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We took Hunter and Ralph to the vet for their 12 month / 730 meal service this week. This is always somewhat traumatic as, cloistered house cats that they are, they find the noise and bustle of the outside world rather terrifying. Both started doing that honking emergency call that scared kittens do (it's horrible - like a feline air raid siren) and Ralph hid himself under a blanket, peeking out only when he spotted Hunter in the other cat carrier.

Fortunately both are doing fine and Ralph, who was a bit porky last time, has shed a whole Kilogram, putting him back at his ideal weight. Hunter looks bigger but, as the vet put it, that's just the fluff - he's actually a size zero.

Hunter and Ralph, July 2006:

Hunter and Ralph, July 2008:

Complete photographic history here.

And Ralph has all the toys.

Spent a good two hours this weekend doing battle against the fluff. When we first got the cats, we had, for various reasons, two hoovers: an Oreck (the hot rod of hoovers: huge engine, design straight from the 1950s, sounds like the end of the world, won't go around corners) and our old Electrolux (nondescript modern design). Both seemed to work OK - we'd push them around from time to time, generating a lot of noise and turning the carpets a bit whiter, then feel better about not having hoovered for three weeks previously. After taking in Hunter and Ralph, though, we began to notice small grey tumbleweeds of fluff drifting around the edges of the room. Yuck. After much prevarication, we spent the best part of £200 on this Dyson and a turbine head (makes a racket, spins around, digs hair from carpets).

And my, does it pick up fluff. Dirty grey heaps of it.

The first time we used it, the Dyson's plastic dust box thingy soon filled up with big grey, swirling clouds of hair. This was a bit disgusting (after all, we'd been living in this stuff for who knows how long), but also reassuring - at least our expensive purchase was working, and we could get rid of the stuff. Sadly, though, that turned out to be only the first skirmish in an ongoing war. We now have to hoover almost religiously every week (I know that some people would do this anyway, but I'm lazy, so it's a shock to the system) and it still picks up great big billious clouds of what looks like largely Hunter fluff - as far as I can tell he sheds his own volume in hair roughly every fortnight.

So, a recommendation or two: if you have a cat, buy a Dyson. I know that they're a horrible symbol of yuppiedom, the adverts are annoying, and the prices are shocking, but they are your last hope when it comes to the removal of cat fluff. Similarly, if you already own a Dyson, buy a cat. You will have justified your purchase of that £200 over-engineered feather duster, and there's nothing so good after a bout of cleaning as sitting down on the sofa and watching the cats saunter over to you, preparing to redistribute their own excess hair in order to keep you busy next weekend. Because, after all, they like to keep you entertained.

The last time we saw her, our vet recommended giving Hunter and Ralph some chicken bones to chew on from time to time - a kind of meaty toothbrush, as it were. On Sunday we happened to have some spare chicken thighs, so we gave this a shot. Ralph growled, hissed, gnawed away and generally had a whale of a time until we threw the bone out. While we were attempting to keep Ralph and his new toy in the kitchen, Hunter quickly and silently somehow managed to ingest the entire thing, bone and all.

This was obviously not the plan. Unaware as to whether or not a cat eating a whopping great bone was a good thing, I turned to the general purpose fountain of all knowledge (internet edition). And what a mistake that was.

Fortunately, there are many, many pages - most on Yahoo Answers - where concerned cat owners have asked the question "are chicken bones safe for a cat to eat". Better still, there are many answers. Unfortunately, they all contradict one another. Some users swear that any chicken bone is a huge health risk. Other owners explain that they feed chicken bones every day with no problems. Some give the (reasonable sounding) advice that raw bones are fine, but cooked ones can break up too easily and cause internal harm. Still others claim that any raw meat is riddled with Salmonella, but that cooked chicken is great pet food.

One person even suggests that occasionally feeding cats KFC is not a troublesome activity. And then there's the brilliantly fuckwitted but surpsisingly common response: "would you eat raw chicken? NO! Then why give it to a cat?". I discussed this one with Ralph one evening over steak, chips and a bottle of red wine and he said "miow", which I think means "if you're not capable of telling the difference between a cat and a person you may have issues".

So, anyhow, I'm still none the wiser. In the end I called the vet, who said that there was no problem as long as Hunter seemed OK. Hunter, as it turned out, seemed perfectly fine for the next 24 hours, and with the exception of a quick furball style vomit the next evening (brilliantly targeted at the sofa) has been eating, prowling and pooping as usual.

In fact, he appears to be thrilled with all the extra attention he's been getting since eating a bone the size of his own head, and would probably try it again in a heartbeat - not that he's going to get the chance. In the meantime I'm incredibly relieved that he seems OK, and will probably stop worrying in six months or so - until then, we'll be sticking to Whiskas.

Furthering their attempts to take over the world, and branching out from previous appearances in magazines published by Dennis, Hunter and Ralph will soon be invading a WH Smiths near you in the CA Ultimate Guide to Easy Website Building. Check them out - and enjoy a special guest appearance by Boris the Myspace Panda - on pages 13 and 14.

Oh, and there's advice on website building, too. Well worth £6, if I say so myself.

A very incomplete list:

• Each cat will roughly double in size in one year. Hopefully this applies to the first year only.
• They will deposit a fine layer of hair over everything to the point where even expensive cyclonic vacuum cleaners are helpless and serve only to mock your inability to ever clean properly again.
• They will steal cake, cheese and olives from your plate, occasionally employing distraction tactics to this end.
• When you cook, they will move to lie in wait for any precious "floor cheese" that may drop from the kitchen counter.
• One of them may even take to licking the olive oil bottle (yuck).
• They will sleep in the kitchen sink, on the hob, and on the desk. Despite allegedly superior intelligence, and some success in other types of cat-training, you will be totally unable to prevent this.
• While you sleep, they will pounce on your head. And feet. And chest. Sometimes they will decide to sit, sphinx-like, on your chest and, while gently crushing you, doze off. Attempts to move them will be futile, as they are persistent.
• If you ever work from home, they will sit on the following items, making even the simplest tasks tricky: your paperwork, the keyboard, your arm, the mouse and the printer. Sometimes they will even attack the cursor and/or caret on the monitor.
• Other things they will sit on: freshly laundered clothes, the oven glove (again, yuck) and your laptop.
• They will eat their own fluff, then vomit furballs. These will be targeted so as to only land on expensive carpet rather than hard floors.
• There will also be poo. It will not, always, be in the right place.
• You will find yourself joining animal charities (plural) - the type that use pictures of wide-eyed puppies in adverts pleading for £2 each month.
• Most worrying of all: when you are at home, and nobody is around, you will talk to the cats. As if they are human. You may even have conversations of a sort. After a while, this will not seem strange to you.
• It's still totally worth getting cats.