I wish my cats were dead

I have three pet cats and I really hate them all. They used to be called Cinders, Smudge and Marmalade although I've recently re-christened them Scratchy, Sneezy and Stinky in honour of the ailments they inflict on my family and me.

Stinky is the worst. She had a thyroid problem. This means that her metabolism is in constant overdrive resulting in her depositing at least three squashy mounds of the foulest smelling faeces you could possibly imagine in her litter tray in the basement every day.

In a tray in the basement, I hear you say - at least she's dumping in the proper place. Well, that's true. Except when she misses and it runs all down the edge or when the tray is on the full side and she goes on the floor behind the tumble dryer instead and I have to retrieve the soft, mushy, retch-inducing substance using a handful of kitchen towel, crawling into the space on my hands and knees.

Then there's Sneezy. He mostly just loafs around the place until, that is, I'm sitting reading with my children at their bedtime. Then, with clockwork regularity, he appears at my side and claws - literally claws - at my arm for attention. When this is denied, he sneezes all over me and stalks off before returning five minutes later to inflict the same torture again.

Finally, Scratchy. She gets her name due to her allergy to fleas. Every morning, as soon I've settled at my keyboard to resume composing superior popular fiction, she leaps on to my desk, sprawls scabbily underneath the light of my anglepoise lamp and as soon as my fingers go to my pristine Mac mouse, begins nuzzling my hand with a persistence that borders on aggression. Sometimes she gets up and blithely strolls across the keyboard. Entire potentially award-winning paragraphs have been lost to posterity due to this.

[Read on at The Guardian]