Cat owner counting cost of pet's freedom

As the cat flap clatters (and try saying that after a few) tonight signalling your companion feline’s departure on his nocturnal peregrinations, be grateful that you live in a country where cats are still accorded the privilege of wandering where they will, writes Adam Sherlock.

- Adam Sherlock

One where the only attendant risk of your furry charge patrolling the neighbourhood is that it will return with a dead mouse to be deposited proudly on the kitchen floor or, worse, with a still-living one which will provide it with endless hours of amusement before the tiny victim finally succumbs from terror and shock.

Be grateful that, by and large, cats are generally tolerated and accepted as recognising no particular boundaries, despite the occasional nuisance they may occasion to others.

‘And spare a thought, if you will, for Dominique Valdés, of whom you will not have heard but who resides in the community of Agde, once a tiny fishing village on the Mediterranean coast not far from Montpellier but now a somewhat hideously developed resort favoured - at least until climate change began to make it too unbearably hot in summer - by retirees from further north.