Every cat has a favourite sleeping place. George, the surgery cat, will sleep happily for hours on a towel on top of a radiator.

From the time her new family adopted her, Melissa had another idea. The warm round opening of the washing machine door provided an excellent vantage point from which to watch the household or sleep. It kept her out from under people's feet and often there were some clothes waiting to be washed to lie on.

Fortunately her owner soon got wise to the habit and would always meticulously check and remove her before putting on the washing machine. Every time that is until the fateful evening when one of the children distracted her just as she was loading the washing machine.

Her husband had already confirmed that the cat was upstairs so she went ahead, put the children's clothes in and set the programme to warm wash. Then she went upstairs to tidy up. It was a couple of minutes later that she heard the terrible scream from the cat.

She rushed around the house trying to locate her, then she opened the back door and shone a powerful torch around the garden in case she had been attacked by a fox. She was still looking when another terrible scream shattered the silence, this time from behind her inside the kitchen. Then the awful truth dawned. The screams were coming from inside the washing machine.

She rushed over to the machine, now a good three or four minutes into its cycle, and cut the power, only to discover that it would not let her open the door because the drum was full of water. Resisting the temptation to break the glass she grabbed a large screwdriver and broke the catch off. The door opened and flood of clothes and soapy water cascaded on to the floor together with a wet, soapy, terrified Melissa.

Remarkably, she was not only alive but conscious and largely uninjured. Her mortified owner dried her off and brought her straight to the surgery. There my colleague checked her over, and admitted her for observation. Her lungs were clear and her legs fine. She was remarkably uninjured.

She spent a peaceful night in my hospital under the watchful eye of one of my nurses recovering her composure. The next morning she was well apart from a slightly weepy eye, probably from the washing powder. She went home later the same day.

Having escaped drowning, scalding and being battered by the spin cycle she is a remarkably lucky cat.

Watching out for the cat that climbs into the washing machine, tumble dryer or under the bonnet of a car to sleep on the warm engine can seem a full-time job. If the cat is still a kitten at heart there are more dangers, too, like climbing up ironing boards that fall over on them or jumping into hot baths that scald them.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.