SO - YOU'VE DECIDED TO GET A CAT!!
by Pauline Dewberry

Leonardo da Vinci summed it up just right when he said 'The smallest feline is a masterpiece.' When you look into that bright eyed little face with mischief and expectancy mixed together, your heart melts and it's a slippery slope from then on - no matter how much you protest, that little kitten is going to milk it for all its worth. (That's his job, after all! 'I'm a kitten - I'm cute!')

So, a friend of a friend of a friend's cat has just had a litter of kittens and the friend remembered a drunken moment when you professed a liking for cats and suddenly you find yourself about to take the journey which will seal the future of this little masterpiece. In your head you tell yourself - and repeat it like a mantra throughout the journey - that you're only going to LOOK, you'll say you've changed your mind, your job prospects have changed and you're being sent to the Outer Hebrides where they don't stock cat food so taking a cat home is absolutely out of the question at the moment.

An hour later you find yourself going home with not one kitten, but  two because there were only two left and you didn't want to give the unpicked one a complex. You were suddenly beset with childhood memories of being the fat, goofy, freckled, bespectacled kid that was stuck in goal because no one would choose you for their team in the games lesson. The thought that a kitten would suffer lifelong trauma, possibly needing psychotherapy at some point in its life was just too much to think about - even though its appearance was as remote from being fat, goofy, freckled and bespectacled as could possibly be - you just never knew what a kitten might be thinking as it watched its sibling go off into the world.

And now as you take the bus home with two little kittens living up to their job descriptions in the carrier with all the surrounding passengers oohing and aahing over their antics, you know that your life will never be the same again!