ARRIVING back at the office, I note that the paper's full of yet another prom night for one of our schools. I still find it amazing that the leavers' ball, or whatever you call it is, very much part of the school year. Not that there's anything wrong with it, there isn't, and it's lovely to see all the pupils, sorry students, dressing up. When I was at school, and even when my children were at school, it would be a cold day in hell before you persuaded any of the boys to go out wearing a dinner jacket OR a flower in their buttonhole, never mind escorting a lady of their choice into the back of a limo. Still, I don't suppose any of them would have been wearing aftershave (even if they did shave), deodorant or moisturiser either. How times have changed. It's all the fault of the Americans really, just as the modern craze of school or college reunions has become. There was a time when you would leave school and hope fervently that you would never see most of the pupils or some of the teachers ever again. Now it's a regular thing and people really enjoy them, with groups of people meeting up after ten, 15, 20 or even 30 plus years and trying to recognise one another. The website Friends Reunited has a lot to do with it, and there can't be many of us who haven't been tempted to look at our old school's site and see if we recognise the names. I did, and only recognised one name, or thought I did because their were several Jackies at my school and I would have hated to get the wrong one. 'Are you the girl with black curly hair or the fat one with spots and a nasty line in Chinese Burns?' Whoops, sorry, hope the spots have cleared up now. Messages on Friends Reunited always tend to be positive, people who have done well. You rarely see a 'I've just finished a spell in Wormwood Scrubs but my parole office is pleased with my progress in the new job', do you? I suppose it's the same at school re-unions. People naturally want to show off a bit, and why not? They want to let people know that the Merc in the car park is theirs and not the rusty Ford Capri so they drive round for a bit until several people have surely spotted them. Other people like to go to find out whose lost their hair, put on weight or still live with their mother. The most amazing thing is, according to someone I was talking to recently, is people go along to school reunions and bump into people they used to hate with avengeance at school, and vice versa, but now they greet one another like long-lost friends. 'I remember one boy,' he said, 'who made my life hell at school and I used to dream of getting him alone one day without his bunch of nasty little friends and doing him considerable harm. At the school reunion this man I didn't recognise came up and was very friendly and kept recalling "our" schooldays with such pleasure that I was ashamed to admit I didn't remember him, until I saw his name tag. Oddly enough I didn't say anything, although I'd often thought about what I'd do if I came across him. We just chatted about the good old days.' I've heard people say this before - old age mellows and memories dim.

Now I know I'm going on about cats lately, so apologies to the non-cat people, but one of my colleagues asked me this week if I knew if lilies could poison cats. 'Hang on a minute', I thought to myself, 'Be careful. Is she asking for a few helpful hints for the poisoning of marauding felines who are digging up her pansies or is she worried about her own cat?' Apparently one of her neighbours, spotting her about to plant a couple of pots of Tiger lilies, said that they were 'fatal' to cats who could die within hours if they came into contact with the pollen. Now, I've never heard of a cat turning up its paws after taking a sniff or two of a lily flower, and I grow a lot of lilies. Presumably the garden would be thick with the stiffening corpses of a tabby or three if it were true. So I laughed. Just to be on the safe side she looked it up on the internet and, lo and behold, there is a whole website devoted to the poisoning of cats by any manner of plants, including deadly murderous lilies. Reluctant as I am to decimate the sale of lilies I feel I must pass this on, but in mitigation point out that this is an American website and Americans are known to be a trifle hysterical and not always very bright with it. Why else would they have a warning on jars of peanut butter which reads 'may contain peanuts'. The 'lily hazards for cats' advice takes up a whole page of the Cat Fanciers' Association Inc., and says that several types of lilies can be deadly and cause kidney failures in cats (no mention of dogs or any other animal but cat fanciers are probably a little bit one-track minded). This doesn't mention the pollen but points to ingestion of the plant. Further investigation reveals there are many more plants which are poisonous to cats. There's a list several pages long compiled by someone called Jeff Rakes, or perhaps that's a description of this job. Anyway, Jeff has kindly told us that most well known plants are equally bad for cats. Daffodils, Daphne, Morning Glory, Marigolds, Marijuana. Marijuana? How many cats have a ready supply of marijuana? I can't get a vision of mine lounging behind the greenhouse with a joint in one hand and a can of lager in the other. Oh stop it, this is serious. The list goes on, with some plants I know are deadly, but why poor old hellebores or honeysuckle, and why apricot and peach pits. Can you imagine any cat who eats apricot pits? In fact, can you imagine any cat which will chew its way through the herbaceous border, steadily denuding all your plants until it keels over dead as a Dodo. I've spent years trying to get my cats to eat supermarket own brand cat food to no avail. I try to sneak in cheapo chunks instead of Whiskas but one sniff and they're off. They know their Felix from their Kit-E-Kat and are not to be fooled. Put a dish of lilies down for them and they would probably leave home in high dudgeon. My cats wouldn't be seen dead before or after eating an Aubergine plant, or a green tomato, or a sweet pea. They wouldn't nibble on a stick of rhubarb or swallow a cherry pit (or its seeds or wilting leaves). They won't dine on Datura, which is deadly poison, nor lunch on larkspur, nor breakfast on black-eyed Susan. Hey, I'm getting good at this. The plain fact is that all cats are fussy eaters and whereas they may chew a little grass or get fairly high on cat mint without resorting to Marijuana, they are unlikely to start chomping your daffs. But, and these days you can't be too careful, I'm not giving any advice. If you wish to strip your garden of plants after reading the CFA Inc's list, then do so. Concrete is easy to lay and cats aren't known to eat it. Or are they? I'll have to check on the internet.