Floof burst into my life on a gloomy autumn night in 2015. I was new to London, walking home from my bar job in the teeming rain, when a pair of green eyes on a porch roof stopped me in my tracks. Closer inspection revealed a small fluffy cat – black as the night, totally drenched and yelling right at me. I helped her down, and in response she shadowed me for 25 minutes down the busy main road, screeching outside my front door with a determination that woke my flatmate. We let her in – “just for tonight”. But as she bedded down on my pillow, I knew she had no plans to leave.
It shouldn’t have worked. I was 23, broke and in no position to become the sole custodian of an alarmingly personable animal – plus, my flatmate already had a cat. We searched for her owner for a week, imaginatively naming her Floof in the interim, but were secretly glad when nobody responded to our posters. Through some unspoken feline treaty, the flat was split in two: my flatmate’s cat, Chairman, took the front half, and Floof got the back. (plus the garden, despite being there all of a week).
