I like cats, it doesn’t make me a mad cat lady

Working from home means I’m invited into the office to collect mail – apart from the fish someone sent – that was disposed of, eventually, snigger.

The latest haul includes a handwritten envelope. Feedback! I open it with caution – these can go either way (I was once reported to the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for blasphemy, quite unconscious, and anyway I was quoting Youngest Child who’d been doing evolution at school, so it wisnae me).

Pink paper – nice, and it’s from a reader who agrees with me. Really!? Double whammy. It says they loved my article of 22 May – “exactly how I and many others I’m sure feel. Also 29th

May article.” I breathe again. A quick check on what I was banging on about reveals columns on the positives of lockdown (face masks, all day PJS) and getting to grips with bouldering.

I’m touched someone has taken the time to write. Thank you. But there’s more. Will there be a sting in the tail? Have I split an infinitive, blasphemed again, God I hope not), but no, it’s an enquiry after my cat, Biggie Smalls who hasn’t featured for a long time.

“Aw. You need to say he’s fine,” says Youngest. “Although sleeping more these days I’d say.”

“Physical impossibility. And I don’t mention him in case people think I’m a mad cat lady.”

“Well you are. So what?” she says. “We’re proud cat owners and he’s ADORABLE.”

How come young uns can clog the interweb with footage of furry animals but if someone my age reveals a penchant for a pet she’s a witch? Three hundred years ago I’d have been chained to a rock waiting for high tide.

But Youngest is right. So Biggie Smalls and his pals Big Pat Stanton and Wee Ginge are all thriving in lockdown. It’s as if they invented it: their Feeders at home 24/7, heating cranked up to the max, what’s not to like?

The only close shave the furry one has encountered over the past 18 months was when I ALMOST mistook a small tube of superglue for his flea ointment.

“Jeez,” said Youngest (see, again with the blasphemy), when she found me hyperventilating over what I’d nearly done. “What if he’d got superglued in the cat flap?”

“Could we have filmed it for Tiktok?” I say.“omg. Just no.”