The children were screaming. The girls were hysterical with laughter, the boy was letting out howls of horror that came from the depths of his soul. This is not right, we thought, it’s usually maniacal laughing from the boy and heart-rending sobs from at least one of the girls…

We’d just got to the holiday house as Mum and Dad were packing up ready to leave us there for the Christmas break.

Cut to the loungeroom, Bella and Hannah rolling around on the floor, pointing at a distraught Luke. Luke walking around in circles, pointing at his groin and yelping. Hamish (Mum and Dad’s cat) sitting sphinx-like on the end of the couch. If you looked up “Fuck You” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of that cat at that moment.

After about ten minutes or so, with Luke still curled up in the foetal position under the shower, the girls had regained enough composure to speak English, and explained to us that the three of them had been sitting on the couch and had called the cat over to them. It had wandered over, and after some encouragement climbed up and sat on Luke’s lap. Whereupon it promptly lifted its arse and urinated all over him.

Exit cat, stage right, placed face-first into the carrier-box for trip back to Melbourne.

This wasn’t Hamish’s proudest moment, however. A couple of years ago, Dad was having a sleep-in, and at some stage through the morning, Hamish had come in to remind him of his cat-feeding responsibilities. Dad made the error of assuming that, being the one who walks upright and has mastered door handles, the decision was his to make, and went back to sleep.

Some time later he woke up, lying on his side, with the cat looking him right in the eye. He sat up gingerly and noticed that something smelled. He looked down, and on the pillow right next to where his head had been seconds earlier, was a fresh, steaming cat turd.

Exit cat, rapidly, stage left, after being hurled across the room.

I went away for the weekend a while back, and left my cat, Beaker, with a clean tray of litter and at least two days’ worth of food and water. This wasn’t enough for her, however, and she spent the weekend searching for the perfect way to make clear to me her disapproval. Showing the kind of innate genius that makes us all thank God that cats don’t have opposable thumbs, she climbed onto the kitchen bench and pissed all over the most important thing she could find - my coffee grinder.

Dogs will do stupid things, they will do naughty things, they will infuriate you (dismembering every form of bedding we put in their kennel for example - including the ill advised bean bag that was scattered over the house, front yard, back yard and neighbours yard). But their wrongdoing is the exuberance of a small child, and as soon as you walk in they know as well as you do how much trouble they’re in, and they’ll scurry away and fall over themselves genuflecting and avoiding a kick in the arse.

Catch a cat shredding the newspaper, or shitting in the laundry basket or scratching your boots, however, and see how much contrition you get. She’ll open one eye long enough to remind you that it’s her couch anyway and you should fuck the fuck off, and you’ll lose four layers of skin if you try to use force to move her.

I’ve spent years trying to figure out why I like having animals around me; the delightful smells perhaps? Or maybe it’s the fun of watching your dog mounting everybody else’s dog, or finding the latest offering of vomited-up sparrow on the front doorstep.

Is it the whining in the middle of the night to be let in or out, is it the mind-bendingly awful flatus after they’ve been too quick and snaffled a sausage that rolled off the BBQ?

Is it the vet bills that always come up just after you’ve paid the car rego and four other giant bills and you’re scratching round for a pot to piss in? As I’m groping under the couch for the slimy half chewed tablet that I’m about to try for the fifth time to shove down her throat and cop a gouging across the knuckles for, I really wonder why I love them so much.

Then I wander out the back room, wondering why lovely and I have been left to our own devices for so long. One old couch with an old doona and a bunch of pillows. Curled up all over the couch, under the doona, and peacefully around each other, three kids and two dogs half asleep watching Harry Potter.

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