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We couldn't include a top five cat list without considering our top five horses! Here's Rachel Hickman on the horse friends that have stood the test of time.

1. For determined girls who love ponies, Patricia Leitch's For Love of a Horse is unforgettable. Jinny lives in the Scottish highlands with Shantih the chestnut Arab, who she saves from an accident and who - as she thrillingly learns in the sequel - is A Devil to Ride!

2. We couldn't fail to mention K. M. Peyton's sweepingly romantic modern classic, Flambards. Meet Sweetbriar, the strawberry roan who teaches Christina to ride. In the process, the horse brings her close in different ways to the three boys who become the men in her life.

3. The 1941 novel We Couldn't Leave Dinah by Mary Treadgold was already a classic by the time I discovered it. It's the story of a girl who won't leave her pony, Dinah, when the Nazis invade her fictional Channel island.

4. For contemporary readers is Lauren St John's The One Dollar Horse. City girl Casey Blue rescues a half-starved horse and makes her dream come true of riding at Badminton Horse Trials. Thrilling, moving and filled with the sort of equine detail that real riding girls love.

5. Riders by Jilly Cooper. Coming way up the age-group with bags of content, huge teen appeal and epicly plotted naughtiness, nothing beats Jilly's sense of fun or her love of animals and the countryside. Follow the restless romance and domestic disasters of Fen, Tory, Jake and the appallingly behaved Rupert Campbell Black as well as their devoted horses including the Bull, Sailor, Africa and the magnificent avenging Macaulay.

Rachel Hickman is the Deputy MD of Chicken House Publishing Ltd. Her debut novel for young teens about love, loss and horses comes out next spring. One Silver Summer will be published by Scholastic Inc.