They said it on the BBC so it must be true, said friend Daisy, who I had recently forced into agreeing to be interviewed for kooky radio show about lives her cat has lost.

The true thing being that childless Daisy has, in fact, got a young baby.

Daisy has three cats, a partner, John, but definitely no children (they tried - it didn't happen, so they decided they were better off without them - a decision reinforced whenever they see self plus three struggling to form sentences and keep eyes open).

Having no children of her own, Daisy tends to counter tales of Rugrat genius with tales of her cats. So I know they take chances with fate and are rapidly going into the red, as far as lives are concerned.

So, when producer of radio programme phoned to say they were doing a piece about how many lives cats have - did I know anyone with a feline who'd diced with death on several occasions and could I go and interview them? I said yes.

The job was one of these easy, not much effort for your pay cheque, jobs. It only required phoning Daisy and John, then popping round with tape recorder and asking them a few questions about cats. No hassle, no preparation, no need for self to be able to form sentences or keep eyes open.

There was only one problem - no childcare for baby Rugrat. But I told myself this was not a problem as, since Daisy and John were friends, I could easily take baby Rugrat with me and one of them would entertain him while I asked questions.

He would be no trouble. And once I had been able to persuade him that cats are not toys and don't like baby Rugrats using their tails as teethers, he really wasn't any trouble.

We all went into their sitting room and he sat quietly in a corner, by the cat litter, playing with a very chewed-looking toy mouse which Daisy gave him (you can guess who, or rather what, it belonged to) while I asked her to elaborate on the incident when Oscar (the youngest cat) followed their bin bags into the jaws of a dustcart.

This immediately went into heavy mangling mode and Oscar emerged ten minutes later, after Daisy had run down the road shouting at the dustmen to stop, totally unscathed.

When I say baby sat quietly, I mean to my - mother's - ears, he was quiet, ie he was not screaming blue murder.

Had I had my radio ears on, which I did later when I began editing the dustcart story, I would have realised he was actually intermittently making very loud screeching mouse-like noises, cooing and blowing raspberries and generally creating the sort of noisy background against which it is very difficult to edit speech.

After doing the best I could, I sent piece to programme producer who said it was a pity the interviewee's baby was making so much noise but she supposed it couldn't be helped.

So I didn't actually say it was their baby but neither did I correct her and say it was mine.

The piece went out and the programme presenter explained, at the end, that the noises in the background, which sounded like a cat in a dustcart, were actually made by Daisy's offspring.

Daisy phoned to allow me to congratulate her on the birth of her child and told me even her mother, who is in a care home which she thinks is a station waiting room (such is her shaking grasp of reality), wrote to say she was pleased to hear she had a grandchild.

"I'm delighted to be a mother of course," Daisy told me.

"But perhaps you should sort out childcare before any more of your interviewees unwittingly become parents ..."