I SAW a kingfisher at the weekend; a flash of iridescent blue skimming just above the surface of the river; the last thing that I expected to see in the centre of Bath, surrounded by Christmas shoppers.

At home, prior to leaving for my weekend break, the dogs had been blissfully oblivious to all my travelling preparations. The same cannot be said for the cats. Eyes narrowed with suspicion when the weekend case came out of the wardrobe.

Distraction techniques immediately came to the fore, with the girls rolling around on the bed looking cute. Neatly stacked, freshly ironed clothes became the next target and when I came back from the bathroom, the girls were already in situ.

Pandora had managed to curl up and fall instantly asleep on my jeans, while Teddi was still busy rearranging the other pile of weekend attire. Obviously they both felt that the casual, crumpled look was much more in keeping with my style.

To cover my weekend away, I had enlisted the services of a house sitter. Kerry, a lovely lady who has helped me out in the past, was greeted euphorically by the Cavaliers when she arrived. The cats, on the other hand, were conspicuous by their absence.

Throughout the whole weekend, I’m happy to say that I received regular updates and a variety of photographs. There were pictures of George the chinchilla in his bath, numerous photos of everyone flaked out on the sofa, one of Jennifer washing Brigadier’s face after tea and one of a sleepy Izzy who had pinched Kerry’s seat when she went to make a drink. You can always rely on my gang not to stand on ceremony and to make sure everyone feels at home.

Couldn’t help but notice midst all the photographs, though, that Teddi my little diva of a puss cat was nowhere to be seen. Now this particular lady is always one to be more than a little affronted whenever I do go away, so I was reassured to receive the following text on Saturday morning.

"Morning. We are all great and we all slept on the bed together, (six of us) and by gum can’t Izzy snore?’ The reference to "six" made me happy, although I did feel for poor Kerry sandwiched in between that lot.

When I am at home, the dogs sleep on their own cushions on the bedroom floor and the cats prefer the bed in what is now, my granddaughters’ room, but maybe they thought Kerry needed company, who knows? I couldn’t help but smile, picturing the scene, as she told me how at one point the cats were sat up, staring down at my "snorey" sleeping beauty as if to say "for goodness sake, stop that noise!"

One thing that I do always look forward to when I have been away is the wildly, rapturous reception from the dogs on my return. So much barking, so much tail wagging and only one pair of arms to cuddle everyone with.

The cats, on the other hand, are much more restrained and claim not to be fussed either way. After all, they’d had food on demand all weekend, they’d got to sleep on a bed in the dog’s domain; what was there not to like?

So all in all, I think we all enjoyed a pretty good weekend. I got to visit an original Roman bath, with steam rising, amazingly, from the naturally heated water as it surfaced directly from the bowels of the earth.

I also got to try a glass of real Bath spa water, favoured for its beneficial mineral properties (if not its flavour), throughout history. But as I say, it is also nice to come home and what was even better this morning, was to be woken by a small black paw tapping my hand.

Now I am aware that I had overslept and yes, it was actually passed breakfast time, but it was still good to know that Miss Teddi is prepared to let bygones be bygones...on this occasion.