At this point in time I have three cats - Maude, Mitzy and Homer.

I had four until recently. The fourth was a cat who was renamed ‘Wormie’ by me.

Wormie was a cat who had been a beloved pet and who had then become an un-beloved pet.

She was a rescue cat like none I had ever experienced. Handed from one insensitive human to another. She had lived a exclusively indoor life for her first seven years or so. But then she had suddenly been discarded - handed over to strangers and forced to live outside at an unfamiliar home with humans who had no interest in her. She had no bed, no comforts and no safe place. She was terrorised by dogs. The fools who took her in joked that they fed her dog biscuits. They did not care when she vanished.

Several months later when Wormie reappeared she was so malnourished that it hurt her to be touched. She was starving, full of worms and terrified. The fools seemed oblivious and laughed telling me how she would follow them around the house from window to window meowing.

I didnt laugh. I saw a creature begging for help.

That day I took Wormie home.

I will never ever forget the screams that cat emitted when she first arrived. It made me cry.

I set her up in a downstairs bedroom and there she stayed. She did not leave that room for months.

Gradually, in her safe space, she gained confidence. She would hunker down into the cushions making a cat nest. She put on weight and she was transformed.

As time passed she ventured out and would start exploring the house a little. Later still she would sneak upstairs and curl up on the couch beside me at night.

She never went outside. Not ever.

I introduced my dogs to Wormie one day, allowing them to meet her in her bedroom (my step daughter had selflessly given up this bedroom - it was now Wormie’s room). Four dogs wandered in to see who had moved in. I stood close by in case of any problems.

All the dogs were gentle and interested but it became apparent that Monty and Wormie had known each other in a previous life. They had an instant connection. Wormie jumped from the bed to the floor. Monty licked her head and Wormie rubbed herself on this dog that she had never met before. It was beyond comprehension and it was beautiful.

We loved you Wormie. And you deserved better.

Wormie died a year later after an embolism paralysed her from the waist down.