Princess Teddy and her sisters

Princess Teddy is a tortoiseshell cat in her late teen years. She has a soft and smooth coat of black, white and ginger, all three colours startling and definitive. Her face is black, split by a white stripe down to her nose, with one ginger and one black ear. She has two immaculate and very white back legs, and a white tummy. The rest of her is striped or mottled black and ginger, apart from one white front paw.

She knows that I think she is altogether beautiful and she basks in my approval. She moves like a cat in a cartoon, utterly feminine. She floats on "tippy toes" and arches her back with her tail in the air, bending herself round corners and looking up at me with an expression she knows will get her instant cat crunchies. She has a high pitched miaow and is frequently vocal, especially if I bend down to lift her seemingly weightless little body for a cuddle, although once up, she tolerates the affection with calm. She knows she is regal, every inch of her is of royal blood.

She is frequently to be found - and I do so with irreverence - on a chair under the table cloth descending from my veranda table; or next to a Lladro porcelain statue on an oak table indoors, which is a lady riding side saddle on a dressage horse. Teddy sleeps innocently and with as much elegance next to it.

Her sister, although not from the same litter, could not be more different. I found the two kittens at a local pet shop. Lex is charcoal grey from top to toe but has long Siamese bones and a small, pointed face. She is quiet and unassuming but regales me with sudden affection about once a week, after which she ignores me completely. She dictates her own supper time, out and about on some errand of her own until after eight o'clock in the evening, and some nights she does not appear at all. Teddy is always in or around the house and follows me most places.

Lex has to be respected as she is timid and shadow-like. Teddy puts up with being teased, her expression either astonished or indignant. Lex trusts me completely but her delicate face is wraithlike. If awoken, she stretches out her long charcoal legs and points her toes - like most cats, she spends much of her day asleep.

Besides these teenagers I have Puck, my daughter K's cat originally, who was put into my care when K's two dogs made her life untenable. Puck is a slightly more than middle aged tabby of somewhat limited imagination. Although one can be persuaded that she is slightly stupid she does seem to understand every word. She is ultra affectionate, never happier than when she is leaning against a human.

It took more than a year for Puck to stop swearing at the kittens. They now ignore each other completely but there is no more bad language from Puck, who inhabits my veranda with great faithfulness and never leaves the garden (I often see Teddy or Lex disappearing over the picket fence, tail up).