Cathy Hopkins lives in North London with her husband and four cats, Molly, Maisie, Emmylou and Otis.

She spends most of her time locked in a shed at the bottom of the garden pretending to write books but is actually in there listening to music, hippie dancing and talking to her friends on e-mail.

Occasionally she is joined by Molly, the cat who thinks she is a copy-editor and likes to walk all over the keyboard rewriting and deleting any words she doesn’t like.

Maisie, the second cat, was worried that Cathy may have forgotten what it is like to be a teenager, so she does her best to remind her. She does it very well. She ignores everybody and only comes in to sleep, eat and occasionally, wearily say ‘miwhhf’ (this means ‘whatever’ in Catspeak).

Emmylou and Otis are new to the household. So far they are as insane as the older two. Their favourite game is to run from one side of the house to the other as fast as possible, then see if they can fly if they leap high enough off the furniture. This usually happens at three o’clock in the morning and they land on anyone who happens to be asleep at the time.

Apart from that, Cathy has joined the gym and spends more time than is good for her making up excuses as to why she hasn’t got time to go.