Most sensible people spend their holidays in hotels, apartments, holiday camps and the like. Not me. Nothing so conventional for me.

I spend my holidays in the nearest equivalent to Dr Dolittle's private zoo.

Let's start with the welcome I got from Rolo. He is a dog of uncertain ancestry but it looks as though a dachshund met a spaniel one dark night and decided any port in a storm was a good idea.

A few months later, a little puppy with short, fat, hairy legs, a long sausage-like body and a handsome spaniel's head arrived to grace the household. He is the only dog I know that takes a cuddly toy to bed with him and actually cuddles it. He also had a habit of lying right across the steps leading to the front door with a determined look of "they shall not pass" when we wanted to go out. He never won, but he sure had a lot of fun trying.

Next on my list of surprises was the flying guinea pig. High in the kitchen window was a bird cage. Little squeaky noises drew me to think a few young canaries or budgerigars were being hand-reared, but what did I find on closer inspection? A flying guinea pig, who sadly happened to be blind.

"Don't worry," said my host, "we are keeping him out of the way of the cats until he goes to his new home with the rabbits."

At that moment there was a thunderous shaking of the cat flap on the back door. "That will be the hen wanting her breakfast," I was told and sure enough a handsome Rhode Island Red wandered into the room and started eating the cat's food and helping herself to the drinking water. She also had an endearing habit of producing beautiful brown eggs on a fairly regular basis, I discovered later.

The garden was the next stop and here I met two other guinea pigs who appeared to lead proper guinea pig-like lives at ground level amid some life-like statuary of animals of indeterminate nature.

Happy little chirruping noises led me to a large cage of budgerigars, singing for their supper, breakfast, lunch and anything else in between. I was told I had only just missed a duck and a peahen who had apparently joined the celestial choir quite recently. I tried to look appropriately bereaved but found it a little difficult.

And then I met the cats. It was like being introduced to minor royalty. It was clear they were the monarchs of all they surveyed.

There was Nefertiti, a beautifully marked cat who looked down her very superior nose at mere mortals. She was busy doing the Abandoned Favourite act as her owner was away at college. A new arrival being nursed by my friends tiptoed delicately downstairs to spy out the land before fixing himself almost permanently around the neck of my friend's wife.

But the undisputed Lord of the Manor was Bendicks, a perfect stand-in for McCavity, the bruiser from Cats. I awoke to feel a sepulchral presence in my bedroom. A solid flump on my feet told me I was having a visitation. I switched on the light and there he was, laid out across my bed, fixing me in a satanic grin.

"You thought you had kept me from a comfy bed didn't you," he said. It could hardly be blamed on me if his rear end and my feet met in mid air, can it? He gave me a parting glance as he went through the door he had crashed open and his eyes said: "I will be back," as he faded into the night.

It was never like this for Dr Dolittle but I bet I had more fun! I had a wonderful time trying to talk to the animals but my language skills obviously need polishing before my next visit. I wonder what next - a Chinese Dragon maybe?