When my parents agreed to take in Lucy, “a lovely quiet Burmese”, from a friend of a friend, they had no idea what they were letting themselves in for. “She’s no trouble at all – just feed her Kitekat and she’ll be happy.” Eight-year-old me knew these were the exact words because my mother repeated them often, with a rising note of indignation, over the following months.
We knew Lucy had never previously been outside the walls of a Glasgow tenement, so obviously a period of adjustment was expected. But for days, she was a yowling ball of black fur lurking behind the sofa. A shiny new bowl of cat gloop remained untouched. If she was happy, she had a funny way of showing it.
