Our Mam was severely asthmatic, so animals were always problematic as kids. More than that though, she hated animals. So much so, that when my Dad brought an injured dog home that he’d found in a lay-by, she told him to get it out of the house. She had no compassion that woman.

Us kids put huge pressure on her though, and she eventually relented by letting us have rabbits in the shed. Mine was called Blacky, and I loved it. Every day I’d go into the fields to pick it fresh dandelions to eat and I loved to take it out and stroke it. After a couple of months however, rats were spotted in the vicinity and that was that. They had to go. A man came to take them away, and Dad laughingly told me they were going to be necked and eaten in a pie. At least, I think he was joking, but it traumatised me.

We got a parrot next, as a way of compensating for our rabbit-caused, pie-induced, trauma. That lasted a few months before Mam said it had to go as it was ‘getting on her chest’. I mean, she had a big bosom, my Mam, but I never saw the parrot on it, so that was a mystery. Anyway, it was a bloody noisy thing, and I always felt it was awful that it was locked up in a cage all day. It was cool with the local kids though, and I bragged about us having a parrot for years.

Yet, despite every piece of loathing our Mam had for animals, and in the face of all the evidence that birds aggravated her asthma, she bought a budgie when I was about 15. Seb was a little cracker. She taught it to talk and it could say loads of words really clearly. None of them were particularly insightful, or suggested it had the power of intelligent thought though. It said ‘cup of tea’, and ‘pretty boy’, repeatedly on loop, throughout all your favourite shows and during sensitive moments such as when when I was trying to get it on with a girlfriend, which wasn’t exactly conducive to my amorous intentions. Anyway, my brother went out to the bin one day with it on his shoulder and it flew off, never to be seen again.

As an adult, I’ve owned many dogs, several cats, and a marine aquarium with exotic fish. Most of them were more hassle than they were worth. I mean, they were lovely enough, but on balance, they cost a lot, shit a lot, and took a lot of looking after.

One pet I had was entirely different though. A cross-bred sheep dog called Zoe. Bought for a fiver from a pet shop, Zoe became my constant companion. We were welded together in a symbiotic relationship that was purely joyful. She never left my side, went everywhere with me and she was just so gentle and intelligent. I swear that dog could talk to me and I to her. She died of old age, and when I got her put to sleep at the vets, it broke my heart. I still get emotional about it now, twenty years later. I hope that, if there is a heaven, she’ll be waiting there for me. Excitedly wagging her tail for us to go for a walk. And, if I had a tail, I’d wag it too.