One Year

Today marks one year since Thomas and I brought Missy home from the RSPCA.

It has been the most wonderful 12 months with her and, at the risk of sounding like a total cliché, neither of us can remember what life was like without her. Although we'd both lived with cats before, they'd always belonged to housemates which, it turns out, isn't the same thing at all.

Missy chose us, rather than the other way round. We went to the RSPCA a couple of days after Brexit, desperate to take our minds off the horror unfolding around us, and wandered around the cat section admiring puss after puss, completely baffled as to how we were meant to choose just one. And then a black cat with yellow eyes pushed herself up against the glass of her pen and 'rubbed' her head against my hand to say hello, and we were smitten.

Missy is mercurial. She is assertive. She can be very aloof and she can be very affectionate. She loves being brushed more than anything else (apart from perhaps Dreamies) and she loves to greet us when we come home from work. She will only sit on a lap if you first put a yellow cushion on said lap: no cushion, no lap snuggles from Missy. She'll hiss when displeased and occasionally strike out, but she's always careful not to use her claws on us. She's an awful wimp who makes a song and dance out of jumping onto a table, and will run away from other cats rather than confront them. She does, however, like to hunt flies. To our great disappointment, she's never shown any interest in boxes, nor in sitting in small and amusing places. Her happy place is the back garden, where she can nibble plants and watch insects to her hearts content. Most importantly, she is - as we tell her often - the best little cat in the world and we could not love her more.