I am at my late mother’s house a lot at the moment, doing what someone memorably coined “sadmin”, and although not all of it is sad by any means – the other day, her neighbours made me some cheese puffs – that is no excuse for the fact that a cat has moved in. My mum spent, conservatively, 80% of her final years estate-planning for her existing cat. She left it a tax-efficient bequest, and found a home for it fancier than anywhere any of us have ever lived. The day after my mum died, Mimi was processing her grief fully ensconced with a family that had bought her a Japanese indoor cat toilet.
Then, wham, a fresh cat appeared. I didn’t immediately start feeding him; definitely half an hour had passed before I gave him a taco, no actual cat food until day two. My third mistake was to get the kids over to meet him, because that led inexorably to mistakes four and five – he now has a name, and my son goes over to feed him on the way back from school. People send me memes about middle-aged women being inexorably drawn to cats. They call it the “manypaws”. That’s a trope as old as time, but what no one ever mentions is how much cats are drawn to middle-aged women. They love us.
I still hadn’t really accepted him as mine, however, until none of us saw him for a couple of days, and I went door to door asking after him. “Haven’t seen him,” said the guy who works in a cat cafe, who you would think would be more into cats. “You haven’t asked me what he looks like!” I said, indignant, going on to describe his delightful tuxedo markings. “Oh, the stray, you mean,” he said. “He is not a stray,” I replied, “he is my stray.”
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
