Creature comforts come first

Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm, 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you, shelter from the storm' - Bob Dylan
The nights are getting colder and, for most of you, that probably means beef stock, firewood and an extra duvet.
For my girlfriend and I, that means we're due for our annual house guest.
I was wondering who it would be this winter when I saw Larry, pressed up against the window and looking rather despondent in the wind and rain.
There have been countless Larrys over the years.
The first of them was probably Ginger, a pathetic fleabag of a feline we inherited one winter from the neighbours across the gully.
With nowhere to go, poor Ginger would position himself below the kitchen window at tea time and try to summon our affections with his meek, crackly meow.
When I responded with milk and jellymeat, Dad would scold me, sternly advising: "Let a stray cat inside and you've got yourself a bloody cat."
His warning went unheeded and, sure enough, we soon had ourselves a cat.
Cats rate pretty conventionally when it comes to our record of refugees.
Take Johnny, for example, the cockroach who used to hang out beneath my bedside table in our old Napier Hill home.
Johnny was tiny and pretty handsome for a cockroach and my girlfriend didn't have the guts to squash him when she found him cowering against the wall one May afternoon.
It might seem strange that any woman could spare the life of a cockroach, but then my girlfriend always did feel my childish pity for feeble creatures - perhaps even more so.
She's still traumatised by the Great Spider Tragedy of 2008.
While taking a shower one morning, she looked down to see a pair of daddy long-leg spiders making their way up the wall but before she could turn the water off, one of them was fatally splashed and tumbled to the floor.
The other spider - my girlfriend is convinced they were newlywed arachnid lovers - crawled down to mourn his lost mate.
Racked with guilt, she was too distraught to do anything for the rest of the day.
In balmy Wairarapa summers, our antiquated Masterton villa was a hotel for all manner of dopey, wayward insects, usually bumblebees that kept ramming their fuzzy faces against the kitchen window until freed.
When the frosty winter of 2009 turned the old house into an ice box, black pellets began appearing beneath the heater, on the couch, behind the toasted sandwich-maker and anywhere else that could afford warmth to what appeared to be a mystery mouse.
Then one night, while we were watching Fringe, my girlfriend saw a moving shape on a stack of old books and shrieked: "Oh my God! Speedy Pete! Look, it's Speedy Pete!"
In a squeaking grey blur, our diminutive resident darted across the lounge, stopping only to wiggle his wee rump beneath the door.
Both of us vividly recall that wild, hedonistic look in Speedy Pete's little eyes that fateful night he finally revealed himself. And what speed. Think Desperaux charged up on amphetamine.
When he accepted that we weren't going to harm him, Speedy Pete started perching himself on the sofa arm to watch Fringe with us each week. We presumed it was his favourite show, too.
Our next winter house guest, a coffee-and-cream coloured cat called Sam, would have gobbled down Pete in an instant if only he was quick enough to catch him.
On particularly miserable evenings, Sam would appear out of the darkness and gaze at us forlornly through the ranchslider, his dripping wet coat often a mess of matted fur and rhododendron leaves.
Sam's timing was typically perfect - soup and toast could never be enjoyed when he loomed in the corner of our eyes - and thus, the scruffy alien on our patio was always granted entry.
I was once told that cats can actually adjust the frequency of their meow to clone the wail of a hungry baby. With Sam, I wouldn't have been surprised.
Two years later, we have our new winter lodger in Larry, who happens to be a stick insect, if I haven't highlighted that yet.
"Let a stray stick insect come inside and you've got yourself a bloody stick insect," I can hear Dad warning.
Well, it looks like we've got ourselves a stick insect.