I understand that it has been scientifically proven that stroking a cat can lower your blood pressure. What the scientists don’t say, however, is that it could very well be the same cat that sends your blood pressure rocketing in the first place.

Let me set the scene. Five o’clock on a sunny August morning. The sun is streaming in through the open curtains, the sky is a brilliant Mediterranean blue and outside birds are singing in the trees.

On waking up, eyes slowly began to focus on the open bedroom window and the small black shape, wobbling along the very narrow edge. Precariously she placed one paw in front of the other, as she tried, using all her feline ingenuity, to work out how to reach the tweeting house martin chicks in their nest, which was tucked neatly away in the apex.

Moving quickly on a morning is not usually my forte, however, sometimes I even amaze myself and in a split second, despite my semi-conscious state, I managed to rescue the errant feline before she plunged to what would surely have been certain death.

Not that anyone else was impressed. The dogs didn’t wake up and as for the damsel in very near distress, with a swish of her tail she stalked out of the bedroom, muttering something about “spoiling all her fun” as she disappeared along the landing.

Her sister, the lady Pandora, was still stretched out languidly across the foot of the bed at this point, she doesn’t like to exert herself too early in the day. Night time, on the other hand, is a very different matter. Now, I don’t like my cats to be out after dark, but they actively disagree. Happy to snooze for most of the day on my bed, the sofa, or the bean bag in the kitchen, at dusk some primeval instinct awakens.

The hours of darkness, in my eyes, are quite simply fraught with danger, but a couple of nights ago despite my best efforts, just before bedtime the lady Pandora managed to slip out and skipped across the lawn. How pretty she looked chasing moths in the moonlight, my dancing, pirouetting “will o’ the wisp”. Darting across to the fence she stopped, momentarily glancing backwards, inviting me to give chase, before leaping to the top of the 6ft gates and dropping down into the road on the other side. With that sinking feeling born of futility, I felt that I had at least to try to make an effort to retrieve her.

Outside, at the end of the cul-de-sac I watched as she skipped sideways, twirling and cavorting in a mad moonlit dance, dashing in and out between parked cars, leaping on leaves and other midnight treasures blown about by the night breeze.

Silently, with knees bent, I decided to creep along the kerbside next to the row of parked cars, in an effort to catch her unaware.

Eventually, my patience paid off and slinking along the side of one car, I managed to reach out and grab her just as she was about to skip past.

Complaining loudly, Pandora wriggled and protested in my arms and it was only then, as I stood up next to the car window that I came face-to-face with the two occupants inside, staring back with what can only be described as a mixture of disbelief and horrified surprise.

Smiling nervously, clutching my cat, I retreated back into the anonymity of my own garden, leaving the bewildered occupants of the car mulling over the antics of the crazy cat lady who has recently moved into the house on the corner.