Stop me if you've heard this before won't you, but it is a fact that we do have a pet or two at Curnow Towers. I only mention this because, having been on holiday last week and finally remembered to borrow (and then to read) my Mum's copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" I had every intention of regaling you this week with my thoughts on that particular topic. Well, either that or my family's strange obsession with washing. But this past week has been one of some drama and emotion in the 'bundles of fluff' department, with the result that this column has ended up being 'a change from our published schedule'. Incidentally, I toyed with the idea of calling this week's assorted ramblings "Beings Animalculus" because it would have allowed me to combine my twin passions of Gilbert & Sullivan, and being pretentious. In the end however, the temptation to name it after probably the worst ever episode of "Blake's 7" proved too much for me.

I've just been re-reading my previous newsflash on the subject of our baby gerbils, and I see that I said we had four. I don't know whether another one popped out after I'd written that, or whether (which is perhaps more likely) I just didn't bother counting, but we did in fact have five little gerbils, at least originally. One of them turned out to be the clichéd runt of the litter, and being much smaller than his four siblings didn't last all that long.

As with many other animals, gerbil babies (sorry, I still haven't looked up the correct word) are born with their eyes clamped firmly shut, and only open them later on. I can sympathise with this, and indeed am pretty similar myself in the morning. After three weeks (the gerbillettes are five weeks old now) all but one of the remaining four had opened their eyes. The fourth's, however, remained steadfastly closed, and as a result we took 'Blinky' (as I like to call him) to the vets. The conclusion, after a little bit of a rummage around by a fully-qualified vet who looked about twelve, seems to be either that Blinky was born with very small eyes which are of no practical use to him, or that he was actually born without any eyes at all.

Before anybody asks whether this might be a moralistic tale on the perils of inbreeding, no the gerbil parents are NOT related - I know that we live in the countryside, but even here that sort of 'cousin-marrying' thing has been frowned on since... well, for months now. However, with the every trusty Internet never far from hand (I used the IMDb to look up Ann Tirard from Doctor Who's wonderful "The Ribos Operation" last night, but she turned out to not in fact be the same actress as had been playing some batty old woman in "NYPD Blue" recently - ah well, wrong again) my wife had already registered on a website aimed at animal-loving folk. The 'Small&Furries' site (no I'm afraid I didn't make up that name) is a Message Board for those people who don't like Doctor Who, but instead prefer to spend their time discussing all creatures great and small. So instead of elevated intellectual discussions about whether the 1996 TV Movie is canon, or what gruesome ways Adric could have died, the people of 'Small&Furries' debate which way its best to feed a gerbil, and whether Komodo Dragons make good pets. Consequently, even before our visit to the vets (we do seem to be popping in there quite a lot lately, and yet they still haven't given me a personalised parking space) my wife had been discussing poor Blinky on-line, and in fact somebody had already floated the idea that he was born sans eyes.

Of course, the trouble with the Internet is that you can't really be sure who you're talking to. For all you know, I might not be the sane, well-balanced idiot that I appear and could easily be a chain-smoking Scandinavian lumberjack sending in these fictional missives from a log cabin somewhere in the Nordic, Fjordic countries. However, leaving my potential Viking origins aside, what I'm getting at is that when you're dealing with people on line it's sometimes difficult to tell the experts from the idiots. When you're in a pub, for example, and somebody's telling you how they used to be in the SAS, or why Sven Goran Erikkson is an idiot for abandoning the 3-3-4 formation, or why Neil Armstrong didn't really go to the moon at all, you can usually assess the level of reliability of the information from the person giving it. On the net it's much harder to determine whether the person telling you with confidence that gerbils can be born without eyes is qualified to make the claim, or is in fact only slightly more evolved than a gerbil themselves.

Anyway, the upshot of course is that we will have to keep 'Blinky'. So far, my other half and my other, other half - well, my other two-thirds then, aren't having much luck with their gerbil-breeding programme. Of five born, we've got one deceased, one blind, and for that matter the mother should, in theory, have become pregnant and given birth again by now. Maybe after the first lot she told her husband to keep his distance. Ah, so different, yet so like us in many ways...

As for 'Blinky' he's cute enough. My wife and daughter have christened him (on the perhaps not unreasonable grounds that my name for him is a bit daft) Kamikaze. The reason for this is that when they let them out of the cage, he will quite happily wander near the edge of the table. They seem to think that demonstrates his fearless, devil-may-care reckless streak; whereas to my simple mind it's just further proof that the silly fool is blind as a bat. Well, either that or he's half-lemming on his mother's side...

So much for the gerbils then. What else has been happening on the animal front chez Curnow? Well, somehow cats always seem to be the ones that attract most drama, and this week has seen no exception to that rule. One of our near-neighbours (up the road and just around the bend - er, that's where they live, not a comment on their mental health) came round on Sunday night with the news that their 'fat cat' had given birth a week ago, and that they now had five lovely kittens who were looking for homes... Yes, yes, I'm sure you're all well ahead of me on this one. Some of the kittens had already been assigned, but they still had two that weren't spoken for, and of course my wife and daughter duly 'signed us up' for them. At a rough estimate it'll be another six or so weeks before they're weaned, and ready to move in with us.

However... One of the two kittens somehow or other ended up with its tail caught in the wardrobe door. Not choosing outfits, I hasten to add; the mother cat and her five little kittens are currently lodging in my neighbour's wardrobe. Another trip to the vet was this time less reassuring, with the poor little thing being booked in for surgery the following day to have most of her tail removed. Alas, when it came to it, the vet found that it was a more serious break than he had first thought, and... well, to cut a long and not very funny story short the poor thing was put down on Tuesday morning.

My wife had forewarned our daughter the night before the op that it might not go well, what with the kitten being so young. By this time unfortunately the kitten had been given a name (Cookie - names aren't really my daughter's best thing I'm afraid) and consequently just the thought that poor little Cookie might not make it, gave us a bedtime full of tears. You can probably guess that we had another bucket load the following night, when it was clear that Cookie hadn't made it.

My daughter, nevertheless, was strangely interested in the fact of the kitten's demise, quite separate from being upset. The timing of appointments was such that we picked up Cookie's body the same time that we took 'Blinky' in to be looked at. The kitten was wrapped up and in a box, of course, but my little one looked inside (braver than me I have to admit, since I didn't) and kept musing over and over about how very cold the body was.

Three days later and I think she's got over the shock of it, and there are, as it happens, still two kittens up for grabs. One had previously been 'spoken for' but the gentleman in question changed his mind on the subject, specifically so that my daughter could still have two. This 'extra' one is all black apparently, and I suggested the name Spot. Hmm, maybe names aren't my thing either. At the moment Spot (or whatever) and the other one (Tigger) are still at the weaning stage, and the high-pitched mewing stage, but they'll probably be with us sometime near the end of May. In the meantime, our neighbours have buried little Cookie in their garden, and although I don't expect my daughter will cry over her again, I strongly suspect that the name will be mentioned from time to time. Like an elephant (and no, that's one animal we don't have) my littl'un never forgets...

And so the Trevor McDonald in me surfaces as I say, And Finally... Rats! Oh yes. You may recall, noble reader, that we are down to just the one now. Oddly enough, and flying in the face of all logic (and quite possibly all that's holy as well) I find my attitude towards our rodent friend has changed. There is something of the air of a Miss Havesham about the one remaining Rat (Julie), left as she is to her own devices. For whatever reason the rats we had were never the most cuddly of creatures, with the result that now she's on her own she doesn't like to be handled. Fed, yes, and she will happily snatch biscuits (my daughter endearingly tells anybody who will listen that the rat's favourite type is "Hobber-Nobbers") or Cheerios or Shreddies straight from your hand - or failing that, she'll happily just snatch your hand.

You can tell that I'm softening you up for a shock, can't you, with this genial talk of how endearing rattus rattus can be. Well, another of our neighbours (actually the other half of an ex-girlfriend of mine, who lives only three doors down from us, but you don't need to know that, this isn't "The Archers") mentioned to my wife that one of his work colleagues had some baby rats to get rid of. That's 'get rid of' in the sense of finding homes, I hasten to add, not in the 'put them in a bag and drown them' sense. Anyway, my other two-thirds readily offered our house as a suitable home for two more of these, er, delightful creatures. Again, they're not yet weaned, so they haven't arrived yet. Neither has their cage, although we are going to collect it next week - my wife suggested putting them in the current rat's cage, which is obviously big enough for two, and relocating Julie rat to a smaller one. But I, in a moment of madness (or "mental aberration" as one of my German teachers once commented on a particularly big mistake in an essay) stood up for Julie rat, saying that the shock of the move might kill the poor thing. Of course, if my Mum had been here she'd probably have considered that to be a plan with no drawbacks. But that possibility aside, we have decided on leaving Miss Havesham to live out the rest of her life where she is now, and get a new cage for the new rats.

I won't say rats are cuddly, but they are, I suppose, fairly self-sufficient pets. Unlike the gerbils and cats they don't run up vets bills of any sort. In fact, rats don't as a rule tend to get anything much in the way of illness - well, with the exception of Weils Disease and the Bubonic Plague, that is, but even ikkle fwuffy bunny rabbits get myxamatosis so nobody's perfect. In fact the only thing that weighs against them, although admittedly it is quite a persuasive argument, is the fact that THEY ARE RATS!!! So on the grounds that they are economical little devils I, in my slightly hysterical way, like to think that acquiring two new rats is a way of balancing the books, in that we can be assured that here at least are two animals that will only ever cost us the price of a cage, some rat food, and maybe, as a special treat, a packet or two of Hobber-Nobbers.

And anyway, it could be a lot worse. I was talking to a customer at work today, and she keeps snakes. Five of them. Can you imagine having one snake, let alone five?

And, just in case my wife should be reading this - no. Definitely not. No way. Not now. Not ever.