This week's elite men's time trial at the 2013 UCI Road World Championships in Florence provided numerous memorable spectacles. The cycling world will long remember the indomitable performance of Germany's Tony Martin as he locked onto his third consecutive title, and the excruciating effort put in by Britain's Olympic champion Sir Bradley Wiggins as he attempted to earn his first world road race title and fell agonisingly - really agonisingly, as by his own admission he rode himself into a state of collapse at the finish - short, having to settle for silver ahead of another huge talent, Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland.

But for the wider world, the abiding image of this event will be of a leaping cat.

Wildlife encroaching onto the field of play has been an intermittent feature of large sporting events down the years. You like to think that the odd goat might have wandered into the stadium at Olympia to disrupt proceedings at the Ancient Games, although there is no record of it.

However the presence of television cameras at sports occasions over the last 50 years has provided a treasury of moments when the sudden emergence of a dog, cat, bird, fox, rabbit, squirrel or pine marten has halted the action and re-focused attention on a new but perennially popular game: that of catching and removing the errant creature.

Colombian rider Rafael Infantino has a close encounter with a cat during the time trial at the Road World Cycling Championships in Florence

In the case of the men's time trial, the stripey cat which ventured onto the course and into the path of the oncoming Rafael Infantino eventually found its own way back to obscurity. Before it did so, however, the Colombian cyclist had to take evasive action as the startled creature began to double back on itself and then - gloriously - reared up on its hind legs at him and his infernal passing machine.

On such occasions, there occur two new sporting challenges. The first is to the TV commentator, and here the man behind the Eurosport mike rose gamely to the occasion. Note to any budding TV commentators - the tone at such times should always be jocular. The classic example came during a 1992 American football game between Michigan and Purdue when a rabbit ran onto the pitch and then proceeded all the way down it, with the commentator counting it down all the way to touchdown territory, at which point it paused to reflect upon a triumph which had set the whole stadium at a roar.

Eurosport's man got the tone right in Florence. But his suggestion that the cat had been "leaping up to say hello" was fanciful. And, in my mind, wrong. That cat was having a go. That cat was clearly saying to Rafael Infantino: "I don't care if you are a highly paid professional road cyclist in pursuit of a prize that would pay for my pet food until the end of my days, and beyond. Get out of my face! In fact, come back here, I want to kill you!!"

Lions on the pitch during the tour to New Zealand in 1971

If you can find the clip on You Tube - it's not going to be a hard task, this - then look again, and I think you will agree with me. Saying hello? I don't think so...

The second sporting challenge that emerges on these occasions is to the production team on the TV, or to media organisations reporting the incursion. That is, there is the obligation to create a bad pun. As far as the rabbit-on-the-football-pitch incident is concerned, the little video package celebrating it has the initial headline of "Hare-y moment". The most recent opportunity created in Florence has, naturally, yielded efforts along the lines of "Near Cat-astrophe in road race". There is no point in trying to stop this. It's nature.

The tone of jocularity, once established, has to be maintained by the commentator. It is not acceptable for his affability to erode as the bloody stupid creature continues to zigzag all over the bloody pitch, evading plunging players and stumbling officials, holding up the action and for God's sake will someone get hold of that bloody thing my fixed grin is killing me!!!!!

Scarecrows on the pitch at The Oval in 1957 as the groundsman prepares to prepare the ground without the botheration of pigeons

In fairness, keeping up the verbal fixed grin becomes particularly difficult on certain occasions.

Such as the 1970 football match between Colchester United and Brentford when the visiting keeper, Chic Brodie, a back-pass - this truly was a hospital ball - and a small white dog converged in the penalty area, resulting in one bouncing ball, one poleaxed keeper and one unrepentant small white dog.

Brodie's left kneecap had been broken by the exuberant forward's lunge, and his top class career ended. "The dog may have been small...but it just happened to be solid..." he later reflected. Which was rather gracious in the circumstances.

Similarly this year when the Swiss League match between Zurich and FC Thun was held up for more than five minutes - great effort! - by a pine marten which, among other things, evaded apparent capture by Zurich's Loris Benito as it bit him on the finger. Eventually it fell to the Zurich goalkeeper, Davide Da Costa, to win the game within the game as he managed to dive and hold the offending wildlife. He needed those gloves, though.

Rabbit on the field - Runny the Rabbit, mascot for the 1993 IAAF World Championships. Sorry about this.

Four years before the Brodie debacle, of course, there had been the spectacle of a rogue human on the pitch as an Everton fan evaded the comic flop of one policeman during the 1966 FA Cup final against Sheffield Wednesday before being rugby-tackled to the floor by another officer.

Sadly, mass incursions onto the football pitch by humans on subsequent occasions have proved entirely lacking in fun or entertainment.

During a 1962 World Cup match the arrival on the pitch of an energetic black dog presented the classic catch-me-if-you-can challenge to the players of England and Brazil. England's keeper Ron Springett failed to gather the loose hound, and then Brazil's winger Garrincha - despite his nickname of Little Bird - proved unequal to this wildlife challenge. It fell to England forward Jimmy Greaves to get the job done - or rather, he fell to it, getting down on all fours and becoming, momentarily, a dog in an England shirt, in order to lure the intruder into thinking that he was about to make a doggy friend. The friendship came to a sudden end as the dog was then passed to an official by his turncoat buddy.

England forward Jimmy Greaves was also adept at luring errant dogs

Again, the commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme did what commentators have to do on such occasions as he maintained - jocularly - that Greaves had already earned the title of man of the match for his efforts.

Such fun. Personally I would love to see more animals get involved in this sport within sport. It would be great, for instance, if a sub-editor could be given the opportunity to write the headline: "Reindeer stops play." Who knows? Perhaps it will happen in Lapland one day.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.