Recently, some early cat-diaries and notes have been rediscovered. These give an insight into some of the finer details around the daily comings and goings in the garden which might otherwise have disappeared into the mists of time by now.

Today, the story of Whitefur’s love affair with the doormat.

The Cat’s daughter Whitefur was the first-born of her litter, arriving with her two brothers on a warm, spring afternoon in the garden.

Whitefur was a fast developer from day one. She was the first to open her eyes, the first to come out of the nest of long grass where the kittens spent their first weeks, the first to approach the humans and climb their legs (and yes, her claws were sharp). Her colouring was quite different from any previous female kittens of The Cat’s as she wasn’t a classic tortoiseshell or calico, so the arrival of female kitten who was mostly white came as quite a surprise.

As she matured, Whitefur earned herself two nicknames – ‘Miss Sunny Side Up’ and ‘Wicked Child’. Naturally, she answered to neither.

Having worked out how to access the upstairs terrace, Whitefur’s work in fine-tuning the training of the humans began in earnest. Her afternoons were often spent fast asleep on the terrace although, at the slightest hint of the arrival of a human on the terrace, she would flop onto her back, sunny side up, paws kneading happily (yet still soundly asleep). But dare to touch her, and she would rocket into an upright position, looking affronted that anyone had dared interrupt a perfectly good sleep.

But Whitefur’s pièce de resistance was her frequent assaults on the half-height fixed fly-screen at the back door. She would clamber up the front of the screen, teetering momentarily on the top, before carefully negotiating the jump down between the screen and the woven cotton fly curtain. Whether she scaled the screen or simply took advantage of an open door and walked in, she had no desire to run riot in the house – all she wanted to do was flop down on the doormat (which was only a few inches inside the house).

And there she would lie, this small, white, furry wicked child, kneading her claws on the mat, having a wash, owning the entire space – sometimes completely unbeknownst to the humans. And, when we removed the fly-screen so she could go out, she would just remain there, revelling in the moment.

It might have helped to tell her off, but this was not within the humans’ remit.