WE’RE exhausted. You’d be exhausted too if your house had been hit by a whirlwind.

The whirlwind I speak of is about a foot long, black and white, and furry. I would say he answers to the name of Alfie, except Alfie answers to nobody.

He’s a cat (if you haven’t guessed) or rather a kitten: exactly four months old and not the brightest button in the box.

Kittens never are. They are amazed by anything, get excited if anything moves, and if you give them a cardboard box they think they have died and gone to heaven.

Alfie’s idea of the perfect evening is to sneak up on shoeless feet and nibble. That would be fun, except kittens don’t have teeth in their mouths. They have needles.

We got Alfie from a Blue Cross sanctuary, where he was born – one of three to a young cat that was abandoned, pregnant.

He came out with a big splodge on his nose, random patterns all over his belly and a faint trace of tabby on his back that hinted at his dad’s identity. His ears are black and white – one black and one white.

We spotted him in a picture on the Blue Cross website, and, being incurable cat people, fell for him instantly. Then our niece, who works at the sanctuary, told us that of all the naughty kittens in the place – and it must be full of them – he was the naughtiest.

As soon as we got him home he strolled out of the cage like he owned the place and demonstrated that in Alfie’s head there is no such thing as fear. He’s not bothered by people, nor other cats, even the ones that seem a thousand times bigger than him.

When the local bruiser wanders past the patio door, Alfie is so keen to play with him, he bumps into the glass.

To say he is as bold as brass would be misleading. Brass was never as bold as Alfie.

His favourite time is about eleven o’clock at night, when he comes flying out of the kitchen into the living room, leaps on the arm of settee, behind the curtains, up the blinds, along the back of the settee, under the table, in and out of the kitchen again, and then around again for another few laps. If you don’t dodge him as he zooms past, you get a cat in your face.

And if you think we have a problem, spare a thought for Poppy, our other cat. She is a rescue cat, from the same place as Alfie, and two years old. We’ve had her a year, so she has been accustomed to being queen of all she surveys. Then Nutty Boy turns up.

Cats don’t have many muscles in their faces, so it’s sometimes hard to see what they are feeling, but Poppy now wears a permanently look on her face that says: “Did you see what he did there?”

She can’t quite believe it, and has absolutely no intention of stooping to his level, but poor Alfie can’t get it into his head that she doesn’t want to play. So Poppy is looking forward to Alfie growing up and being less of an embarrassment to the family. We are, too.

It’s hard work, trying to keep up with a kitten when you don’t yet have grandchildren to get you accustomed to all that running around, so we are looking forward to some peace and quiet in the New Year. But we’re also dying to see what Alfie is like when he’s a big boy. He drives us crazy, but one day we are going to be crazy about him.