Brooks

She sits on my shoulder, a small collection of vivid green feathers. She makes a scraping noise with her beak. Her eyes are shut. What she is up to only she knows. I'm still clueless when it comes to the avian world.

Brooks, the parrotlet, is a sociable bird. Her light pink beak is showcased against the varying degrees of vividness in her green feathers. Two racing stripes, turquouise blue, streak from her eyes and become muted among the darker green feathers of her back. She likes to be in our company, whether on our shoulders or heads, hiding in my hair or sitting on top of her cage. She also sits happily in her cage, door open, so long as we are around.

Leave the room and the search is on to find us. We can count the seconds to when we hear her exit from the cage and the flutter flutter of her wings as she negotiates the doorway and views one of our heads as her landing strip.

She's not a cat. She's not a dog. She's my first bird.

I have been a cat person, sine the age of nine, when Maplotie (meaning 'of the farm') came to live with us. Maplotie, an ordinary looking stray cat, was happened upon in the countryside by a friend of my mother's. Uncle George took pity on her and her kittens, packed the feline family in his car, and headed home.

At the time, my parents had bought a home with an open veldt (field) across the street. Concerned at the prospect of rats in the roof, my mother agreed for Maplotie, so named by Uncle George, and the last of her kittens to come and live with us as our rat catchers and rat deterrers.

I was smitten with Maplotie and her dark ginger kitten the moment they arrived in our household. With the originality of a nine year-old, I named the kitten, 'Tiger'. Maplotie didn't stay with us very long. Being adventurous and nocturnal, she left one night on her hunt and didn't return.

Tiger, though, was an intrinsic part of my childhood. He instilled in me a great love for the independence and companionship of the cat. And so, why now, am I a friend of the feathered foe? Read on...