The Unadulterated Cat

How to get a cat

Five adorable tabby kittens, Just ready to leave Mum, Free to Good Home, Please Phone…

Yes. Please, Please Phone, because they're all big and fighting with one another and some of the males are beginning to take a sophisticated interest in Mum. Do not be fooled into believing that you will need to turn up bearing evidence of regular church-going and sober habits; good home in this case means anyone who doesn't actually arrive in a van marked

J Torquemada and Sons, Furriers.

if you answer the ad you'll find there's one kitten left.

There's always one kitten left. You spend ages trying to figure out what it was that made the previous four purchasers leave it behind.

Eventually you will find out.

Nevertheless, Adverts in the Post Office are a good way of acquiring your basic cat.

Pretty much like (1.) except that the word “adorable” probably won't be used and the word “free” certainly won't be used. Not to be contemplated by anyone on a normal income.

The cats acquired in this way are often very decorative, but if that's all you want a cat for then a trip to the nearest urban motorway with a paint scraper will do the business.

Pedigree cats talk a lot—catownerspeak for yowling softly—and tend to rip curtains. Being so highly bred, some of them are mentally unstable. A friend had an Arch-Villains' cat (qv) which thought it was a saucepan. But, because it was very expensive and more highly bred than Queen Victoria, it thought it was a saucepan with style.

A very reliable way of acquiring a cat. It'll normally turn up within the first year, with a smug expression that suggests it is a little surprised to see you here. It doesn't belong to the previous occupants, none of the neighbours recognise it, but it seems perfectly at home. Why? It is very probably a Schrodinger Cat (qv).

Another very popular source, especially just after Christmas and the summer holiday period, when their sales are on. Despite the fact that you can barely hear her on the phone for the background of yowling, the harassed young lady will probably take rather more pains than the average Post Office Advert cat seller to ensure you haven't actually got skinning knives in your pocket. Often no payment, just a voluntary donation—made at pistol point. You will be offered a variety of furry kittens, but the cat for you is the one-year-old spayed female lurking at the back of the cage with a worried expression who will show her appreciation by piddling in the car all the way home.

These cats come with a selection of bowls, half a tin of the most expensive cat food on the market, a basket and a small woolly thing with a bell in it. They will then spend two weeks under the bed in the spare room. Try to get it out and it could be you in the hospital having skin from your buttocks grafted onto your arm.

Cats are not always inherited from dead people. If the previous owner is still alive, the Real cat will probably be accompanied by a list of its likes and dislikes. Throw it away. They're just fads anyway.

Try to avoid inheriting cats unless they come with a five-figure legacy, or at least the expectation of one.

Do you know where your cat spends its time when it's not at home? It's worth checking with more distant neighbours that they don't have a cat with the same size and colouring. It can happen. We once knew two households who for years both thought they owned the same cat, which spent its time commuting between food bowls. A sort of menagerie à trois.

An interesting fact about acquiring cats is that the things are, by and large, either virtually free or very expensive. It's as if the motor industry had nothing between the moped and the porsche.