8. Cartoon Cats

Usually black and white. And they often have an amusing speech impediment. If your cat can read newspapers, it is a Cartoon cat. If it can get hold of a stick of dynamite by simply reaching off screen, it is a Cartoon cat. If it wears a bowtie, it's a Cartoon cat. If, when it starts to run, its legs pinwheel in the air for a humorous few seconds making binka-binka-binka noises, it is a Cartoon cat. If you are still uncertain, check to see whether the people next door have a bulldog called Butch who has spikes on his collar and is usually to be found dozing outside his kennel. If they have, you'll know what kind of cat you've got.

9. The Sub-Post Office Cat

A sub-species of Factory cat. Can be any colour in theory, are almost always black and white in fact. The significant characteristic of this breed is an ability to spread out when asleep, like a rubber bag full of mercury. They're gradually fading out, made redundant by the loss of the very shops they tended to inhabit and also by the Public Health laws, which are not drafted to accommodate the kind of animal that considers its natural role in life to go to sleep on a pile of sugar bags. I used to be taken into a shop where a Sub-Post Office cat used to sleep in the dog biscuit sack. You'd reach in to pinch a bikkie and there'd be all this fur. No one seemed to mind. (Whatever happened to those dog biscuits? They were real dog biscuits, not the anaemic things you get in boxes today; they were red and green and black and came in various interesting shapes. The black ones tasted of charcoal. That's modern times for you. Our grandparents had oil lamps and gas lights to look back to, we've got dog biscuits. Even the nostalgia isn't what it was.)

10. Travelling Cats

Oscar's 2,000 Mile Purr-fect Trip says the heading in the local paper. Or something like that. At least once every year. In every local paper. It's a regular, like “Row Over Civic Site” or “Storm As Schools Probe Looms”.