My week off work started with a bit of a drama when Calypso, one of our cats, went missing.

She looks like a chocolate box cat with long fluffy black and white fur and a sweet little face.

Unfortunately she is a bit of a predator, hunting and catching all sorts of feathered prey, which she usually brings home and deposits under daughter's bed.

I spring-cleaned daughter's room, which is up in the attic, and left her dormer window open.

Calypso, who must have been lurking in a corner, decided to go on to the roof and procure herself a lunch of newly-hatched seagulls from the nest on next door's chimney pot.

The first we knew she was missing was when she didn't come home for her evening meal. I popped to the corner shop at 10pm and thought I heard a cat miaowing but couldn't see one.

As I returned, the wailing got more plaintive and I looked up to see her perched on the ridge of a roof some ten houses from ours.

We spent the next hour calling her but she didn't come back, so poor daughter spent the night in a freezing room because we had to leave the window open, just in case.

The next morning him indoors and I spent two hours searching the roofs with binoculars while we waited for the neighbours to complain about our newly-acquired voyeuristic habits.

We decided the cat may have either fallen or been chased off the roof by the adult gulls.

Worried she may be lying injured in someone's back garden, daughter and I put flyers through everyone's front door, asking them to search. Sadly, we didn't hear anything.

By the next night we were really worried. However, as we returned from the dog's training class, daughter and I heard frantic calling from the rooftops again.

Looking up, we could see one very scared cat flattened to the same roof I had seen her on previously.

After half an hour of coaxing, it became apparent she wasn't intending to go anywhere. I think she must have been attacked by some justifiably irate parent gulls and didn't dare return the way she'd come.

In the end, him indoors had to get the ladder and climb up to the roof ,with the aid of some very helpful and nice neighbours, and carry her down.

She was obviously traumatised and so grateful to be rescued that we couldn't tell her off. She was also starving and polished off two tins of tuna.

Daughter's bedroom door and window are now staying firmly closed to Calypso.

Him indoors gained the temporary status of 'hero' and was rewarded with a steak dinner, in order to stop him kicking the cat.