THERE is one dramatic member of our family who I think I have previously missed mentioning in this column.

How remiss of me not to have waxed lyrical about the regal puss who makes her presence felt around the home in many subtle and less subtle ways.

I say regal, but she’s a total moggie with very dubious parentage, rescued from a not-so-nice place in 2006.

I had many pets in my life so was determined to get a cat when we bought our first home. I convinced the poor other half, who’d actually never had a pet at all, that it would be good for him.

He was broody but completely naive, and I thought it might get him used to – in a very small way – the burden that comes with being responsible for something.

She would, after all, need feeding, cleaning and all that, and he was also nervous about handling small delicate living beings.

I thought she’d acclimatise him to sharing our space with an animate entity.

We were put through the mill in the early days when, as a kitten out exploring the back garden, she ate something suspect and nearly died, saved only by the swift intervention of the wonderful José Messa – a local celebrity among animal-lovers and owners in town – at Companion Care.

Then, the following month, she ripped her paw open and needed staples.

The worst drama of all came when a big long-haired bully of a neighbouring cat harassed and intimidated her to extreme levels.

This horrible creature was so strong that it broke our catflap off the door on numerous occasions when chasing her into our home. It defecated in our living space, and one night I woke with a start to see it at the door of our bedroom.

Our cat was on my pillow behind my head, making a yowling sound I think would roughly translate as ‘Save me, mummy!’.

There’s never a dull moment, thanks to her nervy, eccentric personality, and she left us in hysterics when she came up with a new plan when we moved to a house where there was no catflap.

To attract attention and to let us know she wanted in, she started jumping up and grabbing the handle, something she still does.

On our old, wooden door, she realised that she could actually scale the whole thing and would spread herself across its top half, clinging on, her whole body visible to us through the glass.

Gobsmacked, we would swing the door open at which point she promptly and elegantly dropped to the floor on all fours, with a swift lick of her paw and a motion which communicated the sentiment ‘job done’.