One of the minor drawbacks of having a new baby is that we've had to suspend membership of the local share-a-cat scheme; under which, regular readers will know, two of the neighbours' cats spend their leisure time round at our place, allowing us to enjoy the pleasures of having pets, without the expense.
I say two cats, which used to be the case until my wife nearly bisected one of them when closing the patio door in a hurry one day. There was no physical damage done, but the unfortunate animal did get a bad shock and, in his panic, cleared our 12-foot back wall with six inches to spare (an Irish record for a cat). He's recovering well from the trauma, I'm glad to say, and on good days now he'll come within 500 yards of the house. Vets say he has a 80 per cent chance of being able to miaow again.
To be honest, it was about time we quit the scheme anyway. The other cat, a female, was spending so much time at our place that we were going to have to get legal advice about who actually owned her. So when the baby arrived, we had a long hard talk with her (the cat, that is) and suggested she go up to London to visit the queen, or words to that effect.
She took it badly, and this is when she started stalking us. Mostly harmless stuff: heavy purring, miaowing late at night, rolling around the roof of the car in a pathetic impression of the piano scene from The Fabulous Baker Boys - that sort of thing. Then, one very wet night recently, I found her peering at me through the frosted glass of the upstairs bathroom and I just had to relent.
I should point out that one of this cat's favourite activities is jumping from the upstairs window sills on to the corrugated plastic roof of our patio. And the sound of her landing on the roof in this manner is a bit like the sound that follows the opening of a gallows trapdoor. If you're not expecting it, and especially if you've just been watching Stephen King Night on TV, this can have a very bad effect on your central nervous system.
Related as they are to the large, dangerous cats of Africa and Asia, the small, domestic, furball types of cat do not get much chance to scare the bejaysus out of humans. I know at some level they hanker after this power - I've seen the way they watch the wildlife programmes - and jumping on to the patio roof is what our particular cat (note to neighbour's solicitor: use of the word "our" does not imply acceptance of ownership) does for kicks.
Anyway, this night I relented and decided I'd let her into the patio. So I went downstairs, opened the back door, counted "one" and braced myself for the sound of her landing on the roof.
But, well, it's an old roof, and the cat had been putting on a bit of weight lately, probably from comfort-eating. And instead of the usual thump and creak of corrugated plastic, there was a crashing sound as she fell straight through, leaving a catshaped hole in the roof, like the ones you sometimes see in Tom And Jerry.
Had this been the male cat, the experience would have spooked him so much he would have jumped at least twice the same distance in reverse, going back out through the hole and clearing the back wall in the same movement. But so laid-back is the female cat, she was purring before she hit the ground, congratulating herself on finding a short cut.
In fact, she didn't hit the ground. She hit the washing machine. Because in choosing a place to knock a hole in the roof, she had brilliantly hit upon the only part of the patio which has an electrical fitting, on to which rain was now falling.
I thought seriously about putting the cat in the washing machine and selecting the fast-spin cycle. But instead, while the cat purred like a Rolls Royce and pattered around rubbing her herself against furniture she hadn't seen for ages, I got out the step ladder and climbed on to a slippery roof in pelting rain to stop the gap.
Now the feline ban is firmly back in place in our house and the cat is as resentful as ever, staring in at us with slanty cat's eyes, thinking cat thoughts along the lines of: What's this baby person got that I haven't, anyway?
And you know, if you did a strict product comparison along the lines of the consumer magazines, you'd be hard put to answer that question. There are similarities between babies and cats: in both cases, you have to rub their backs a lot. They also score about equally under the heading of "ability to destroy new sofa" (although at least the baby doesn't leave hair all over it). But on crucial questions such as "capacity for making rude body noises when being admired by guests" (Cat: [X] Baby: ), and on general control of alimentary functions (Cat: Baby [X][X] [X][X] [X]) the cat does, on paper, look like an attractive option. And yet, household pets are only pale substitutes for the sort of emotional rewards babies provide new parents.
Of course, the baby keeps us awake every night. But then again, it has been hard to sleep lately anyway, what with the cat jumping on the patio roof all the time, trying to find another weak spot.