I love our cat Bianca dearly, but there are times when she amazes me. She's beautiful, affectionate and incredibly sweet, but sometimes I feel that she's a refined, crustless cucumber sandwich or two short of a picnic.

Take yesterday, as an example. I was watching her grooming, and she was doing that graceful, flexible cat thing, where they hoist a rear leg skywards while they groom what I will tactfully refer to as their 'hard to reach regions'. She heard a noise downstairs and abruptly stopped and turned her head mid-groom, her leg still in the air. After satisfying herself that the noise did not mean either food or a possible play-fight with Bella, she turned her head back, knocking it on her raised leg. She actually jumped slightly, startled by her own leg. After a second or two looking at it in a baffled and mildly alarmed way, she appeared to remember that a) it was her own leg, and b) she was in the middle of grooming, and carried on with the task.