Hello all British musician types. Would you like to have a pet? A little furry creature to keep you company on those dark nights which beckon from the winter ahead? Being British, course you would. You value animals a few notches above mere humans, and would gladly die to save the life of an iguana or wildebeest. But what of the specific needs of the musician? How do pets fit into the manic lifestyle of the aspiring, world-dominating rock star personage? Our easy-to-use guide shows which pets to choose, how to keep them, and how best to use them to your own ends. Take your pick!

No 1 THE ELEPHANT

Recognising: Look for destroyed buildings, startled inhabitants screaming, "It come, it come, the big grey beast, boss!" and a general air of desolation about the countryside.

Keeping: Best to put aside several acres of flat, featureless ground, well fenced and with observation towers at strategic intervals. A disused concentration camp would be ideal.

Feeding: Ask at your supermarket for EEC brand "Food Mountain", available in 600-ton and 1200-ton jars. One jar every hour should be sufficient. For a treat, serve lightly sautéd startled inhabitants on a bed of elephant grass.

Using: To make replacement keyboard keys, first catch the elephant with a lasso. When you've wrestled it to the ground, soothe the giant animal by whispering into its ear, "Don't worry, I'm a vet." Then neatly saw off the nearest tusk, which can later be divided into very serviceable keys that will last much longer than those modern plastic ones. Allow about 17 keyboards per elephant. Thus by elephant ownership you can spot keyboard players likely to come into the more-keyboards-than-sense category. The Animal Liberation Front are said to favour MIDI.

No 2 THE CAT

Recognising: Plaintive moans which wake you up in the middle of the night, followed the next day by scratching at the door and low purring. Also, dead sparrows which mysteriously appear on the table.

Keeping: A large bag, out of which you may occasionally let the animal in question.

Feeding: Put the aforementioned cat among the pigeons, these birds having been previously nailed to the floor.

Using: First locate the cat's guts. Perhaps it has been out on a night's "activities", and you have heard the other cats in the neighbourhood say, "Blimey, that cat's got guts." This is a good sign. Politely ask the gossiping cats where these guts actually are. Whip them out, lay them on the table, stretch them a bit, and you've got yourself some very cheap and passable guitar strings.

No 3 THE COW

Recognising: Keep an eye open for pools of milk in suspicious places, and the sudden appearance of electric fences across the living room. Queues of milkmaids at regular times each day should give the game away, too.

Keeping: Choose a green hill far away without any claims to prior ownership, put up a non-city style wall, and your herd of cows should stay intact. Hire a cowboy or two to ride around, chew tobacco, and kill any Red Indians remaining in north Kent.

Feeding: You will have to find a supplier of cud, which cows chew in enormous amounts. A good supplier will be able to offer particular flavours for special occasions: these are called the birthday cud, the Christmas cud, and so on.

Using: Wait near your cow field, crouching down by the fence (don't touch it), and listen for the chosen cow to say something like, "Phew, what a hard day, I think I'll take my jacket off." Snatch the jacket from the back of the cow's chair as soon as it's off. This valuable piece of leatherware can now be fashioned into a jolly attractive guitar strap (or, for the more adventurous amongst you, into a keyboard strap). Try carving your name into the cowhide thus reconstituted, or effect some gay repeating pattern into its supple, receptive surface.

No 4 THE TORTOISE

Recognising: Itinerant Liverpudlian musicians are likely to be seen kissing the animal on the shell; this is often referred to as "a dead giveaway", or in extreme cases "a dead tortoise". Otherwise, watch for anything moving more slowly than a cheque from a record company. Not to be confused with a Mexican maize pancake.

Keeping: A warm, cumfy place is best: chilly chelonias get grumpy. See how it gets on under the bonnet of your transit van. Alternatively, a low oven.

Feeding: Worth starting a lettuce patch in the window box, as the little git eats about six times its own weight of the stuff every day. Also very fond of amphetamine tablets.

Using: The trick is to fool the tortoise into thinking it still has its shell after you've stripped it off. You may find Luigi Tortellini's 1978 paper "Testudinal Shell Hallucinosis" of some help here. Once off, iron the shell at cotton setting, smoothing out the creases until you've got a large oval shape. Snip the edges away, screw it to your guitar, and you'll have the most envied scratchplate in the group. Any scraps left over can be fashioned into attractive plectra (see also THE CUTTLEFISH).

No 5 THE HORSE

Recognising: Mostly brown, black, white or mixtures thereof; beware the horse of a different colour. Yellow, for instance. Or green. These are likely to be pantomime horses and are not suitable for our purposes.

Keeping: A large box on wheels, which you have to hitch up to a Range Rover and ride about the countryside with, is the best place. Otherwise, place in a bright room with Princess Anne, invite teams of scrubbed youngsters to Spot The Difference, and sell as entertainment to your local ITV station.

Feeding: Anything that you can get straight into the horse's mouth: corn flakes, radishes, sugar lumps, pearly dew drops drops, broken glass, dubbin, und so weiter. If the horse dies as a result, you can always flog it.

Using: As you know, a frightened horse sheds no tail-hairs, so for our scheme you must calm the animal down, perhaps by leaving it in the horse latitudes for a while. Then you can safely snip off a few of the longest hairs for your cello bow. Pardon? Who needs a cello when you've got an Emulator? Oh well, stick a pin in the horse's bum and sample the result, then. Next!

No 6 THE ANT

Recognising: First sign is usually an itching in one's underwear, generally the pants (hence the phrase "I've got pismire in me attire"). This leads to the discovery of small black creatures who answer to the name of Adam.

Keeping: Quite a problem, as most receptacles you provide will be carried off by a few hundred of the varmints and used to line their own nest, thank you very much. A useful if rather inaccessible place to secure them is the stomach of an aardvark.

Feeding: Anything dead or virtually so: Edward VII, latin, jazz, Kennedys, and so on. Ants are particularly partial to the corpses of pangolins.

Using: Several months' intensive training will leave you with a team of dedicated troubleshooterants who will put right any defects in your expensive electronic equipment. Each member of the team is assigned a different transistor, chip, or other electronic component. At a given signal, the team crawl inside your DX7, for example, go straight to their designated components, carry out a swift set of checks, crawl out, and report back to base. Thus screwdrivers and expensive repair bills become a thing of the past.