Back in those halcyon days when the Rabbit ruled our roost, I never realised how many sick and indigent cats fell into our catchment area. Although Coinin was a dwarf breed, he possessed a will of iron, and so he kept all the local moggies at bay.

Tragically, the rest of him was made of flesh and blood, which allowed a fox to make off with him and cleared the way for the walking wounded to begin the pilgrimage to our patio doors.

It is my fault, of course, for encouraging them. But the thing was, I was only trying to encourage two of them, a pair of calendar-cute kittens who peeped over the garden wall while we were still in deepest mourning and the kids were starting to pester for a replacement. (The goldfish, bizarrely, continue to thrive, but their habit of swimming aimlessly around with their own excrement still attached to their bodies has made them unpopular pets. Even I kind of hate them, and I am the only reason they are still alive. ) Whiskers and Tiger, though, seemed a solution . . . feral kittens young enough to be tamed by small hands but wild enough to never want to get their paws on the sofa and their hairs up my allergic nose.

I'd even begun planning holidays: us somewhere gorgeous and implausible and them, I dunno, under the oil tank getting in touch with their wild side all over again.

But it turns out that you can't put food out for two little kittens . . . however appealing . . . without inviting an entourage to dinner as well. The long queues of diners weren't sick in the beginning . . . which raises the spectre of MRSA . . . but probably says more about the frantic nature of the mating season in feral cats. It's dog eat dog, if you'll excuse the expression. We have gone, in a couple of short weeks, from perfectly healthy if horrible cats to knackered, shagged-out moggies with bits missing and, inevitably, a clutch of pregnant females, many of whom are also without their full complement of appendages. One cat who came did so on three legs, with the fourth buckled under him at an unnatural angle.

Another was missing an ear and a third looked as though somebody had briefly spun his back end in an electronic pencil sharpener (is there such a thing? And if not, why not? ) The most alarming of all was a nasty black yoke with fur that stuck out in all the directions bar the correct one. This, though, was hardly her most notable characteristic: she was also down a tail . . .

and by accident rather than design, I'd wager. Anyway, every time she showed up she'd chase the kittens away while spitting viciously at all the foliage in the garden. The little girl down the road told me that this particular cat had killed her dog, which seemed unlikely but a little disturbing. It was only when I chased the foul devil-cat away that I noticed she was profoundly pregnant . . . so much so, that she couldn't scarper up the oil tank to make good her escape.

So, reluctantly, I started feeding her as well (I'm a mother; don't make me apologise), giving the kittens extra portions only after Beelzebub had eaten her fill and . . .get this . . . shit on my lawn in full view of me.

When she disappeared for a few days, I half hoped she wouldn't come back, but she did, thinner and hungrier and clearly with urgent business elsewhere. And because I can't turn away a nursing mother, she's still here, terrorising the kittens and, for that matter, me. Even a well-aimed bucket of water courtesy of the Husband (who never went through childbirth) hasn't deterred her. Meanwhile, the man second next door has acquired a cat trap and is rounding up the strays. I've had to warn him not to take away two calendar-cute kittens who refuse to answer to the names Whiskers and Tiger. Oh, and I've mentioned that if he traps a black monster with no tail, he should probably let her go as well. She'd bite through the bars in any case. I suspect there may be a lot of rueing in the days ahead.

Something fishy going on On the basis that I never do anything by halves, in the two years since I got a high cholesterol reading, I have ingested the larger part of the world's resources of Omega 3 oils and in the process, more or less single-handedly depleted the north Atlantic mackerel stocks. My cholesterol long ago returned to the sunny side of five, but I have persisted in munching on my mackerel and snacking on sardines three or four times a week as well as popping a pill of fish oil a day. Now, the British Medical Journal informs me that not only will all this not facilitate my living forever, but it might actually kill me (admittedly, only if I become a man and develop angina). So what the hell am I supposed to eat in an obsessive way now? The sooner Lent finishes up and I can get back to my formation grape-munching, the better. In the meantime, I may eat a cat or two. Just to keep the waiting lists down, you understand.