Chim-chiminey, chim-chiminey ...

I can't sing, although I do have fun searching (usually unsuccessfully) for the notes and have been told that some are alright. This is why I play guitar and drums.

I can't dance - much to Pen's disappointment.

I don't look like Dick Van Dyke, although my impression of a Cockney is streets better than his.

However, I have learnt to sweep chimneys - or more specifically - ours.

Three weeks ago, our wood burner started to behave a little strangely. Firstly, it didn't seem to be performing like we knew it could. That said, we knew that wood burners were reliant upon the wind being in the right direction or sometimes, you just couldn't get them going.

We didn't believe that at first, but we were beginning to.

Also, it was taking forever to get going at all - nearly two hours and we noticed this on a day when there was no wind - so that wasn't a factor.

Then suddenly, we discovered smoke belching from the chimney joints and the wood burner's breather holes, filling the kitchen.

I quickly emptied the fire into the garden - one shovel at a time - and allowed the fire to go out. Fortunately, this was a morning start for the wood burner and we had plenty of time to get in touch with a man we knew in Domfront; a man who had swept our chimney before we'd had the wood burner installed.

He couldn't make it until early the next week and knowing no-one else that could do the job, we borrowed a friends gas heater and waited ...

Upon his arrival, he discovered that he could get to the 45^o elbow in the kitchen, but no further. He had to admit defeat, feeling that the chimney would need to be swept from the top down, for which equipment he didn't possess would be needed. He gave us the phone number of someone he knew that could do the job and left.

I have the utmost respect for someone who can admit if they can't do something. Too often, people blag their way into getting jobs and end up taking the money and running, leaving a huge mess behind them. At least he hadn't done that.

So we phoned this other bloke and asked him to come and sort it out.

Days with multiple phone calls passed until eventually, two of his workers came and began stripping the wood burner down ready to clean out the chimney pipes. We were a little apprehensive as the chap's brush looked a lot like a mangy hedgehog and couldn't possibly have done a very good job cleaning out the pipes. Nevertheless, when they'd finished, the smoke did go up the chimney, although, they left one hell of a mess behind them.

After that, the weather brightened considerably. The days were warm and we didn't need to use the wood burner until the sun went down, but after two weeks, once again, smoke began coming out of the joints. With the kitchen filling with smoke, I emptied the fire and Pen got on the phone to the company who'd cleaned it before - the company which, to this date, still hasn't billed us for the work.

Not that we're at all inclined to pay them anyway.

We couldn't understand how in the two weeks following the cleaning of our chimney, the whole lot should be clogged again. I didn't want the blokes who did it the last time back in the house, but Pen was adamant that they should be given the opportunity to come and rectify the problem we believed they caused.

"I don't know why we don't just buy the brushes and do the work ourselves," I argued. "It's not as if it's particularly difficult - from what I saw."

Well that was all it took.

We bought a set of poles with a 200mm brush, got home and got on with the job. It cost us 20€, which was expensive compared to some places where the price was around 12€, but having seen both, we got our money's worth. Besides, it cost us 50€ to have the chimney swept the first time - it might have been less, but we wanted a certificate for insurance - the brushes were expensive at twenty, but even so, in one use, we saved 30€.

More than that, we can use them again, plus, we discovered that there was no possible way the last people had cleaned the chimney properly, as the elbows were absolutely clogged shut with crud; crud that had probably taken from October when we first began using the wood burner regularly to build up. The quantity of muck was astonishing.

All of this had to be swept up with a dustpan and brush and while it wasn't as dusty as cleaning out the fire itself, the mess was pretty big.

So we began looking into the possibility of getting another vacuum cleaner. I suspect we've all tried cleaning up our DIY mess with a conventional, domestic cleaner, only to look disappointed when it doesn't work properly afterwards. We didn't want to ruin ours, but the price of a sensible work-type cleaner was prohibitive.

Then we discovered the little toy to the right. It's not a vacuum cleaner, but by connecting it to one, it can be used to suck up the crud and dust from the fire - providing it's not still glowing - without clogging up and thereby ruining our domestic one.

We've seen them before and their prices have ranged from about 30€ upwards.

This one?

6€95.

Bargain.

We now have the full set and can clean out our fire and the chimney to our heart's content without ruining our vacuum or having to be on our hands and knees for ages sweeping up the crud!

This led us to ask questions about why we'd ended up blocked up to begin with. Our friend from Domfront was surprised to learn that our chimney was blocked since our wood burner is a French made Invicta, which usually only needs to be cleared once a season. He suggested that it was the wood we were burning.

We explained that we bought what we had been told was well-seasoned oak and beech, but he didn't think so. Neither did the other people who came to clean out our chimney.

From now on, we will be cleaning our chimney more regularly and have made mental notes on what our wood burner's behaviour was like when it became clogged. We will also be asking more questions of our wood suppliers before we hand over the dosh so we don't get caught out like that again.

Spring? Is it too much to hope?

It seems as though it's been ages since we last had a day where it didn't rain. For months, everyday was a wet day and fields had turned into 'ponds' that covered hectares. In fact it's only in the last few days that some fields are once again visible, but water is still running away in torrents and the ground continues to feel more like you're trying to negotiate a swamp.

Last year at this time, they had one night where eighteen inches of snow fell overnight, but it looks (touch wood) as though we will escape that this year, as since Thursday of last week, not only has it been dry, but sunny too. Granted the nights, or at least from sundown onwards are damned cold, but that seems a small price to pay for some good weather after literally months of absolute crap.

Does that mean that spring has sprung?

Well, frankly I think it's too soon to tell for sure, but we've been taking advantage of the sunshine while we can getting out and about and in the garden ... with Biscuit.

Under the strictest supervision, we let our kitty-cat out into the unknown territory that is our napkin of a garden, for the very first time, marveling at how nutty he went at all the new sights, sounds and smells, not to mention the new textures, bugs, bits of dust, leaves and especially, shadows.

We sat on the bench as he gamboled and frolicked, sprinting with utter abandon from the kitchen door, up the garden and into the garage at the other end, making contented 'prooping' noises all the way.

It was nice to see him so happy.

Yesterday, we returned from a lovely, sunny walk to have tea in the garden and Biscuit once again gamboled and frolicked happily.

Monday however, it was a different story.

It appears that our cat is not content to simply bimble around in the space we have, but already wants more. Today, it was all we could do to stop him from leaping up and over our garden wall and getting out into the big, wide world outside.

He was driving me mental as I had work to do in the garage and was running back and forth between it and the house. Everything took twice as long as it should, as I only had to approach the door and there was Biscuit, squirming through between my legs and out into the garden.

The first couple of times this happened, I was able to see the funny side. Thereafter however, I began losing patience. Once, I left him in the shop at the other end of the house and immediately I opened the back door, he shot past me and down the garden path in a blur of fur and paws. He very quickly got wise to being  collected and returned to the house, so it became more difficult to catch on each occasion.

This I fear will only worsen.

I wouldn't mind so much if it weren't for the fact that I had to keep a watchful eye on him ... at all times.

It's true our village isn't big or busy, but there is a through-road that leads from Mantilly to Domfront with traffic that doesn't appear to notice our little village and hacks through at breakneck speed, putting our darling little bundle of curiosity at severe risk. Even the slower moving cars and trucks that pass through the little lane outside our front door wouldn't take the least bit of notice of a little ginger cat and we're afraid that it wouldn't be long before Biscuit was no more than a small orange pancake.

So we cannot let him venture out on his own - for his own safety.

He doesn't see it that way.

There are plans in the offing for a fence that will act as a deterrent, but alas, this can only happen in the future, not immediately. Even when it is up, he's a determined little so-and-so, so he will still have to be supervised - and very closely at that.

Oh joy.

And people wonder why we never had kids...

The before's, durings and afters 3: The Bathroom

Our old bathroom was tiny with a tiny bath and a cracked sink. The bath needn't have been so small, as there was room for a larger one, but we're in France where the majority of men are less than six feet tall (182 cm) and don't need something half the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool to bathe in.

We were tempted to retain the old bath as it was good and solid cast iron, but it was also stained and in awful condition, impossible to keep clean, bloody cold in the winter and meant I had to bathe with my knees round my ears. It had to go.

Then there was the front bedroom, which was huge - well compared to most English bedrooms it was. Our bedroom is on the same floor but over the kitchen, which is heated by the wood burning stove and remains quite a nice temperature thanks to the vent installed, but the front bedroom is over the shop, making it quite chilly during the colder months of the year.

We had considered using it as a spare room, but had discounted that idea when we discovered it was cold and more importantly, French house insurance rules state that rooms under 3 metres square (or 9 square metres), didn't count on the insurance and neither did bathrooms. 

By partitioning off the front bedroom and adding an extra door, we would then be able to create an office and a bathroom. Converting the existing bathroom into a toilet, meant that we would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night and negotiate our way downstairs to take a leak either. It also meant that it fitted with French preferences to keep the bathroom and toilets separate.

During the work we were having done, the room got partitioned with a stud wall that created a room of just under 9 square metres on one side which we use as the office and a second, larger room, which was to be the new improved bathroom.

When the plumbing and electrics were all in place, our bath was installed in its cradle and made ready for us to create our new bathroom, although we weren't able to use the shower, as the bath stood against a plain plastered wall on one side and nothing at either end.

Getting the shower going soon became a priority!

We knew doing the bathroom was going to be a difficult job as we had already done a bathroom at our previous house; not necessarily difficult, but a lot of fiddly work, which had to be done in a specific order.

Here, we planned to panel the entire bath side of the room except the area around the bath, which we would tile, create an airing cupboard in the corner and a removable panel in front of the bath so that the plumbing could be accessed in emergencies.

As can be seen from the picture (right), a chimney stack runs up the corner of the room behind the bath and because we a) didn't want increase the cost of the work involved to remove it from top to bottom and b) didn't want the extra mess - of which there was already more than we knew what to do with, we elected to box that in.

This killed two birds with one stone as the odd shape of the room could be disguised behind the paneling, thus giving us a nice, straight appearance to the finished product.

So with the materials all purchased, we were ready to move forward and begin the task of taking the bathroom from something that was just off being a bomb site, to being the finished product.

I would like to say that the work all came out perfect, but as the person who did a lot of the work, I can say without any fear of contradiction, that it does have a little bit of 'character' here and there.

The house runs the gamut of angles and not being a professional, I did tend to get caught out every now and again.

Having said that though, I am well pleased with the results. As is Pen.

Left shows the new basin we had installed and the chimney is now hidden behind the false wall. I would like to have utilised the space and put some shelves in the paneling, but decided instead to keep it simple, which also kept the costs down. The tongued and grooved isn't cheap when you're covering such a large area.

The other side (right) contains the airing cupboard which is heated using a timed 120 watt tube heater that we bought on-line from a British company, as the French don't have anything like it. 

Tiling wasn't easy and if you were to look closely, you'd be able to see the fact that some tiles aren't quite in the right place. 

Again, it's down to lack of experience and abundance of 'let's get this finished and we can live with that'.

Regardless of my lack of precision, the whole thing is water tight and does exactly what it's supposed to. It also means that we can shower now, which is usually more preferable than bathing.

The floor was stripped and waxed to bring up the wonderful colour. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that Pen spent an age on her hands and knees removing the old varnish.

We should have used an industrial floor sander, but it would have meant having to use magic to prevent the entire house being covered in sawdust.

Whilst Pen's method took a while, it was a whole heap cleaner and the results speak for themselves.

Among Pen's many DIY skills, she's also a dab hand at wallpapering.

This was on offer at La Maison in Gorron, brings a wonderful texture to an otherwise boring wall and fits with the overall effect nicely.

Well done, Pen!

The table was the first time I got to use my biscuit jointer to take two lengths of wood and seamlessly join them together. Best tool I've ever bought that and good fun to use too.

The table leg was supposed to be used in the kitchen, but some miscalculations meant that it was no longer required. The idea to use it in the bathroom was marvelous and it fits really well. The table should have been twice its length, but upon seeing how long it would actually have been, it was decided that we'd keep it smaller. That's why the power points are to the left and not in the middle as planned.

Overall, we're dead chuffed with our new bathroom and since the airing cupboard has actually been proved to work, it's been well worth the wait.

The unofficial inspector of works ...

Biscuit is supposed to be on inspection duty here, but appears
to have seen something much more interesting

Our once dinky little cat, Biscuit, is growing, as cats - or kittens - do, and fast becoming more of what the French describe as a crapule or scoundrel.

He can't help it, it's his job.

He has a thing for feet - ours - and appears to take great delight in hiding under the bed while we're dressing or undressing only to leap out, grab us by the ankles and go for the toes.

Going to bed and getting up looks more like a fast-forward clip of Riverdance. Just call me Michael Flatfoot.

Aside from having a canny knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - usually under those same feet he takes such delight in terrorising - he has many redeeming features ... and not just the fact that he's a very pretty cat.

Most notably, he loves to be 'helpful'.

His 'help' is often offered for sweeping the floor and dusting - especially when it comes to the sofa in the kitchen. Tying shoelaces is now much more, er ... interesting with Biscuit's 'help', as is filling in forms (of which there are no shortage. Well, this is France after all), using the computer and making the bed where he leaps under the duvet as it is being spread out and then goes mental.

He was obviously a supervisor in a previous existence and that is something he is very keen on doing. We have been informed by our French friends that he has become the 'Unofficial Inspector of  Works' - an apparently normal trade for a cat to take up.

In pursuance of this trade, he has taken to sitting on Pen's or my shoulders. He really seems to enjoy that Meerkat view from high above the ground and is happy to sit and watch what I or Pen are doing, offering little mewls of advice here and there as he supervises.

His 'helpful' noises (best described as 'proooooop', occasionally interspersed with short squeaks) were especially loud whilst sealing around the bath recently. I cannot tell you how much easier it was with him peering over my shoulder, offering sage advice in a language I couldn't even begin to understand, whilst I leant at full stretch over the bath. However, as I said, he does like to be 'helpful' and supervise.

I would have thought he'd have been paying more attention in the above picture as at the time, I was sanding down wood filler prior to waxing the door of the airing cupboard and needed to be particularly thorough or it would affect the colour of the wax after application. He'd been particularly vocal on other less important jobs, so his silence in this case was quite a surprise.

It's not just DIY jobs he likes to oversee, but cooking and other general housework too. He often sits on our shoulders as we wash up, make tea or coffee, prepare or cook food and many other tasks. About the only time he becomes otherwise entertained is when the washing machine is running. He seems convinced he can jump through the glass door to get to the washing itself and tries tirelessly to prove it.

We'd hate to tell him the truth and disappoint him.

The downside in Biscuit's apparent need to supervise, is his method for getting up on our shoulders to perform said task. This leaves a little to be desired and can be extremely painful to say the least. It seems that no matter how used to his method of getting to our shoulders we may have thought we were, he still catches us out - regularly.

I was reminded of this the other day while taking a leak. He clawed his way up the backs of my legs, up my posterior and almost pulled my sweats down, leaving deep red lacerations in the process. From there, he scrabbled up my back and on to my shoulder, where he sat, meowing loudly.

Of course I would have liked to have dissuaded him from using me as a human pin cushion at that precise moment, but could only grimace and try to maintain accuracy - not an easy task, I can tell you. I was forced to simply stand, unable to do anything about his impersonation of Sir Edmund Hillary, as my hands were otherwise engaged and my feet needed to stay precisely where they were too, for fairly obvious reasons.

Still, we'd much rather he did that than got up on the worktops and so I suppose, must be grateful for his help and other small mercies ...

The before's, durings and afters 2: The kitchen

The original kitchen with doorway

I thought I could kill two birds with one stone here and show the before's, during's and afters of the wood burner too, but there's so much has happened to bring the kitchen from the three rooms that were, to the one room that is.

It's been a long time coming, but finally, just a little while ago, we finished the kitchen - well, as far as we can for the time being anyway.

When we first got to the house, the kitchen as we now know it, was actually three rooms: a kitchen, a small salon and an entrance vestibule. None of them worked that way for us. We had always dreamed of the 'great room'; that huge expanse of space where we could spread out and just be.

Dark, narrow and very old-fashioned

All the houses we have lived in have had small rooms. Ironic when you think about it as England has some of the biggest people, yet as a general rule of thumb, has houses with some of the most miserly spaces to live in.

Plywood and Formica everywhere -
well-built but had definitely seen better days

Take our last house. It had three bedrooms, yet had a kitchen that was no more that three metres in length - or about ten feet and was less than two metres wide (about six feet or so). I could put my arms out and touch both side walls and if one of us was doing something in it, the other had to stay out. Even the cat was wary of being in there if either of us was. This is what laughingly passes for a family home.

Scary isn't it?

From the kitchen down through the
entrance vestibule

 Our first thought here, was to bash the walls down and open the whole area up, but the closer we looked, the more scary a prospect it became. I'd guess, it wasn't until about our third visit that we actually bit the bullet and began removing the walls. Not a job for the feint of heart, I can tell you.

The original salon

 It's quite a prospect taking walls down in your house. There are structural considerations to be made, but after we had been assured that the walls were not supporting ones, down they came.

As you can see, the pictures give ample reason to want to rip the downstairs to pieces, I mean, we wanted space, not 'spaces' and whilst the demolition wasn't easy and would mean we would have a room downstairs that until we moved in permanently, would feel like a building site, the job had to be done.

It took umpteen trips to the dechetterie with bag after bag of broken bricks, plaster and sundry rubble, but soon we had what we had always wanted - space.

So here we have the beginnings of our great room.

With the walls removed - requiring no small amount of blood, sweat and tears on our part - the amount of space was something bigger than we had on the entire ground floor of our rented house in Blandford.

We've never had anything that big.


We had room to move about, room to put our stuff; stuff that had been in boxes since we left the house before Blandford - about three and a half years in real money.

I spent days and days before we moved here, using Blender to create an accurate 3D representation of our ground floor complete with cupboards, tables, chairs - everything including the kitchen sink!

Once the visualisation was complete, we had the ideas we needed to put the kitchen back together. Of course, so much of what we were hoping to achieve was dependent upon how much money we would have to do it with, and the further into the renovations we got, the more it was looking like it was going to cost us far more than we budgeted.

... and we didn't have bottomless pockets ...

With the addition of our wood burning stove, we're really pleased with the results of our labours. Pen made new curtains for the windows and with the walls and ceiling painted, it's really come to life.

We have elected to leave the floors as they were as being commercial grade tiles, they're more hard-wearing than anything we can afford for the moment, and saves us the bother of trimming the doors.

Exposing the beams was, we feel, an absolute necessity. They add so much character to the room, which at present is a little bland. We haven't had the time to find things to go on the walls other than the pebble clock that I made and the 'Keep calm and carry on' tea-towel that Pen framed, to work as accents.

We had initially planned to keep the original wooden cupboard unit that used to be under the window in the kitchen, but when we pulled it out so that the plumbing could be done, we discovered that it was in foul condition. It had been built when everything everywhere was Formica on ply.

Sadly, on all but the top, the Formica had peeled off, leaving behind the glue that had once held it in place. Had we tried to remove it, it would have been costly and extremely time consuming. Besides, where it hadn't been moved for probably several decades, there was all manner of crud everywhere, making it unhygienic, or to use today's vernacular - minging.

So, as you can see, the old crap that used to be there has now been replaced by new stuff - at far greater expense than we had anticipated, but in the end, it's far more fitting than anything I could have built.

I did have to assemble all the cabinets and drawers, but essentially, the kitchen furniture - worktops, cabinets and drawer units - all came from Brico Depot, coming in at about 20% the price we had seen locally and is far better quality than similar units in England.


It maybe the only room that can be classed as finished, but it's made such a difference.

Next room is the new bathroom...

Amber's first visit to the vet

With a new cat in toe, our responsibilities have gone up quite noticeably. Not only do we have the decorating and finishing off in the house - which might not get finished until long after we're drawing pension - but now we have this tiny little life that right now, is totally reliant upon us

... for everything.

She's no bother though and eats very little, so that's good, but she has to see doctors - or a vet in her case. After the fiasco with the bath, I just knew she wasn't going to like this.

As luck would have it, she didn't mind the journey at all. She was surprisingly easy to get into her cat box, probably because she wasn't big enough to go star-shaped and stop me from putting her in it. Nevertheless, unlike Sammo, who made noises like someone was trying to strangle him all the way from home to the vets, Amber was very quiet.

Better still, she was quiet when the vet - a very nice woman, who had been recommended by the lady that told us about the cat in the first place - poked, prodded and generally woman-handled her before dropping the bombshell.

Now anyone who has read my stories, will know that I have written one or two stories of a transgender nature; mainly those that involve an unexpected change either by magic or accidental. I suppose it would therefore be fitting to be told that Amber was not what we thought she was.

She was - or is a boy.

To further add to our confusion, she wasn't three months old either, but more like two - as denoted by the fact her eyes - sorry, his eyes were still violet-blue.

So Amber was not an Amber after all and try as we might, we were not able to associate our little bundle of fluff with a name that to us, was definitely feminine.

To begin with, Pen didn't think it mattered, as once he got to seven to eight months old, he would be neutered anyway, making him if anything, A-sexual.

"I don't care," I grumbled. "It's a girly name and he's a boy - apparently."

"Says the man whose name in French sounds just like Nicola?"

"Yes and I don't like that anymore than he's going to like being called Amber. It's a girl's name."

The upshot was, we decided a name that was more appropriate for a boy cat was in order - regardless of the fact that he would only continue to be male for the next six months or thereabouts and we began considering alternatives to Amber as a name.

He was not precisely ginger, and we began tossing other names into the mix like Oatmeal, Butterscotch and other gender non-specific names, but nothing really stuck. At least, not until I began calling him Biscuit Brain. Somewhat derisive I know, but it was because of his clumsiness and his propensity for doing completely daft things, having us in stitches; laughing like drains.

To cut a long story short, Biscuit has stuck - though I don't always drop 'Brain'. Not only does it kind of fit, but he's actually responding to it and in the month we have had him, he's doubled in size and daftness.

True, he's lost a lot of that clumsiness that he, like all kittens seem to have and replaced it with sheer lunacy, enjoying nothing more than racing and tear-arsing around the kitchen, arms and legs akimbo, whilst dragging his favourite toy - a bit of gardening twine with a bit of paper tied to one end - around in his mouth.

Yup, he's going to continue to be a handful. He's learning how to jump with height and distance increasing on an almost daily basis and as he has settled in with us, his confidence and curiosity have also increased, meaning that there are fewer places in the house that he won't go nosing around.

He's certainly keeping us on our toes, but makes up for it by being extremely cute and cuddly, which has made a really nice change, since our previous cat, Sammo, was such an ornery bugger.

With the cold weather upon us, we spend many a pleasant evening relaxing in front of the wood burner, watching one of our favourite shows on the TV, whilst polishing the cat.

See; I told you he was cute ...

Amber's shower

Amber. The eggcup-sized moggy

As some of you may know, we added another member to our family a week ago in the form of the three month-old, 454 gramme, Amber - so named by us, largely because of her colour.

We weren't actually looking for a new pet, but we'd kind of decided that after Sammo - a black short-haired male cat that we got from the Cat's Protection - we wanted a girl cat, as they seem more affectionate and far less obstreperous.

Amber turned up by word of mouth. A neighbour asked if we were interested in a little girl kitten and she didn't have to ask us twice.

We discovered she was living in someone's garage, which didn't bode well, but off we went to go see whether we'd want to take her. Actually, whether we wanted to wasn't really an issue. We had already decided that provided she had a heartbeat, we'd want her.

She is the smallest cat I have ever had in my hands and our first kitten; our other cats both being rescue cats and fully grown when we got them. Amber, we were told, was just three months old and not a lot bigger than the eggcup she's photographed beside. Her mother was a tiny marmalade-coloured tabby, while her father was a ginger tom - hence the sort of biscuit colour she has. The name Amber just seemed spot on for her.

Once home, she took to us immediately and shared herself between us, which is more than can be said for Sammo, who was a right vindictive bastard. He didn't like to be touched anywhere other than his head and then only sometimes. He was rarely demonstrative with his affections and only very occasionally graced Pen with his presence. He was marginally better with me, but still left me with numerous scars and reasons to use his insides to string my guitar.

Amber however has proved she is happy with both of us and we definitely feel we made a good choice in taking her in.

De-fleaing

All has not been sunshine and roses though, as Amber came to us with a very bad flea infestation - something we didn't notice in the gloom of the garage we saw her in. Anyway, we bought a flea collar and the problem did lessen, making her a much less itchy cat, but it did not alleviate the irritation from the dirt the fleas had deposited. So we figured that some anti-flea shampoo and a good clean-up would probably do the trick.

Now, we were both avid watchers of programmes on Discovery back in England like, 'Animal Cops - Houston' and had often seen the guys at the Houston SPCA, shampooing kittens to rid them of fleas and their dirt. It didn't look difficult - in fact, the animals concerned always appeared grateful and never got violent in any way.

Well the truth there is that it was either trick photography and the wonders of Hollywood, or they had been tranquilised. Cats are notoriously hydrophobic and Amber was no different. However, at this stage, I was under the misguided impression that since she was so young, she might well take it in her stride and realise as soon as the warm waters began rinsing away those blood-sucking parasites, it actually felt good.

Dream on, buster.

Regardless of how she was going to take it, I took her upstairs to the bathroom feeling a little like Androcles - with a very small lion. We had thought about giving her her treatment in the kitchen where it was warm and the surroundings familiar, but once we'd read the instructions on the flea shampoo and the fact she was going to have to sit around for five minutes before being rinsed off, perhaps the bath was the best place to do it.

It seemed such a good plan.

We were not stupid enough to tell Amber what was in store, I mean, even our Rotty was able to spell well enough to know that 'W', 'A', 'L', 'K', 'I', 'E', 'S', meant fun, so we were not about to take it for granted that she wouldn't suss out that she was in for something she wouldn't like - even if that dislike was just out of some cat-only-knows principal.

I gently placed her in the bath and set about arranging the towels and shampoo within easy reach, while her mewling got louder and louder, a noise that worsened as soon as I turned on the tap to run the water until warm.

The agitation clearly showed as she tried her damnedest to get out of the bath. I couldn't help laughing. She looked so comical as she slipped and slid around the bath, going star-shaped a couple of times, but at the same time, I could tell she was scared and didn't want to be there, her plaintive cries tugging vigorously at my heart strings.

"It won't take long," I told her as comfortingly as I could, but my words fell on deaf ears.

Regardless of how much discomfort she felt right then, I knew doing it would make her feel a hundred times better. I had to see this through and picked her up, taking the shower and getting her wet for the shampooing stage. As I doused her with the gentle running water, she became even less happy with this than she had been - which isn't saying much, and who can blame her? Despite her tiger-like stripes, it didn't in any way mean she was a water lover.

Clearly, she wasn't one of those.

Worse, she seemed to shrink in size, her normally fluffy coat lying slick against her tiny body, making her look small enough to fit into the eggcup. In her bedraggled state, dripping and looking extremely forlorn, my heart strings were once again tugged - only harder this time. It's really difficult in these situations to believe that what I was doing would be for the best.

I placed her gently in the bottom of the bath, to get the shampoo, making soothing noises and trying my best to placate her, while her big eyes seemed to be imploring me to stop and as soon as I let go, all hell broke loose.

She made her extreme dislike of the bath and my impending plans abundantly clear, by trying even harder to escape, slipping and sliding around and occasionally managing to get her claws into me as I leaned over the bath - which was bloody painful.

"It's alright," I said as soothingly as I could, placing the shower in the bath then turning the water off, thinking that that may calm her.

Clearly, it wasn't alright and my soothing noises were having absolutely no positive effects whatsoever.

Now, not only was she wet, but she was probably thinking that I hated her and was trying to do something nasty - as if dousing her with water wasn't sufficient - but then I think she caught sight of the shampoo bottle and turned from bananas to completely schitzo.

I took the bottle of anti-flea shampoo and read the instructions again, just to make sure I got it right. Meanwhile, Amber's plaintive cries were getting louder and much more insistent. She was also beginning to struggle a lot more and keeping a firm hold of her was nearly impossible.

'... using 1.5 ml per kilogramme of cat ...' said the instructions and I wondered just how I was going to be able to lather up a whole cat with just 0.75 ml of shampoo. In fact, I wondered what 0.75 ml of shampoo looked like, trying to associate less than a fifth of a teaspoon in shampoo terms.

I just used a little spot of shampoo and began lathering the cat, which set her off into an even higher gear. Her howling could possibly have woken the dead and coupled with my own squawks as claws dug into my wrist, the bathroom suddenly became extremely noisy.

At this point I can only say that transmogrification - or in this case, trans-moggy-fication is factual. The normally placid little ball of fluff suddenly transformed into a cross between a set of twenty ninja stars and an out of control chain saw.

The good thing was the dirt that dripped from her fur was astonishing. She may not have been happy, but she was clean.

Worse was to come though, as although she calmed slightly when the rinse cycle was applied, I had to repeat the process, this time with a five minute wait in between the application and the rinse.

As I tried to repeat the process, I have to question the logic in producing flea shampoo for cats that is going to be used by the general public. If it's not difficult enough trying to give a cat a pill or put it into a carrying basket, the concept of giving a cat a bath can't even be considered in the same league - especially not for the average cat owner.

My arms, wrists and hands were systematically being mauled, slashed and generally eviscerated and something that dry, fitted on the palm of my hand had become something else entirely. It was akin to fighting an octopus with a cutthroat razor on the end of each of its tentacles.

Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Probably worse was the way this little beasty made me feel afterwards. I mean, I cut the process time of the shampoo down to three minutes as I simply couldn't take her yowling anymore. I dried her off and went next door into the office to cool off with her wrapped in a towel. She was shaking and I have to confess to wondering whether I had done her irreparable damage - unwittingly, you understand.

The next day

Now this was a complete turnaround.

Prior to being given her bath or shower, she was itchy, which resulted in almost constant biting at herself. The day after, this had all but gone. She was bouncy, soft and gentle, displaying those typical behavioural patterns one normally sees in kittens. 

Since then, it has been like owning a different cat: one that almost constantly has us in stitches thanks to her exploits.

The shampooing did the trick, but I really wouldn't recommend it.