to romp in again.

The reasons why I didn’t like the flat were multitude; I didn’t want to move in the first place but had no choice in the matter as the rug was pulled from under me when the landlord announced he was selling up. I arrived at the new place with the wrong attitude and was wont to sit on the kitchen floor and weep. But in addition to feeling resentful, there were genuine niggles.

It seemed sometimes the very fabric of the place was conspiring against me: the bath was too short and the water wasn’t hot enough; it was also impossible to persuade the shower to reach a reasonable temperature, while the water from the kitchen tap trickled and tasted odd. I didn’t like the darkness of the yard at night and I became incandescent with rage when people parked over the opening, so I couldn’t get in or out. Then there were the fleas. Then there was the flood. Oh, and then there was the ghost …

I first became aware that we were not alone in the dimness of a mid-autumn morning, when the world and I were still half asleep in the pre-dawn twilight. I stumbled out of bed and along the narrow corridor to the kitchen to feed the mewling cats. They had been shouting as if they were starving but then, as one, they lifted their heads from their breakfast and stared intently along the corridor at something I couldn’t see. This happened on a number of occasions. More than once, my little black cat, who doesn’t like anyone but me, also ran to hide from someone at the door. Only there was no-one at the door.

After a while, I mentioned it to my sister. Her friend, who’d known the people there before me, had dropped hints about crashes in locked rooms and dancing candles. “Don’t you want to know what it is?” she asked me. “Not really,” I said, “it was there first and it can stay as long as it doesn’t bother me.” But I wished I didn’t having the feeling that there was someone peering around the bedroom door when I put the light out at night.

Last week, my mum was talking to someone whose daughter had lived there years ago. “I didn’t like being there by myself,” she said, “Because I always thought there was something along the corridor.”

“Funny you should say that …” said my mum.

The cats' paranoid mother

The face at the window was Sylvester the Cat made flesh and fur, only with more plaintive eyes. I first saw him when I was moving things into the bungalow a couple of months ago. He sneaked through the open door when I was carrying boxes in from the car. “Nice cat," I thought and mentioned him to a friend who lives around the corner. “No he’s not,” she said. “He goes around beating all the other cats up.”

My two – the boy is a big black and white fella more of the Felix variety and his sister is sleek and black – are mainly house cats. In the flat where we spent an unpleasant few months before moving here, they didn’t get to go out at all. Now they play in the garden under supervision. I am a paranoid cat mother who doesn’t let them go on the wander.

I’m even more paranoid since this Sylvester character and his alleged thuggish tendencies appeared on the scene. He keeps popping up on the bedroom windowsill at night, and this morning, he was gazing into the living room. My two are fascinated by him and the feeling appears to be mutual.

I wonder if he wants to play – or whether he’s teasing them because he’s outside and they’re not? Perhaps he’s saying: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”

I think not. My cats’ ears are little black silky triangles devoid of battle scars. I’d like them to stay that way.