We all have different ways of creating an atmosphere for working here in deepest spice acres. Mrs spice has as her writing space the sun room with TV, DVD, music player and bookshelves to create a comfortable environment for the creative process. The house elf has her own dark corner in the basement, lit by a solitary flickering candle, the walls adorned with spider webs, crawling insects and large pictures of her favourite movie stars, Dobby and Kreacher from the Harry Potter movies.  She always says the gloominess makes the glowing numbers on her calculator come alive and that it is simple things such as this that provide her with comfort. I, on the other hand, prefer to work in the light of day and to be surrounded by music. Emma, the cat, seems to agree with me on this.

My preferred working area is a desk in a space adjacent to the kitchen and which is situated in a bay window. I have the computer, music and daylight, which is just about all I need. And I also usually have Emma, who likes to spend her working day lying on a cushion placed on top of an open file drawer as is clearly caught in the accompanying photograph.

With music playing, the cat napping and a fresh mug of tea in hand I can happily get on with the day’s tasks and not have to worry about a thing. Emma, on the other hand, can be very picky about the music I play when it comes to settling down to a hard day’s sleep. Anything with a lot of high frequencies, like tenor saxophones, pianos and similar instruments she’s happy to stay all day long, but the minute there are any heavy bass frequencies around, reggae or dance music, for example, and she’s away to another room.

I didn’t quite believe this when I first noticed her having a tendency to skedaddle whenever I changed the style of music playing to something that she disliked, but sure enough as I kept on trying out different combinations on her there was definite evidence that she had a marked preference for the higher frequencies often found in jazz.

Funnily enough I don’t find it the least bit surprising that the cat would prefer jazz as the ambient noise in her surroundings. In fact I think I’d be quite surprised if the coolest of cats were to choose anything else.