Introducing Mizzy

My good friend The Neighbour’s Cat suddenly and unexpectedly got sent to live with someone else just before Christmas last year. I had no idea she was going, didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, and for months afterwards kept thinking I’d glimpsed her out of the corner of my eye sitting on the windowsill or hiding behind the curtains.

I’d been thinking for ages about getting my own cat, and last week I finally took the plunge and answered a classified ad on Gumtree. Someone nearby needed a new home for a ten year old, overweight, black-and-white cat with dandruff, so I’m now sharing my flat with a fat old lady cat called Mizzy.

By pure coincidence she has very similar markings to Neighbour’s Cat, but measures at least twice as much around the middle and currently weighs about five kilos or 11lbs, which is a lot of cat. Apparently an “average” cat weighs about four kilos, which I worked out is roughly the equivalent of me weighing well over 11 stone instead of 9. She’s going on a diet.

She’s very chatty and friendly and lets me rub her belly, and her string chasing technique involves lots of amusing rolling over to use all four paws, so we’re getting along fine.

I’ll be adding her opinions to mine here if she has any interesting ones, although so far she’s still eating Go-Cat because I didn’t realise it was made by the evil Nestle, who she will be boycotting when we get to the end of the packet. She much prefers home-made toys like the string and a feather to the annoying jingly balls actually sold as cat toys, so that’s a good sign. We haven't discussed vegetarianism yet.