I don't suppose my parents were the smartest. I mean, if it weren't for the landlady, I would have ended up like my brother, - who didn't fare too well by either my parents or the landlady, in fact. He met a rather unfortunate death which some felt was quite unnecessary. Even though he had a hole in his throat there are those who argue that he could have survived that at his tender age with a lot of growth ahead of him. But that is all water under the bridge now -he died and that was my survival.

The silly thing about it all is that my folks had the best of intentions but just didn't get it right. They really did their best to raise us well but the foundations were all wrong. I guess at the end of the day that is all you can ask of parents - that their intentions are good even if they don't have a clue. I mean, with every generation we have new ideas on what constitutes good parenting so as long as you can say they tried their best what more can you ask of them. That was the case with mine even if they screwed up.

The problems started with the nest. They built it at a 45-degree angle. It didn't help either that they chose to build it in a clump of bamboo. No doubt they believed that with the landlady's cat we all stood a better chance in the bamboo than in a tree. But it did lead directly to my brother's demise and the strangest fact of all was thatit was the cat who saved me.

My brother's first and final roll landed him on one of the young bamboo shoots that pierced him clean through the gullet. The cat saw him first and with all her sniffing alerted the landlady. She pried him off the shoot and took him inside to show him to her husband. To everyone's surprise he started to move and so she did what she thought best - ending his pain by wringing his neck. When he squeaked she lost courage and let her husband do the rest. Only later did it transpire that his death might have been unnecessary. But it would have been my neck if my brother hadn't preceded me.

When I did my slide down the bamboo everyone had wizened up. The cat was the first on the scene and sniffed at me with little interest - I was as cold as ice with more than a few ants waiting to dig in. But the landlady wasn't about to make the same mistake it seemed and she deftly removed all the ants, cradled me in her hands and blew warm gusts of breath on me to warm me up. I even got a heated cloth wrapped around me and the occasional wipe to dry off the steam from her breath. Expectations for a recovery were low and it took pretty long before I came round.

This time all the steps were taken to ensure I had the best chance of survival. The animal ambulance was willing to collect me at the drop of a hat but recommended I go home. The landlady's husband took steps to rectify the basic problem of our house and set that straight with the help of a bit of wire. I was then carefully placed back in my nest. Mum seemed rather put out by it all and for a while there we were all a little worried that she wouldn't come back. However, before it got too cold and too dark she came back and my older brother and I settled into a comfortable routine with mum and dad looking after us.

We did pretty well during those days. Every now and then the landlady would peer in to see if we were still there and mum and dad worked round the clock to feed us tasty titbits. In fact, we grew pretty fast and within a week my brother and I stood on the edge of our now horizontal home and looked around us. From out vantage point we looked out onto a lush green environment with several small bushes and convenient hiding places. We would need those in the days to come, we thought. A cat is still a cat.