Le Château has been awash with visitors this bank holiday weekend, some welcome, some not so much. The welcome ones were 3 delightful human children aged 5, 7 and 9, who gave Louis Catorze heaps of attention and wanted to take him home. (We said yes, then had to reassure the parents when we saw their “Oh God, they’re actually serious” faces.)

The less welcome one appeared under rather different circumstances: the 3 of us were cosied up on the sofa watching a heartwarming comedy about serial killers, and suddenly we heard the distinct and uncomfortably close sound of a cat. When we investigated, we came face to face with Ginger Impinger in our hallway. For a brief moment he and Catorze touched noses and all was quite civilised but, as we followed, the cheeky orange invader ran for the hills.

Now, this is our fault entirely: when the cat flap started malfunctioning months ago we just lazily put it on a manual setting, effectively turning it into a regular non-microchip flap, and just thanked the stars that no other cats were coming in. It turned out that the malfunction was a design fault, so Sureflap sent us a replacement free of charge, but we were still too rubbish and disorganised to install it. And our inefficiency, it seems, is GI’s gain.

I feel bad for him, especially as he is good-natured and doesn’t appear to want any trouble, but I don’t another cat coming into the house. Plus he is unneutered, which makes him more likely to spray and be a nuisance. So I’m refitting that cat flap, even if I have to prise the old one off the wall with my bare hands.