At last we have the patter of tiny feet in the house again - eight of them. Although it's not so much a patter, more a cachophany of hob-nailed boots as anyone who has had two lively eight week old kittens can tell you. How anything so tiny can make so much noise has always been a mystery to me.

It's been a long wait before we ventured to seek a new cat. I always had the feeling that Monty might arrive home one evening, bearing a small suitcase and a plausible excuse for running off into the night.

But of course he hasn't and it's time to realise he probably never will. My thanks to all those kind readers who sent condolences for the loss of Monty and Genghis Fluffy - including Peter Lloyd from Pensilva.

I never cease to be amazed at the resilience of kittens. Removed from mum at an early age they fit almost instantly into the household, immediately identify the source of food, find their dirt trays and within a very short time are masters of all they survey.

Compared to one's own offspring, who probably didn't know where the sink was at 18, and frequently have to be turfed out into the cold cruel world at 30, they are little miracles.

The arrival of two tiny fluffy brothers, one grey and white, the other pale apricot and white, meant a hurried rush round to find all the cat equipment. The litter trays had been last seen full of plants in the greenhouse and the litter tray scoops had totally disappeared (although there is something which looks suspiciously like one of them in the cutlery drawer being used as as salad server but I never like to mention this).

Ghenghis's cat faced food bowl can't be found. I used it for Monty for a bit, but he never felt safe eating out of it, constantly checking over his shoulder for an expected swipe with a black paw.

Slow motion

The first few days are always fraught. You have to get used to moving your feet and legs in slow motion, not shutting cupboards without checking, not leaving the freezer, washing machine or dishwasher open, and definitely not leaving the fridge open if you want to see your cold roast chicken again.

There are worries about them eating enough, or eating too much. Only feed them the special dried food they are used to, we were told. Nobody told the kittens that, however, and on the second evening the grey one launched himself onto my little table, grabbed my pork chop and leapt off with it, growling when I tried to remove it. They are now tucking into a slightly more varied diet. They get only water to drink, although one has already had to be fished out of half a cup of cold tea which he had climbed into headfirst and was relishing.

Our other small inhabitant of the house, my two and a half year old grandson, is fascinated. He has to be prevented from sharing his meals with them (all cats quickly suss out a sucker for titbits) .

There is a consensus of opinion that you shouldn't have kittens if you have a small child in the house. I believe that you should bring up small children to be kind to animals and providing you watch them carefully neither come to any harm. Actually, this wasn't entirely true with Genghis Fluffy, who had been known to gnaw on the leg of any passing small child and had worked out a 'tickle my tummy' routine which encouraged little chubby hands to come within range before he pounced. But then he was unique.

Naming

One of the most important tasks you have with new kittens is naming them.

Only another cat lover can understand the importance of finding the right name.

I never like to hurry this. I think that somehow the right name will just arrive.

In the mean time we've had to go through some silly suggestions. Because there are two of them it's been double names - Del and Rodney, Cheese and Pickle, Grant and Phil, Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Ronnie and Reggie, Itchy and Scratchy, Bill and Ben.

I could go on. My grandaughter wanted Fizz and Pop, or was it Snap and Crackle.

My feeling is that you have to think of the cat when it is grown up. Fluffikins might be fine for a kitten, but what kind of psychological effect will it have on a fully grown tom cat? Street cred right out of the window. Rather like naming a baby Bobbykins and leaving him to the mercy of playground bullies when he is 14.

You also have to be quite sure you have the right sex - my friend Jill has a Brian, the proud mother of numerous offspring - and we once had a Pansy who had to be hastily renamed Panda.

When I was a teenager I went through a bolshie phrase and named a litter of kittens after Communist leaders. Thus we had a Nikita Kruschev, a Joseph Stalin and a Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I couldn't think of any more so the other kittens were the Brothers Karamazov and Leo Tolstoy. Vladimir Ilyich and one of the Karamazovs turned out to be female, and my mother refused to use the names anyway.

At the moment we seem to have settled for Oscar for the grey and white one, and Jefferson for the apricot one, which is mine. It may change.

So there it is, a bit of a boring column to those who don't like cats. But I had to mark the momentous occasion.

I hadn't realised how much I had missed those little scratch marks on my ankles, or even the nerve wrangling shock of something small and furry shooting up my leg and arm and landing all of a heap on my head. Sheer bliss.