Krazy Kats

Thus far, our first autumn in Spain was not going the way we had anticipated. Our carefully-laid plans were being hijacked by a pair of hyperactive kittens. Neither Jaffa nor Minnie seemed to realise they were guests, staying with us only as long as it took to line up a loving home for them, then we would say goodbye to them and get our lives back on track. We knew that at some level we would be sorry to see them go; after all their first few weeks of life must have been harsh - while Tango was sheltering in our house from every rainstorm, they were probably bobbing about like corks in the storm-water somewhere nearby (this part of Spain is surprisingly rainy) .

But we were doing all we could for our temporary foster-charges: providing them with free medical care, dry surroundings and a comfortable place to sleep. Tango stepped up to the mark as well and proved herself to be an indulgent mother, ready to feed at any time of the day or night. She seemed to favour Jaffa over Minnie but that's probably because she was still trying to work out if Minnie was actually hers or had been introduced, like some sort of weird-looking cuckoo into her care when she wasn't paying attention.

Meantime, Jaffa and Minnie were determined to make the most of every opportunity presented to them. They quickly came to the conclusion that far from being a temporary waystation, our house was a permanent adventure park for kittehs. I assume they believed that their lives had been quite tough enough gracias, and from now on their only responsibility was to have fun twenty-four hours a day.

Sue and I quickly became used to dodging kittens as we went about our business: usually Jaffa would be chasing Minnie counter-clockwise around the lounge until by an unspoken agreement they would abruptly switch roles and Minnie would pursue Jaffa. It was if an invisible spring had wound itself almost to breaking point in one direction and the only way the tension could be released was by allowing it to uncoil in the opposite direction for a while. The kittens quickly found they couldn't get up the necessary rotational speed to make themselves pleasantly dizzy if they stayed at floor level; however, if they used our new leather couch as a launching pad, with its superior grip and traction - why it was as if it had been specially designed for the modern kitten in a hurry!

Every so often they would take a break from their fruitless attempts to break the sound barrier in our lounge, saunter over to Tango, push and jostle into position and then get down to the serious pursuit of guzzling as much milk as they could. This generally involved unscrupulous tactics such as one kitten (usually Jaffa) trying to monopolise all of the available food by slyly nudging his sibling off whatever nipple she was currently attached to.

Following a feed was generally our quiet time: exhausted by their relentless pursuit of giddy hedonism they would drift off into a well-deserved nap.

As time went on, and still there was no queue forming outside our house to adopt Jaffa and Minnie we came to the conclusion that our attempts so far were laughably inadequate. We would have to sit down and give serious consideration to more radical plans to shift a kitten off our hands for good.

And that's what we did.