Okay. People are always asking about the animals that live at the Perfumery, so here's the run down.

Tiger

Tiger is the official top dog at the Perfumery. He is the oldest, toughest, most battle-scarred and grumpiest animal resident. Estimates vary as to his age but he's at least 12 or 13. Some confusion also exists around his gender: this summer I overheard a visitor commenting that she (he!) must be about to have her kittens. Time to go back on the diet, Tiger...

Tiger pretends to be getting elderly and being unable to jump up onto things. For example, demanding loudly to be lifted up to his food bowl and using his claws to mountaineer up one's legs when he wants to sit in one's lap. This supposed infirmity does not, however, stop him climbing several metres up the elm tree and leaping from there to the roof of the Perfumery in order to be able to reach our bedroom window when he decides it's time someone got up to feed him.

During the summer Tiger likes to mingle with the visitors, particularly those visitors in the vicinity of the Tearooms who might find themselves with a surfeit of milk on theirs hands and be in need of some helpful advice on how to dispose of it. I often look out of my office to see a couple sitting having their tea and cakes in the sunshine with Tiger occupying a third chair and waiting patiently for something to come his way.

Not that Tiger will actually eat scones or cakes. Milk yes, but not pastries. Also, for at least ten years, Tiger has been obsessed with toast. Particularly toast with Marmite on it. Whenever anyone's having toast he will do his best to either be given, or failing that, blatantly steal, some. But then he never eats it. Occasionally he'll lick the butter off, but that's about as far as his taste for toast goes. He always asks for the next piece though...

Squeak

Squeak is next up in order of seniority. Again, exact age unknown, thought to be 7 or 8. Squeak (so named because when he was found as a tiny fluff ball of abandoned puppy the only noise he could make was a squeak) is a sheepdog-something cross. We don't know what that something was, but whatever it was, it was big and solid. My friend Andrew described Squeak as a table dog, because his back from shoulder to tail is broad and level like a table. A furry table.

Squeak may look, ehm, fat, but in fact he's not. Stout would be a better word for Squeak. If you prod him (carefully) you discover that he's very solid; if you lift him up (very carefully!) you discover that he weighs over 35 kilos; and if he runs into your legs at full tilt, you discover that 35kgs of fast moving table can send you flying. (By the way, don't actually try and lift Squeak up...) For reason of this stoutness, some of older locals reckon that Squeak might really be several parts traditional cattle dog, a breed not often seen now in Ireland.

Squeak always comes with me as photographer's assistant when I go out to photograph flowers. He's great company, but his usefulness as an assistant is sometimes offset by his tendency to sit on something you're trying to photograph. Or you get home and review some carefully composed landscape shot only to find that there's a bit of Squeak in one corner...

Not strictly allowed in the sitting room, Squeak's favorite trick is creep in without looking at you and lie down with his head hidden behind the curtain. We presume the logic behind this is that, like children, he figures that if he can't see you, you therefore can't see him. Since this does have quite a large rating of cute appeal, it generally works as we don't have the heart to kick him out.

Ginger and Marmite

Ginger and Marmite arrived as tiny balls of fur with razor sharp teeth and claws three years ago. Without names. Fionn promptly named the ginger kitten "Ginger" and was on her way to calling the black kitten "Blackie" when we managed to persuade her that Marmite suited him better. 'The kittens', as we still refer to them despite the fact that they've been fully grown for years, have been great fun for us. Tiger took them in hand when they were little and there was a lot of washing behind the ears, which he sometimes enforced by holding them down with one paw. Mock fights and mock hunts were frequent, and these latter soon progressed into real hunts and in the mornings we'd come downstairs to a variety of small, dead creatures in various stages of dismemberment.

Marmite is fastidious, dainty and somewhat aloof. In the words of Rudyard Kipling he is the cat that walks by himself and all places are alike to him. Ginger could never be described as dainty. "Pear shaped" would be a much better description. Ginger also manages to look scruffy somehow. He's fascinated by water, especially running water like a hose or a tap. One moment you're brushing your teeth and the next there's a very large orange cat sitting in the sink trying to catch the water with his paw. Or falling asleep...

When Ginger and Marmite were little they always slept curled around each other in a basket. As they each grew to be basket-sized we would come in to find one asleep in the botttom of the basket with the other curled up on top of the first, like a cat sandwich. For Christmas last year we commissioned them a custom-made willow cat basket of generous proportions, allowing them to sleep head-to-tail, like a black and orange yin and yang symbol. And then Tiger decided there was room for him too...

The presence of the animals enhances the quality of our daily life and provides light relief from the occasionally intense demands of the business. They remind us to be human. And that is no bad thing.