I wouldn’t exactly call myself a cat person. Karen and I have never lived in a house with a cat. Dogs yes. Cats no. However, Rachel and Tibu and Nikki have had or still do have cats. They are fond of the felines. They are catty people. They are kind to kitties. You get the idea.

Last time, you may remember that Yasmin commented on the number of stray cats around here. The first night, we spotted one running around the roof of the covered area in the garden. It wasn’t long before we realised that she was a mum and had two little kittens. Now, I’m not normally one that goes gooey eyed over little kittens. But these are gorgeous. We have called the mum Cleo because she looks like a sphinx. One of them has a really stripey face and so I think she looks like Tigger and the other one is the smaller, so probably younger and a spare so we’ll call her Harry.

They’re not daft, these cats. They are probably being fed by Yasmin 100 yards down the road, but when they came here, Tibu immediately fed them some of the tuna which we bought for the lunchtime salad. The longer we stay here the more they are getting used to us. To the point that now they come and sit next to us, usually when we’re eating, but sometimes it would appear just to be near us and be sociable.

They also meow. According to Nikki, the only time a cat meows is to communicate with a human. They don’t meow to each other. Which makes me think that cats must have no language. Imagine that, a species where they don’t talk to each other but seem to be able to understand each other. Perhaps they are telepathic.

This feeding is a regular occurrence, and so we have taken to buying cat food (it’s a lot cheaper than feeding them tuna). The only downside is that we had forgotten that with them being so used to us, when we leave the door open to the villa, they do tend to go in. I walked in the other day and mother and one of the kittens came flying out, and as I went into the kitchen, I saw the smallest kitten scrambling around on the floor.

Desperate to make a quick exit, she launched herself at the door with the full length window in it, presumably assuming it was open. Needless to say that she bounced back off it, landed on the floor and slid back to where she started. I tried to usher her out in a kind and humane way, but part of me wanted to burst out laughing, as it was exactly the sort of thing that you would see the minions doing.

(On the subject of the minions, with the new Despicable Me movie being out, I have seen a lot of minions clips. The thing is, I love the minions. They just make me laugh. I do think that they are direct descendants of the Three Stooges. Think about it, there are three main characters; they go down in height; they get progressively more stupid the smaller they get. They are the Three Stooges for the 21st century… but funny. I think there’s a thesis in this. If anybody’s willing to pay me to do an MA in minion studies, I’m your man. I reckon I can even trace a line from the minions back to Chaucer. Give me a shout if you want me to do this. To be honest I could do with the work).

So,we are the house with three cats. For the time being. The other night quite late on, the three of them appeared and came round the corner to see us as we were sat out having drinks on the terrace. And then a fourth one appeared, and this one looked quite a lot bigger. We think Dad may have appeared now.

Alternatively, these cats may not be able to talk to each other, but I do fear that they may be telepathically letting the cats that Yasmin is feeding know about us, and before long we could be running a cattery for the entire village.

PS we were out today and saw this graffiti. It seemed quite appropriate!