Notes from a cockatiel who hates Mondays

Cricket is a six-year-old cockatiel who lives with our colleague Jules in a flat in Lisbon. Sometime last winter, Cricket started getting noticeably grouchy on Monday mornings — biting the cage bars, refusing the millet that was usually a sure thing.

It took Jules a few weeks to notice the pattern. The flat was quietest on weekends; Mondays brought back the morning-rush noise of two humans getting ready and leaving. The bird was, in his way, complaining about the regime change.

The fix turned out to be embarrassingly simple. A radio, set to a low-volume talk station, on a smart plug, scheduled for both weekend mornings. The transition stopped being a transition. Cricket's Monday mood normalised within a fortnight.

We mention it because pet boredom is rarely loud. It looks like a dog chewing the wrong thing, a cat over-grooming, a bird picking at its own feathers. The fix is rarely a new toy — usually it's a small adjustment to the rhythm of the room.