At night, we shut our cat Cleo into the downstairs rooms (living room, dining room and kitchen) so that she has access to a comfy sofa, her food and water dishes and her litter box. Normally, by the time we're ready to go to bed she's happy to have a last bit of food while we're locking up, then she toddles off to her bed. However, she occasionally gets very playful when we're going to bed, and refuses to be shut in.

This is obviously no big deal: we can leave the door open to the downstairs rooms, and she's free to wander as she likes, so when this happens, we just go to bed ourselves. Inevitably, what happens about 20 minutes later (just as we're falling asleep, inevitably) is that we hear her little chirrups, which gradually become more strident. In the darkness, we see the fluffy tip of a tail moving around the end of the bed, and then a clunking noise as she tries to open the wardrobe doors. She never does this during the day, so quite why it's necessary late at night I don't know. Perhaps she can hear Mr. Tumnus calling to her from Narnia? Or perhaps it's just a convenient way of generating enough noise to get us out of bed. Either way, it works, and one or other of us will get out of bed.

At this point she'll rub around our legs (the way cats do), and trot obediently down the stairs ahead of us to go into the kitchen. She has some more food while we're there, then settles down on her bed.

Cats are weird sometimes. Her food (she has a complete dried food) and water is available all the time, her bed is there, and she's free to roam around the house. So I have no idea why she needs us to supervise her when she feeds (she won't eat unless we're there and stroking her), or to put her to bed.