I WAS talking to someone about moving house when he began to commiserate with me over my inability to settle. “Do you have kids?” he asked. “No.” “Ah, not so bad, then. Moving is hell on kids.”

It is true: moving is hell on kids. I remember, from my childhood, being shunted from a rough part of Nottinghamshire to a quite posh part, then to a part that made the original rough part look like Martha’s Vineyard. What is pointed out less frequently is that moving is hell on kid substitutes, too.

I suppose that Ralph, Shipley, Ruby and The Bear should be used to it by now, having spent most of their lives being whisked away from homes just as they have become settled. But the last upheaval was particularly hard. Finally, it seemed, they had found a true local friend (Spooky, a strong, silent tom from the other side of the tracks) and a good learning environment — the meadow out the back where they could develop their life skills on an endless supply of small, furry rodents and even coexist happily with authority figures (next-door’s dogs).

So idyllic did life seem that even when the boxes started to pile up in the hall they maintained a calm demeanour. When, finally, the cat baskets came out, their look was one of such bewilderment that it highlighted just what an expressive thing the feline face can be.

The concept of cats as children is something that is easy to laugh at when it extends to making up soppy names, upside-down cuddling and feeding of organic bacon by hand. When it becomes less funny is when they begin to keep you up with their wailing all night. Over the past four months, since moving to Diss in south Norfolk, my wife and I have had a mutiny on our hands.

The problem began on the morning of the move. Ralph, who uncoincidentally shares a name with the most backward character from The Simpsons, suddenly became unaccountably inert, which necessitated an emergency ten-mile dash to the vet’s, five minutes before the removal van was due. Since then, although Ralph has recovered, the protest has gathered momentum.

As Ruby wages war against the vacuum cleaner by laying down vast tracts of fluffy black hair on the new carpet, Ralph, Shipley and The Bear work by night, bringing in a selection of mice and rats and the occasional teenage moorhen. It is obvious that we have irritated them seriously this time. Though they have always been a bloodthirsty bunch, the kill count is now up to three a night, and rising.

Have we gone wrong somewhere? My feeling is more that something has snapped, that our pseudo-brood feels that it has been deceived one time too many. The problem is that there is no talking to them. In the old days, when my parents used to explain to me why we had to keep changing houses, I didn’t like it, but at least I understood the motive.

The Bear, on the other hand, will never understand that his pseudo-parents do not intend to move again for a very long time. Every time he sees as much as one cardboard box, his thoughts turn uncertainly to the future. Our only hope is time. They say it heals. I don’t know about that, but I feel sure that it will reveal what is giving off the curious odour from under the box containing the new dishwasher.

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