IN THE West Country and in parts of Wales, the biblical message of Noah and his Ark has seemed all too relevant this week. Television watching has been met with cries of “Ooh” and “Ahh” from soft-hearted viewers, as images of grannies and their rescued cats filled their screens.

While the floods destroyed their home, Noah and his children (he seemed to have had some trouble persuading his wife to join the expedition) had the consolation of a boat filled with potential pets.

Just how important pets are for the health of both children and adults has been the principal subject at the International Conference on Human and Animal Interaction, in Glasgow, this week. The conference is held every three years, but this is the first time that it has been held in the UK.

Few of us realise how important cats and dogs are to many people. It wasn’t very flattering for their other halves to find out that nearly half of one sample of pet owners said that they preferred to sleep with their cats on their bed than to have their partner in the bed with them. Furthermore, if the pet encroached on their bed space, and was therefore a selfish bed partner, they didn’t mind — but they wouldn’t tolerate the same behaviour from their partner. And 60 per cent of pet owners said that they were able to put up with the foul breath of a pet, but not of a partner.

It is well known — and there is clinical evidence to confirm this anecdotal evidence — that caring for a pet can have a beneficial influence on blood pressure. There are, of course, exceptions. Poppy, my son’s labrador — however endearing — has a temperament in keeping with that of a long line of Stuttaford pets. None of them is likely to have reduced anyone’s blood pressure, in fact they are far more likely to have reduced the length of their fingers. Yet they, it seems, are the exception.

It is more difficult to prove that many other benefits result from pet-keeping. One research paper delivered in Glasgow showed that patients in a nursing home specialising in the care of those with Alzheimer’s gave evidence to support the premise that when patients had access to a dog and could brush it, feed it and walk it, they showed a measurable increase in attention span, greater interaction with other people, and there was a reduction in recorded behavioural problems. Their mood was less variable, they talked more to others and what they said was more relevant.

Their memory of what the dog had done, and their ability to recount stories of its habits and needs, was rather superior to their ability to remember other aspects of their daily life. Even an aquarium with fish swimming around in front of patients with Alzheimer’s is helpful.

Many patients with the disease have poor appetites but, if there is an aquarium in the dining room, they eat more. This was reflected in the study sample’s weight maintenance. They also suffered fewer episodes of disruptive behaviour.

Pets are not only valuable at the tail end of someone’s life. Other research papers presented showed that, in those households where there are pets, the children have fewer days off school because of ill health.

The difference was appreciable. At the start of their education, in the nursery-school years, those children who had access to a pet were absent from school with ill health 18 per cent less than those who did not have contact with animals.

By the time they started at primary school, the difference was still marked but had fallen to 13 per cent. Eleven thousand pet owners in Australia, China and Germany were surveyed, and the number of attendances at their doctors’ surgeries were compared. Pet owners made 20 per cent fewer annual visits.

Whether it is entirely fair to attribute all these advantages to looking after and cherishing their cats and dogs is difficult to prove. There are likely to be confounding factors. It could be that dog and cat owners are, by nature, more self-reliant and responsible, for example.

It has been shown that animals around the house in a child’s very early life may reduce the incidence of atopy — asthma, hay fever, other types of allergic rhinitis and some forms of eczema. However, once someone has developed these allergic responses, later exposure to animals may provoke a response. Research carried out in Detroit, Michigan, showed that children who had a dog and a cat, or two dogs, in the house in their first year of life were 40 per cent less likely to suffer from one of the atopic diseases than those who didn’t. A study from Harvard University showed that keeping a cat, if there was no history of asthma, reduced the likelihood of a child developing asthma, hay fever or some forms of eczema, but if there was a history of asthma in the mother’s family this didn’t apply. A history of allergies on the father’s side was irrelevant.

Fifty years ago, when exposure to animals was more common, allergic conditions were correspondingly less prevalent. In Eastern Europe, where young children still live in close proximity to animals, allergies are less common than in the spotless, aseptic households of Western Europe.