"As usual, Kiki shouted out 'Armageddon', my cue that he'd had enough.

At a hushed press conference, a hospital spokesman described what happened next. "I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Raggot, our gerbil, in," he explained. I tried to retrieve Raggot but he wouldn't come out again,so I peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him."