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As a matter of course, life at my house tends to be chaotic. It is not unusual for me to be several tasks behind, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other [breakfast]; rushing to organize the kids and play the 1812 Overture on the ukulele. OK, I was lying about the ukulele…but you get the idea.

One evening, I was simultaneously piling laundry into the washing machine whilst preventing the outbreak of WW III in the lounge, as my children "discussed" which TV channel they would be watching. Slightly distracted by the portent of their hand-to-hand combat, I switched the washing machine on, sent biscuit bribes to the "front room frontline" and set about the ritual ablution of that evening's dinner dishes. After a few minutes, my son wandered into the kitchen, obviously having polished off the chocolate chip cookies [leaving not a crumb for me, no doubt] and looking for something else to do. That something would be his kitten, Swampy.

At first, the search was orderly. Then we took to making mewing noises and ritualistically shaking cat biscuits. No luck. Swampy was nowhere to be seen. Five or so minutes passed as we systematically turned the house upside down, looking for him. Well, more upside down than it already was, that evening. I had been so busy during the day, there had been a lot to do and it almost seemed as if I had the world's washing, spinning around in my washing machine…You know when you watch a cartoon and there is a moment of intensity, the pulsing zoom to close up and back out again, accompanied by the classic "Dum, dum, du-u-u-um…" cliff-hanger? That is exactly how I felt as I looked at the washing machine, which had been running for about 10 minutes by then.

You see, Swampy liked to snuggle up inside its drum for a nap, sometimes and usually I checked before I loaded it up. However, what with the channel battle diverting my attention, I had forgotten to make the perfunctory "Swampy sweep" of the inside of my trusty Hotpoint before I tossed no end of dishevelled clothing into it. Therefore, I did what anyone else would do. I panicked! Leaning over and swatting the switch to "Off" on the washing machine as I ushered the children out of the kitchen to "go and see if Swampy fell asleep upstairs", I felt like an executioner. There was no way that such a tiny animal could have survived half a cycle on forty degrees.

Fearing the worst was yet to come I grabbed a flashlight from the counter and shone it through the glass door on the washing machine. Through the sudsy darkness I could just make out a small, black, fluffy-but-wet mass and my heart sank as I realised my fear was not unfounded. As the washing machine had been halted mid-cycle, of course, it wouldn't open. Reaching a wrench out from the cupboard, I set about levering the door ajar. The force I had to use was enough to completely smash the door and locking mechanism and as I did so, a spiteful vomit of warm, soapy and extremely dirty water gushed out all over the kitchen floor.

Sitting in my puddle of dingy suds and one-sock-missing misery, I reached carefully into the back of the washing machine drum to retrieve…a black woollen sweater. A sweater? [Note to the reader: if you are familiar with Genesis in the days of Peter Gabriel, then read "A sweater?" with the same inflection as "A flower?" If you are not, then you don't know what you missed].

Holding the dripping bundle at arm's length, like Medusa's head, I considered it for a moment, thinking that a Gorgon might have caused me less trouble, before I threw it back into the washing machine in disgust. But not without a measure of relief that I did not have to explain to my son how I had just scrub-a-dubbed kitty, all the way to Heaven.

Swampy, naturally, was oblivious to the furore he had caused and had been asleep on the chair in the lounge the whole time. No doubt overlooked because he was partially obscured by a mound of cookie wrappers.