Our cat care columnist, Bexley-based pet behaviourist Pauline Dewberry, who runs the website www.thedailymews.com, writes about some of the surprises you can expect to receive when you share your home with a feline friend.

The trouble with the kind of gifts that your kitten or cat will bring you from time to time is that they don’t come with the receipt. You can’t take them back and exchange them for something more useful.

How do you react when presented with a dead mouse? Natural responses range from screaming and running out of the house to the classic standing on a chair demanding that little Fluffy removes the deceased mouse at once.

Little Fluffy, it must be said, will wonder what in heaven’s name is the matter with you. He’s brought you a gift, something for your lunch or dinner – and knowing that we human beings are terrible at hunting, he’s gone out of his way to bring you a lovely surprise.

And this is how you react – by screaming?

Ollie, one of my lovely ginger cats (I had seven gingers at one time) was a prolific mouser. It was nothing for him to bring in two or three A NIGHT. Most of the time, I’d be able to rescue them using a plastic container, reserved purely for mouse-rescuing purposes, and I’d take them back into the garden and try to put them where he couldn’t find them.

One night, he came in for the third time with a mouse. The mouse looked very fed-up and I thought I recognised him. I apologised to him as I scooped him up in the Mouse Catcher and released him into my neighbour’s garden, wishing him god speed and a long and uneventful life.

Sometimes, when I got up in the mornings, I’d come downstairs to find a couple of the cats lined up by the Welsh dresser, paws in action trying to access something that was lurking under it. Or the cooker. I have a 3’ ruler which I use at these times. I position the Mouse Catcher near an exit point of the dresser and carefully move the ruler from side to side, screaming involuntarily when the mouse makes a mad dash for the cooker, completely neglecting to make use of the Mouse Catcher.

The cats and I run to the cooker, the Mouse Catcher is put in place and we repeat the process. If the mouse refuses to play the game, I’m forced to have my breakfast at the dining room table with my head on backwards watching to see if the mouse makes a bid for freedom.

The cats, meanwhile, have got bored and retired to their preferred snooze spots while I’m left knowing there’s a live mouse loose in the house.