Once upon a time there was a crazy old person living alone in a small house down by the river.

The house was old, but the location was spectacular: the old lady's relatives tormented one another speculating on what the site would fetch on the open market.

The more ruthless of them began to plot the old lady's demise, wondering about the possibilities of removing her.

How difficult could it be, when the mad old stoat didn't know what day of the week it was, talked politics to her cat and sometimes wore two hats, one on top of the other, when it wasn't even cold?

What they hadn't allowed for was the innate cunning of the really old, who, despite being totally gaga, still recognise a threat, and ask questions like "That's a lovely new footbridge, my dears, would you show me how safe it is to walk across?

So the spinsters plotted while the old lady blissfully passed her time talking to her cat, cooking wonderful meals, and lived her best life oblivious to all the machinations around her.

The cat was completely apolitical, but it knew who controlled the can opener, so it mewed occasionally, as if agreeing with her political grumbles, and thus enjoyed life immensely.

As has often been observed, a cat is not a dog: they are entirely self-centred, and know not only which side of their bread is buttered but also how much butter has been applied and, crucially, by whom.

It is the last bit of this piece of knowledge that makes some cats fierce protectors of the person wielding the can opener and making them ferocious attack cats.

So the old lady's cat lay in wait each night, ready for the dangerous intruder that would threaten its comfortable existence; and it armed itself with a small rocket-propelled grenade it had run up out of empty cat-food tins and the old lady's second-best false teeth.

The explosive charge knocked up from ordinary kitchen ingredients and a vivid feline imagination was more than a little unstable, but as long as the cat didn't drop it, or have it kicked by a clumsy intruder, it could be relied on to do the job if necessary.

Unfortunately, the intruder who came calling was indeed clumsy.

The device detonated with spectacular and, at least to the cat, most satisfying results.

The intruder was never formally identified, but one of the old lady's distant cousins, a grasping avaricious bastard who had always felt he should get the house when she died, was never seen again, which meant the others also became a little more circumspect in their plotting to get rid of the crazy cat lady.

All the while, down the street, a puppy frolicked and jumped and ran and wagged her tail - she observed the cunning cat and determined she would one day be a devious dog.