In the 90's, my entire family were in the habit of throwing their coats on one side of the stairs when they got in. My brother had a puffer jacket made of slippery plastic, so I'd always make sure to tread carefully and deliberately down that bit of the stairs.

We had two cats, a sort of feckless black and white one named Toby, and a tabby named Rasparuk that quickly grew up into a killing machine. Well, sort of. We'd never had mice in the house until we had cats. Sometimes they'd bring living mice into the house and let them go. Often, they'd be dragging themselves around with paralysed back legs, and putting them out of their misery was a deeply unpleasant task.

Early one morning, golden light flooding through the house, I could hear a cat playing with a dead mouse in the kitchen below, so made my way downstairs. At the bottom, content to have not slipped on my brother's coat, I stepped off the last step onto the parquet floor, and felt a wet pop under my bare foot. Recoiling, I felt another. Looking down, I saw the front half a tiny newborn mouse squirming weakly, smaller then my little toe. The back half was separated by a short distance and looked like liver pâté with blood in it. I almost puked on the spot, and it took a while before I could lift my other foot.

Ras had brought a pregnant mouse in, let it go, then killed it after it had given birth in my brother's puffer jacket. There was a trail of newborn mice down the stairs and across the floor into the kitchen, where Ras was throwing the dead mother around and chasing it. After cleaning up and discussing the options, we gave the remaining babies to a reptile shop.

I don't mind cats, I can understand them and get on with them, but since this I wouldn't exactly say I've liked them.