You've Got To Be Kitten Me

This month Olly Mann embarks on a surprisingly complex mission to find some new furry friends…

We are in the market for a new cat. To write such a thing feels like an act of betrayal, because our current cat (can one have a “current” cat? Is it like having a “current” wife?), Coco, is very much alive. I adore her. For the first five years of our relationship, she literally slept between my legs on a nightly basis.

But I have to face facts: she is now 15 years old. We require perhaps not a Coco replacement, then, but a Coco replenishment; a feline companion for her twilight years, who will assume pole position only in the hopefully-distant-event of her death. An heir apparent. A Prince of Wales cat.

The problem is that our criteria for choosing a successor cat differ wildly from Coco’s criteria for cohabiting with a creature whom she won’t want to claw to death. This is a little hard for me to get my dumb human head around, because Coco is fairly low maintenance in her dealings with us. For instance, she nonchalantly endures a romp around our sitting room, pursued by my toddler wielding a toy hammer, on a daily basis. She survived virtually the whole winter in a kitchen cupboard when our house was being refurbished, and didn’t run away. She genuinely appears to enjoy our company, typically choosing to curl up wherever we are, despite numerous alternative sofas and beds in the vicinity. She’s easy-going.