My wife is great but I hate the family cat. The blasted beast despises me and is trying to drive a wedge between us – but she thinks he’s an angel. So many men will share my frustration: ROB CROSSAN

I’m typing these words with a hastily applied plaster around one finger, while wearing a long-sleeved shirt – partly for protection and partly out of embarrassment about the litany of scratch marks on my arm.

The cause of my bleeding digit and wounded forearm is staring at me from the doorway to my study. He is obsidian-black, obese, with a rodent-like tail that is wildly out of proportion to his corpulent frame.

This is the cat I live with. His name is Satan. And he longs for only two things in life. The first is food. The second is my imminent funeral.

Cats are one of the very few animals who domesticated themselves. Humans put enormous effort into persuading sheep, goats and cattle to do as we wanted.

Cats, on the other hand, simply decided life would be easier if they quit patrolling grain stores in Ancient Egypt looking for mice to kill and instead cultivated human beings. Without really asking permission, they proceeded to move into our living rooms, gardens and beds.

And we’ve adored and loathed them in equal measure ever since.

I didn’t, for obvious reasons, want a cat called Satan in my life, even part time. But his owner is my wife Emma. And it quickly became apparent after we started dating five years ago that she would not be parted from this moggy, despite his immediate and ongoing antipathy towards me.

I should say that I adore cats and have had quite a few as pets over the decades, mourning their losses to old age, cancer and, in one instance, a lethal curiosity about a passing Volvo.

I thought I could get along with any feline. At their best, cats offer love and affection without demanding anything like the time, money or walking dogs require.

But Satan ripped up my playbook with his claws and teeth. He wasn’t given that name when Emma first acquired him at six weeks old. Originally called Cookie, she felt he simply ‘grew into’ his new name through his devilish habits, which included walking sideways, spitting and hurling himself at hard surfaces.

When we first met, I elected to undertake a charm offensive. In those early days, I would come over with flowers for Emma and a tin of salmon and a ribbon for her cat. Satan did not welcome my advances.

Crouching on top of the fridge on my second overnight stay, he hissed whenever I made eye contact. Emma eventually coaxed him down, only for him to wolf down the salmon, promptly throw up on the carpet, then push the ribbon under the sofa like a dinner party hostess shoving a gifted bottle of Blue Nun under the sink.

Whenever I went within paw range, he would scratch me. He is quite partial to spitting at me too, a habit he seems to reserve exclusively for my benefit.

‘I really wouldn’t try any harder with him,’ Emma told me, as she explained why she had such a soft spot for the feline reincarnation of Jack the Ripper.

As it transpired, my then wife-to-be, working as a frontline NHS intensive care nurse in one of London’s busiest hospitals, believed Satan was highly intuitive to her needs. ‘He’s good to me when I’ve come off a 12-hour night shift,’ she insisted.

It took me a while to realise just how entirely immune Emma was to this cat’s insatiable lust for violence. As Satan cemented his pathological dislike of me, his adoration of Emma deepened. Rubbing himself against her legs, jumping on her lap for strokes, even letting her comb him, he plainly wasn’t happy about a third wheel.

His attempts to sabotage our nascent relationship included developing a highly intuitive ability to injure himself or go missing at the most inopportune times.

One long-booked lunch at the storied River Cafe restaurant was cancelled when Satan decided to bolt out of the front door and sprint towards the A-road outside Emma’s house.

He was found, hours later, attempting to rip a bin-liner open outside a house four streets away. I could have sworn he was laughing at me as he graciously allowed Emma to carry him home.

Emma and I buying a house together and getting married has done nothing to improve my rapport with Satan.

He sleeps on my bedroom pillow when I’m not there – then bites when I try to remove him. He has jumped on my head from his favoured vantage point on the attic stairs and scratched my face.

He even took umbrage at my vacuum cleaner, destroying the hose connection to the point where we are currently sufficing with a broom.

W hile he leaves letters and parcels for Emma well alone, he uses anything addressed to me as an impromptu toilet.

Nothing – not calming medication, catnip, milk or toys – has brought balm to his rancour.

I wish I could tell you about a chink of light – one moment when he let his guard down and allowed me to stroke him or, at the very least, stopped using my legs as mobile scratching posts.

But his mind is made up.

My sole consolation is that Emma respects my stoic acceptance of his malevolent presence.

I once dreamed of a ‘him or me’ showdown when, tearfully, she would offer Satan up for adoption. But five years later, I’m convinced no man should endeavour to part a woman from her pet.

Of course there’s the fear that you might find yourself, rather than the animal, on the wrong side of the front door. But if your partner’s pet is horrible, he can act as a useful foil.

In our house, it almost doesn’t matter how I conduct myself: there will always be a male in residence whose behaviour is far more unreasonable than my own.