"We just have a few places to touch up with paint," the workmen assure me. "You can bring the cats in."

No way. Workmen believe, like cats, that every gate, door and window should be left open for easy access to the soi, which is also home to lots of resident dogs and cats.

Readers tell me not to worry about what will happen when I re-locate the cats to their new home. "I moved mine numerous times across several continents involving hours of plane travel, and they never had any problems," one reader says.

I may be overly protective, but right now I'm dealing with a fish and a turtle who simply won't settle in. Oscar the oscar hasn't been eating very well ever since we moved. He may be in the latest-model fish tank, complete with a state-of-the-art air pump, but he's not happy. He hasn't figured out yet, I think, that this huge tank is his, all his.

Bugsy the snake-necked turtle has always been sensitive. When a friend brought him to the flat a few years ago, I put him in his own large tub. The turtle refused to eat or even check out the tub for weeks, but simply hid in his little underwater house, too depressed to do much of anything except nibble half-heartedly at some fresh shrimp. Finally, one day, he actually looked at me when I offered him his shrimp and then gulped the whole thing down.

In the townhouse, he's going through the same bout of homesickness. The workmen banging away aren't helping much either. Some days, he doesn't eat at all. I know that eventually he'll accept his new surroundings, but I hope it will be sooner rather than later.

Just when you think you know everything about your animals, something amazing happens. When I moved from the flat a few weeks ago, the guys helping me with the fish and turtles discovered four turtle eggs in one of the floor-level gardens I had set up. I didn't know when the mama had laid the eggs, but as the boys picked them up, they jiggled them (a definite no-no with turtle eggs). "The eggs are dead," I said. "We'd better throw them out."

"No!" said the boys. I put a little sand in a bucket and buried the eggs carefully.

One day last week, the construction work had been particularly intrusive, and I went into a cleaning frenzy. "That bucket needs to be emptied," I thought. Thank goodness I looked inside. I saw a broken egg, then skittering movement. A tiny turtle had just hatched.

Imagine. In spite of a bumpy ride to the new residence and the never-ending banging and paint smells of construction work, this kid decided to be born.

I should name him "Alfred E Neumann", after the "Mad Magazine" cartoon, whose slogan is "What, me worry?"

n Questions about your pets? Fax (02) 751 4446 or e-mail laurie@nationgroup.com.