How I found perfect happiness

The view from the upstairs window was of other large and secluded houses perched on other still-green Surrey Hills. I spent six days here. Every day the owner would go to London leaving me alone with two rare and valuable prick-eared, six-toed house cats called Tio and Luna.

The only instructions I was under concerned these low-slung, vividly marked cats. Under no circumstances were they allowed outside except on a lead. I was to be especially careful not to let them slip out between my feet when I opened the front door. A well-rehearsed system of ‘air lock’ door opening and shutting, if punctiliously observed, rendered the possibility nigh on impossible. Every window must be kept shut, including upstairs windows, to prevent a break for freedom over the rooves and down one of the iron drainpipes.

The pair certainly looked athletically capable of such a feat, having Scottish wildcat and some sort of lynx near-ancestry and that extra climbing toe.