OtherWise: Pets that go bump in the night

Nocturnal animals make rubbish pets.

They tend to lie about all day, which is fine if you just want them as decoration, but seems just to be a waste of petfood if you are expecting interaction.

As a kid I had pet mice, which was an early introduction of how irritating pets can be if they only want to party when you are in snooze mode.

The mice (which began, I think, as three and ended up as 36) would spend all day curled up in a dense nest of gnawed paper, in an upturned margarine container in their cage. To get any form of movement happening I would have to tip the mouse-and-paper mix from the container and annoy the mouse portion of the contents.

Once annoyed, the mice would scramble about looking for an alternative place to hide, which was OK if you wanted to make them run through a maze made of blocks, but less convenient when trying use them as Barbie car chauffeurs or dolls' house residents.

At night though, they'd party up large, eating, drinking, climbing, playing and without a doubt multiplying.

Their favourite activity, apart from multiplying, was running endlessly on a mouse-wheel. The mouse-wheel was a metal one, a bit wonky, very squeaky and with a persistent "clunk". The mouse cage was in the corner of my bedroom, the perfect place for something that spent all night emitting rustling, gnawing noises with a backing track of squeaking and clunking.

Rabbits proved slightly more interactive - at least you can cuddle them, but they too proved most active after hours, hence finding holes dug under the cage of a morning and a vacancy where once were rabbits.

A particularly large rabbit named Floyd got us into quite a bit of bother, having exited his cage one night and taken up residence under the local Anglican Church. The vestry was unhappy about his tunnelling prowess, while the ladies of the church were most displeased with his nightly forays into the flowerbeds. He took ages to catch. Both times.

It turns out cats are pretty darned nocturnal too.

Having had older cats for a long time, I just thought cats didn't move much, night or day. They were on the couch when I got up, on the couch when I got back from work and on the couch when I went to bed.

The only sign they had moved was the disappearance of the food I put out.

Then I got a kitten.
One kitten was pretty much OK, but being a sucker for punishment - and tabby cats - I got a second kitten.

All hell broke loose.

Suddenly our nights were alive with the sound of tiny cats body-slamming one another up and down the hallway, climbing the curtains and falling off, or scrambling on to the kitchen surfaces and conducting experiments with gravity: if you push a coffee cup and a vase of flowers off the breakfast bar at the same time, which one hits the ground first?

I thought it was only puppies that stole footwear until the kitten invasion, which coincided with my pairs of shoes becoming un-paired. I'd find one under my foot as I got out of bed the next morning, while the other would be hiding under the dining room table.

There would be pot plants upended, the dirt tracked along the hallway and on to the toilet seat because, you know, toilet water tastes way better than the stuff in the cat bowl.

Once they found their way onto the bed, nights became nightmares. It seems a flying leap is the preferred way to access a good spot on the duvet at 2am. The kittens' aim is bad though and being hit suddenly in the chest by a kitten-turned-missile is now the norm.

A casually-flung arm would be attacked with teeth and claws, a foot that moved under the duvet would be savaged, and one night this week I woke to find a kitten on my pillow, nose to nose with my sleeping self.

I don't know how long I'd been breathing recycled cat breath, but finding a half-mouse on the floor the next morning I hoped it hadn't been for long.

Yes I could put them outside, but out is a dangerous place for night-time cats, especially on a main road, so in they must stay. I hope they settle down into cat-hood soon.

In the meantime I am looking for a way to keep them awake all day, just out of revenge.