Who's the Daddy: Misery of a caterwauling pet

The fatter and more malevolent of our rescue cat brothers, Marleyboo, upped sticks and moved five doors down a few months ago.

He still pops back every week or so to mark his territory up my floorstanders and yak up his kibble seconds after stuffing his face.

It’s Mr Robbie who is flexing his muscles, and his voice, every night as he bellows the song of his people between 3am and 4am with all the raw emotion of the Italian football team. It doesn’t matter what side of the front door he’s on, it’s always the wrong one.

The yeowling, in the dead of night, is enough to wake the dead – and everyone on our street and the ones either side of it. We only got cats, some 12 years ago now, because an extended family of doubly incontinent mice had taken up squatters’ rights in our house, plus our daughters (10 and eight at the time) really wanted them.

Well they’ve moved out, more or less, and we’re stuck with a loudmouth moggy who only seems to know one song and it goes “Whaaaaaeeeeeeooooowwwwwllllll!” and he plays it on repeat to anyone who’ll listen. It’s becoming a bit of a pain to be honest. The boss craves her sleep like bankers covet taxpayer bailouts but nobody appreciates a furry pre-dawn alarm call, especially on a dank February morning. In other news this week daughter #1, who is due to graduate from university in about three months, texted to say she was on her way to her first in-person lecture since February 2020 - excellent tuition value at only £9,250 a year payable with six per cent interest as I’m sure you’ll agree.

What should happen is this. Any student who didn’t get face-to-face contact with lecturers during the pandemic (so that’s all of them then) should get their fees wiped for the months and years they missed out.

They didn’t get what they paid for and have instead been spoon fed an education that at times has felt like the world’s most expensive online subscription service that works out at just over £340 a week.