Substitute pets

Lying across the top of my piano is one of the few things I requested from my grandmother's estate, a draught excluder in the form of a (very elongated) cat. Wilfred - yes, he has a name - sits there, like any real cat, completely oblivious to his surroundings.

There was a new addition to the flat on Friday. I was out with Paul when something caught my eye in a shop window: a dog made of bronzed metal, its body a flattened cone with the tip cut off, with thick wire coiled around each end for its legs. Best of all, its head and tail are on springs ...

That said, having a metallic dog is frankly ludicrous so he had to have an equally ludicrous name: Fred.