My Family And Assorted Animals...

Pat Keenor is a well-known Devon journalist who brings her wit and wisdom to our pages every month

- Pat Keenor

I HAVE a very spoilt cat called Toffee. She hates visitors, detests dogs and sits on the windowsill glaring at passersby. She just about tolerates my family but has been known to take a swipe at young children as they dash about, not being very used to ‘dashing’ in our household of two staid adults.

So people assume the better half and I are ‘cat people’, which we are, but left to our own devices and without our feline tyrant we would also be ‘dog people’, both of us having been brought up with various canine friends.

As I was a farmer’s daughter I grew up surrounded by animals, from livestock to pets and, of course, dogs. At different times we had rabbits, guinea pigs, ferrets and mice – and, as I mentioned in a previous column, some leverets rescued from the jaws of a combine harvester. They grew up, became independent and like young people the world over, hared off to seek pastures new. Except for the runt of the litter, a little ugly hare we rather unkindly called Uggles, who stayed with us for ages.