One of the memories I have of O level English literature is that of Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell telling us that “to lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune but to lose both looks like carelessness”. I wondered recently if the same allegation of carelessness could be applied to us after our two family cats expired within days of each other. Which they did despite us shelling out on a series of vet's bills that approached the weekly wage of a premiership football player. That they died was not too much of a surprise as they were approaching 20 years old and hadn’t been the cute, cuddly energetic felines they once were for some time. What surprises me the most was just how much I miss them, despite my previous belief that I didn’t like them at all.

I was keen at first when nearly two decades ago as a newly married couple we agreed to consider giving a home to one of the litter of kittens that a student of my wife’s found at the bottom of her garden. When we arrived for a viewing to help our considerations we found six endearing tiny things sleeping in a large box which did the business that only cute fluffy things can do which turned 'consider' into 'must have' and 'one cat' into 'two cats'. While choosing I watched one of them, still only a few weeks old unsteadily walk across the box to do her business in the litter tray and I thought that she would be one of the cats for us. But alas that initial visit to the litter was the only one she managed for some months. In fact for the first few weeks of her life with us she couldn’t grasp the concept of weeing on anything other than her own tail which soon went from a brilliant white to a very smelly yellow and since Hoover have yet to invent the electric cat washer we spent many romantic evenings cat bum washing as she sunk her claws into our extremities as cat and newly weds battled over the kitchen sink. It was just the initial battle in the war to take complete control over our lives which she together with her sister soon won. Their tactics of government were to terrorise our minds into grateful submission. Many nights they would hide indoors in places we have never discovered and turn up pawing at our door in the thick of night inducing a weary walk to the kitchen to shut them up. Prior to this they would be sick on the landing carpet, depositing their vomit in a place so well chosen that it was impossible to walk bleary eyed to the bathroom in the morning whilst avoiding a damp underfoot feeling that banished all memories of the cute wide eyed kittens that once occupied our living  room. We still called it the living room whereas the cats referred to it as the room of death to which they brought assorted dead creatures on a daily basis which they would deposit at our feet expecting some sort of reward and look puzzled when we shouted at them and threw their trophy in the bin. Worse than the dead creatures were the live ones which included next door’s fish, numerous frogs and toads, bats and small birds that would end up limping, hopping or flying around the room pursued by hysterical humans while the cute felines looked on satisfied that they had created such a lovely game for us all. The novelty soon wore off.

And they left their mark in other ways too. Even when they got too old to terrorise the local wildlife they would deliberately follow the vacuum cleaner around and pollute the newly cleaned carpet with replacement large clumps of white hair that they could deposit at a faster rate than the best technology of Dyson or Hoover could remove.

And then they got old and the vets bills added up as various minor ailments were sorted out we wondered how long it would be before the traces of long white hair would be banished from our hall carpet. It seemed such a bright future for us and our overworked vacuum.

In fact they lasted longer than we thought until one of them made that last lone trip to the vet a few weeks ago and the character of the house completely changed. Her sister just sat in the hall and meowed at us as we walked past pleading with us to go and get her which of course we couldn't. She refused to eat and drink and despite our best efforts went the same way as her sister within a week and we became a cat free family once again. I have said that it is probably the vacuum cleaner that misses them the most now that we don’t need to get it out every day and clean up their feline remains but the truth is that the house just isn't the same. I’ve forgiven the vomit and half eaten frogs and I miss the nagging meows when I arrive home from work, the warmth of a purring cat on my lap while sitting alone in a house devoid of the rest of its humans and the conversations we would have when I moaned about the world and they sat their expressionless without making comment. I’d forgotten just how much they had become part of the family. They were there when we were first married, seemed almost as pleased as us when the crying bundles of skin and bone made it home from the maternity ward and sat on our laps and purred comfort in the darker times. The kids seem almost relieved that now the cats have gone they can have the hamsters they say they've always wanted which I guess will not leave clumps of hair on the carpet, bring in dead things from next door and show such persistence that I will feed them before I do anything else after getting up in the morning. But I doubt if those beady eyed rodents will replace the cats and their annoying yet somehow endearing qualities. I'm almost thinking of getting another one.  Or maybe two.

 Tony.