Felicity the cat may not be very clever but she has her future all mapped out. She wants to do her “A Levels” twice, have a gap year, go to university, do the first year again (in case she doesn’t feel confident that she understood everything), perhaps change direction from social science to the performing arts, which will stand her in good stead for doing a three weeks fitness teaching course (costing £1,000) when she drops out from the performing arts course; ultimately, she intends to work at Tescos in Exeter because it’s far enough away from Dawlish not to expect to be seen by snooty friends.

Flea, as we call her affectionately, was slightly worried until her “Gwanny Porch” came over for lunch the other day. You see Flea is nearly twenty and still can’t read – she isn’t as gifted as my sister’s monkey called Andy – and she admitted to her granny that she was afraid that she might not get into school, let alone university. Typical Granny Porch became quite cross when Flea sat on her lap for a cuddle and complained of being depressed…

“What utter nonsense,” Granny said with authority, “everybody knows that anybody can get into university nowadays!”

Not being very bright, our Flea didn’t know that… but now she does and she’s looking forward to many years of the student life. Flea is intelligent enough to anticipate that they will be “the best years of my life, so long as I get into a university at least two hundred miles away from home!”