My publican mother always said it was a good idea for families to have pets, as their brief life cycles acquainted children with the inevitability of death. I only wonder, in retrospect, if my four siblings and I had to be on such close terms with the Grim Reaper. First there was Goldie the bathroom goldfish, who committed piscine suicide by leaping from his small tank on the cistern into the bleach-filled toilet bowl. Next came my beloved Russian hampsters, Olga (after the gymnast Olga Korbut) and Tatiana (after the ill-fated Grand Duchess), whose cage was so big you had to put your hand gingerly into piles of hay to find them, then withdraw it with a cross rodent hanging off your finger. In a Houdini-like act of escapology the duo squeezed round the side of their shut door and were beheaded by our cat Fluffy. Yes, I know. For a woman who went to great lengths to give her children names like Hereward, Dorcas and Rowan, mum’s ingenuity failed her completely when naming pets.

I finally realised my determined attempts to keep pets alive were doomed

I convinced mum the solution to the non-escape-proof cage was to buy a bigger rodent. So we returned from the Sevenoaks pet shop with a skewbald guinea pig, named Lord Lima for his ancestry. I wasn’t aware that most Peruvians regard “cuy” as a tasty snack. I kept Lord Lima tucked in my jumper like a hot-rodent-bottle; he was wonderfully placid and undemanding. But no one anticipated that the family Airedale Terrier, Jane (see what I mean about my mother’s lame monikers?) who’d had two puppy miscarriages, would develop a maternal fixation on the guinea pig. She’d pace up and down outside the cage, howling with frustration that she couldn’t lick and nuzzle the terrified Lord L. Our Airedale had form with stepmothering. When Fluffy had litters of kittens Jane would transfer them to her dog basket by enclosing their tiny mewing heads in her great slobbering jaws. I don’t suppose it was much worse than being carried around by the scruff of the neck by their real mama. But I feared Jane would roll and crush them, not realising her size, nor that she was a totally different species.

When I was in Wales on a school trip, the inevitable happened. Jane broke into Lord Lima’s cage and he scarpered across the lawn into the woods and was never seen again. At least, that was what I believed, aged ten. It seems more likely, aged 54, that blood and entrails were involved. Undeterred, I demanded my own puppy, since a vacancy had arisen. Jane’s companion hound was a bad-tempered Jack Russell called Whisky, who only dad could master. He’d taken to snarling and frenziedly leaping at cars, preventing visitors from leaving their vehicles. Not a great trait in a dog when your owners are country publicans. My father took to letting Whisky out at midnight to chase rabbits, then letting him back in at dawn, exhausted. One cold February day Whisky bolted across the road to the pub and was knocked down by a passing motorist.

Around this time, I’d read and reread a book called Ajax the Warrior by Mary Elwyn Patchett, about a girl growing up on a remote cattle station in the Australian outback. She acquires a whole menagerie of animals, but king of them all is her heroic half-dingo pup, Ajax, who saves her life. Obviously, I now desired a half-dingo of my own, or maybe a wolf – at very least, a Husky. What I got was a half-Labrador rescue puppy, Polka, who seemed as wild and noble as an animated tea cosy. That is, until she developed a brain tumour aged eighteen months, which transformed her from docile companion to slavering maniac. She sunk her teeth into my wrist and wouldn’t let go until mum pulled her off. A day later she was euthanised, after our vet said he’d never seen a Labrador bite a child.

This was when I finally realised my determined attempts to keep pets alive were doomed. I wasn’t just unlucky, I was the Titanic of domestic animal welfare. Although, somehow Fluffy the drearily-named mog managed to live to the great age of 21 – despite having given birth to well over 150 kittens in her long lifetime. These moppets survived both the Airedale’s love and entering the world in inauspicious locations: the coal pile, my dad’s sock drawer and a box full of Lego. No sooner had one litter of nine-week-old furballs been dispatched with various pub customers (we used to put up a notice offering a free tin of Whiskas with every kitten), than a gnarly tom would appear and pin poor Fluffy to the ground. I was particularly fascinated by her courtship with a one-eyed ginger we christened Nelson. As part of their lovemaking she bit off part of his ear. I now realise it’s unusual for a cat to keep having babies into her teens, but mum felt it was unfair to spay a fellow female for doing what she did herself (the fifth little Pelling was born when my mother was 40). And, on mature reflection, I realise what our pets really acquainted me with wasn’t the inevitability of death, but of sex.

Rowan Pelling is a British journalist and former editor of The Erotic Review