FROM the garden the other night came a terrible noise. Something like a cross between a washing machine with a bit of metal stuck in its drum (usually the wire out of one of my bras) to an animal in mortal pain. I cautiously opened the door and peered out, and seconds later came another high pitched shriek and the grey cat shot between my legs, closely followed by his ginger brother. Ginger didn't exactly shoot in, he came at a bit of a trot, aiming to keep his dignity and preserve his manhood (in vain, of course, but perhaps he hasn't realised yet). Grey boy isn't worried about dignity. While his brother slowed to a halt once inside the safety of the hall, and wandered off with an air of 'I was just going to come in anyway', Oscar hid under the kitchen table behind my handbag. I peeked out of the door and spotted a large black and white cat under my car and next to it the outline of a tabby. They both glared at me in a challenging way, as if to say that they would take me on if I so much as dared to take one step outside. When I did they waited until I was feet away before walking nonchalantly off into the bushes. 'We'll be back', their waving tails seemed to say. The black and white cat I know. He has occasionally taken his life in his hands and snuck in the back door and eaten our cats' food. Once he was creeping along nervously looking over his shoulder when he literally bumped into ginger who was on his way out of the kitchen door. Both jumped about a foot in the air, hissed and pranced around in that bully boy way you sometimes see teenagers adopt when they know they're not really going to fight but want everyone else to think they are. Honour satisfied the black and white turned and fled. In the garden we occasionally hear hisses and snarls but so far it is honours even, at least with ginger. Grey boy tends to hide behind things and try to look like a shrub. Now, it seemed, black and white has brought in reinforcements, because we've had the awful caterwauling on more than one occasion and even ginger has decided that two onto one (or one and a half if you're inclined to be generous) isn't on. An added insult came at the weekend when I spotted black and white sitting on my car bonnet. This is ginger's favourite spot. He loves the warm engine and likes to jump on the car as soon as it has stopped. Sometimes, actually, he stays on the car even if it has started up and rides to the gate before casually strolling off the side. He's not scared of cars at all, and once he climbed into my son-in-laws van and sat on the seat and my son-in-law, who was popping up the road for something, thought he might like a ride. Which he did, until the van was about 200 yards away and then he started leaping round the interior like a Whirling Dervish, up and over the steering wheel, on the floor nearly under the clutch and leaping up between my son-in-laws legs. It was a new twist on putting a ferret down your trousers and not likely to be repeated. Anyway, when ginger saw black and white on the car he did a cat version of high dudgeon and positively bristled. But he also turned around nervously to see if black and white's comrade in arms wasn't in the vicinity and waiting to pounce. Now, I've noticed that both cats don't run out of the door, they casually saunter to the step and glance around. They think I don't know why, but I do, especially since I jokingly did a fairly good imitation of a cat hiss right behind them the other morning and they both ran up the stairs and made for the airing cupboard. I hope this doesn't continue because we may have to turn to a cat psychiatrist or, in the interest of saving money, a big powerful water pistol. Why other cats suddenly start coming in the garden is a bit of a mystery. Both mine emphatically mark their territory almost every day in the old traditional smelly way. This should be enough to keep out unwelcome visitors. Possibly the black and white has become bold because he's now got a friend and he's told him that our house contains two pampered pets who only eat chicken Whiskas in jelly and need a bit of a roughing up. Both cats look well fed themselves though, so they're not strays. Strays know how to behave. They are usually totally submissive to the resident cats, put up with all kinds of threatening behaviour and slink around pathetically. If you feed them they look very grateful and aren't at all fussy about their food. Once they stop being strays, however, their behaviour can take a turn for the worse and because they are street wise they are often far more aggressive than your own dear people. It's a bit like taking in a vagrant who has been on the road for 20 years. Once he's got his feet under the table he's not going to told to adhere to the genteel manners of the house. Years ago we had such a vagrant, catwise, in the shape of a bedraggled ginger tom who took up residence one winter in our coalhole. The latter, doorless, and empty, was rather dark and forbidding but dry and fairly comfortable if your previous main abode is under hedge. We had three cats at the time and I noticed that all three of them would do a detour round this place if they had to pass it. Then, one night, I heard the familiar scream of a cat on the end of another cat's claws and looked out. Ginger tom was stretched up on all fours, teeth, or should I say tooth, bared. In the light from the kitchen door saw that he had one eye and one ear, and not both on the same side. He was uttering a sound which was like no other I've heard from a cat. A kind of growl cum bark and he was positively foaming at the mouth. He had one of my cats cornered and when I leaned down to rescue it both struck out at me (life can be very unfair with cats). My own scratched my hand quite lightly, ginger dug a channel out of my arm and only backed off a fraction. I still felt sorry for him, and later put out a tin of food, which was gone in the morning. Silly of me really, because for months after he stationed himself feet from the door, his one good eye glaring fiercely, his one ear pricked. If you got within three feet of him he snarled and sprang, even if you had the can of food ready and waiting. Even when he was in his den he growled warningly at anyone walking up the path. He spent the winter with us, never allowing any contact, never letting his guard down although I tried. 'Who's a nice little pussy?', I would say. 'GRRGH', he would answer, grinding his tooth. Years later, telling this story to a person who belonged to a cat charity, they said I should have reported him. Who to, I wondered? MI5 or the CIA? He clearly belonged more to the X Files than the RSPCA. He moved on in the spring and we moved out. I often felt I should have left a note for the incomers mentioning the possibility of a the imminent winter arrival of a one-eyed ginger tom with an attitude problem. But I didn't.

I read somewhere the other day that you can now buy flat-packed houses which you assemble yourself. The whole house. Phew, what a nightmare. Speaking as someone who has been wrestling with a flat packed computer desk for some weeks now, and it is nowhere near complete even though it only has four legs, a top and a slide out keyboard rest, I hate to think what problems a four bedroomed house might unearth. Imagine, week after week of reading instructions which appear to have been written by a failed graduate of the University of Bejing, telling you to put peece A under peece B and screw together when you don't appear to have a peece B and peece A shows no sign of fitting against anything. And doing this with room sized pieces. To say nothing of the nightmare of finding that the roof is on upside down after your have fitted all the floorboards or that when at last you have completed the house you have enough pieces left over to build a small bungalow. Good idea, but no thanks.