We think it’s fantastically cute and endearing when they steadfastly ignore us — but, you know, they’re killers. Photograph: iStock

Having taken a break from licking her bottom long enough to peruse the morning papers, the little cat is worried. Her ludicrously round green eyes bursting out of their sockets, she’s had to go and lie down in a darkened ironing box to get over the shock.

The sombre news precipitating her decision to cloister herself away among winter shirts and faded pillowcases concerns a worrying decree in a small German town called Walldorf.

Eager to protect its last three breeding pairs of ground-nesting crested larks, the municipality has instructed local residents to keep their cats indoors over the summer months for the next three years. The penalty for noncompliance (if, say, your moggie is caught casually sloping around under the Gothic spires in search of a companionable Katze or a snifter of Glühwein) is a fine of 500 quid. That rises to a miaowing great €50,000 if pussy is apprehended in the act of killing or injuring a crested lark.

Cats, being cats, are prolific hunters, while we, their all-too-human pet owners — often, if not always, splashing around in a kitty-shaped sea of sentimentality — see them as fur babies

Reading the report at leisure over a cup of apparently ethical coffee while the kitten whimpered inside the leg of some jeans that haven’t fitted me since 1996, I felt nothing but sympathy for the local Walldorf burghers. Cats, being cats, are prolific hunters, while we, their all-too-human pet owners (often, if not always, splashing around in a kitty-shaped sea of sentimentality), see them as fur babies.

We buy them rabbit-flavoured gloop to eat and salmon-flavoured treats to crunch. We purchase scratching posts and velvety beds and hang pretend mice on strings from chair backs for their delectation. We think it’s fantastically cute and endearing when they steadfastly ignore us — but, you know, they’re killers.

While easily seduced into parting with our cash for gourmet pouches of “plaice and whole shrimp” (I wish I was making this up), would we be as happy to shell out for a sachet of goldfinch-flavoured poultry chunks? Or as keen to see haughty little Pushkin tuck into a dish of robin redbreast in jelly? It would certainly revolutionise my shopping habits if I was stacking up on overpriced sachets of tender-cut rat in a meaty gravy.

[  Seagulls are getting alarmingly strategic. The hungry day-trippers don’t stand a chance ]

[  he bill for our scrambled eggs arrives. We quickly remortgage to come up with the cash ]

It’s hard to count the number of cats there are in Ireland (they keep hiding under the couch), but it’s estimated to be around 300,000, with the result that a corresponding four million birds annually end up being batted around in our pets’ sharp little claws.

I was asleep the other morning, out for the count under the gauze of dawn, the window wide open, when the shagging kitten jumped in through it with a bird in her mouth. I awoke to a sound like a broken washing machine emanating from her throat and manic scuttling around the foot of the bed as she tried to retrieve her prey.

I pulled the duvet over my head, lay very still and pretended I wasn’t there. It wasn’t my finest hour.

The person I sleep with was already on his feet, bleary-eyed and banging his knees off the chest of drawers. Using a dustpan and a used envelope, he crawled around the bedroom attempting to locate and rescue the battered bird. But by the time he found it, under the middle of the bed, it was too late.

Even if sending kitty out looking like a boy-band escapee doesn’t save the local birds from slaughter, at least it’ll give them a good laugh

Finally reassured that there wasn’t a mouse in the room, I resurrected myself, caught the furious cat by the neck and bowled her into the kitchen. Deprived of the pleasure of taunting her winged prey, she flung herself on to the rug, flailing her limbs around and threatening to call Childline.

“You’re getting a bell,” I told her.

I subsequently read that bells are pretty useless; the current advice is to buy your moggie a luminously sparkling vest instead. Even if sending kitty out looking like a boy-band escapee doesn’t save the local birds from slaughter, at least it’ll give them a good laugh.

“Count yourself lucky you don’t live in Walldorf, killer,” I said to the kitten when she finally emerged from the depths of the ironing box, trailing a Christmassy-looking napkin behind her.

Mind you, if I was a Walldorfian cat I don’t know that the local feline curfew would particularly bother me. A quick TripAdvisor search of things to do in the town reveals that the museum in the centre of town has “not many things to see” and that the swimming pool — “big, clean, with excellent employees” — is “actually the best place to spend your day”.

I really hope the place manages to hold on to its larks. Could be pretty grim without them.