Would you pay £1,800 for a cat?
...especially one that eats like a dustbin and never goes out. Meet the must-have moggies (loved by stars) whose price will give you paws for thought!
UntIL recently, I couldn’t say I had very much in common with Italian fashion designer Stefano Gabbana. naomi Campbell is not a close friend. I’ve never seen the inside of a yacht. and my wardrobe is distinctly more H&M than d&G. However, there is one thing, it seems, that I share with the Gabbana half of dolce & Gabbana: our very discerning taste when it comes to our choice of cat.
no torn- eared, common moggie for Mr Gabbana. Oh no. Like me, he has opted for a pure pedigree, the British Shorthair, a gorgeous, blue-blooded, amber- eyed, darling of a feline, with fur like purest cashmere and the cutest, teddy bear face that was made for Instagram.
He introduced ‘ the newest member of the #dGFamily’ — a blue kitten named Prince — to the world via his Instagram page last week. So far, Prince has been papped with his scratching post, stretching out on a table for tummy rubs and caught napping on an ornate, red and gold Fornasetti tray, worth about £150.
Like designer dogs before them, these are the ‘It’ cats. a British Shorthair kitten — they are also called British Blues as that was once the only colour you could get — can fetch anything up to £1,800, and you have to join a waiting list with a registered breeder.
Famous owners also include singer Sam Smith and actress Sadie Frost. advertisers love them, too. British Shorthairs have modelled for everyone from Prada to whiskas cat food.
they’re social media catnip, too: there are 3.6 million posts tagged #britishshorthair and are the most popular pedigree in the UK.
Unfortunately, this online deluge may be having unintended realworld consequences. ‘we do have concerns that people are choosing cats solely for the way they look, rather than for their temperament or personality,’ says Rob Young, head of catteries at Battersea dogs and Cats Home.
‘we also think it’s leading to more impulse buying, people bringing in cats for rehoming are increasingly saying they bought them online. Meanwhile, black cats in particular are harder to rehome — and we think one reason is that they don’t show up so well in photographs.’
I confess to posting an obscene number of pictures of my two females, Saga and Birgitte. It would take a heart of stone not to coo over the Shorthair’s chubby, perfectly coiffed cheeks and their round, imploring eyes and slightly snub noses.
they’re sweet-natured, thick as clotted cream, and a lot of fun.
there’s none of the usual feline aloofness. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the British Shorthair’s true appeal is that, for a cat, they’re surprisingly un- catlike. Calm,
contented, and cuddly, they actively seek out and enjoy human company. Birgitte in particular, cries if she can’t work out where I am in the house.
The grey-bears, as we call them, came into our lives at the perfect time. My husband Dan and I picked them up from the breeder a fortnight after I miscarried a muchlonged-for baby. We’d put our names down for the cats before I knew I was pregnant, paying £450 each, and ironically, once we found out, we’d talked about changing our minds, after all how sensible was it to get two kittens a few months before bringing home a newborn?
In the event, we were so grateful for the joy they brought, at a time when we were otherwise monosyllabic with sadness. A pet is no substitute for child — but it is hard to feel completely hopeless when there’s a kitten nuzzling into you.
There’s one area in which we do differ from the celebrity world, however. Many British shorthairs are so precious (and so dense), they inevitably end up house cats, we do, however, allow ours out — albeit under supervision. They are too cowardly to stray beyond the back fence and would never deign to bring home a dead mouse.
Their appetites are definitely plus size and they are prone to putting on weight. Our two are veritable dustbins and will eat anything they can get their whiskers round when we’re not watching: curry, avocado, the crumbs from a plate of toast and marmalade, lettuce leaves.
The only other downside? Grey fluff shows up equally conspicuously on white and dark clothes. something to bear in mind for next season, perhaps, Mr Gabbana.