A stray cat’s moved in. My wife’s given it a name. Uh-oh

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/23/tim-dowling-stray-cat

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I am in a Birmingham Travelodge with the band I’m in, between two gigs. With the remains of our non-complementary breakfast spread out before us, we turn our backs on one another and crouch over our phones, taking the opportunity to deal with any family or work problems that have accumulated overnight.

I study a text from my wife that says, “stray cat alert”, accompanied by a picture of a cat. The cat, I cannot help but notice, is asleep on our sofa. There is a second picture in which the stray cat is being cuddled by the youngest one. I call my wife.

“Don’t worry, I think I’m about to get rid of it,” she says. The cat, she tells me, was found by a friend in the middle of Uxbridge Road. It’s unclear why it’s presently at our house.

“We don’t need any more animals,” I say.

“I’ve mounted an Instagram campaign,” she says. “There’s a lot of interest.”

“That’s good,” I say.

“It is very sweet, though,” she says.

“I can see,” I say.

“It’s called Ottilie,” she says.

“Uh-oh,” I say.

As our van heads north to the next gig, I recall some of the other abandoned animals that have crossed our threshold over the years: the unwanted, the traumatised, the insane. There was the panicked pair of low-slung dogs that spent an afternoon trashing our kitchen before the RSPCA turned up. There was the tailless grey cat that, for better or worse, is still our cat. There was the scarred, smelly and frankly hideous staffy cross that I found tied to some railings one night and was wrong-footed into taking home. It was just after Christmas, a time of year when even death row has a waiting list. My wife stared into its scabby face as it sat wheezing in the middle of the sitting room.

“I’m going to call you Pearl,” she said.

Pearl lived with us for 72 hours, most of it spent at my side, gazing up at me with boundless longing and drooling on my shoes. Eventually my wife found Pearl a place in a shelter. That afternoon she came up to my office and slipped a lead over the dog’s enormous head.

“Say goodbye to your little friend,” she said.

“It’s not my friend,” I said.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said.

When I arrive home on Saturday afternoon the stray cat has already gone to new and allegedly delighted owners.

“Really?” I say. “I didn’t even meet it.”

“It was terribly sweet,” my wife says.

“We should have kept it,” the middle one says.

“You can only have so many animals,” my wife says. “There’s a tipping point, and we’ve crossed it.” I turn to look at the little dog, which is perched on the back of the sofa behind my head.

“You were the tipping point,” I say.

“I would trade that dog for the stray cat,” the middle one says.

“I would trade this dog for a handful of magic beans,” I say.

“Would they even have to be magic, though?” the middle one asks.

“No,” I say. “I would accept most tinned varieties.”

“Stop it,” my wife says, clapping her hands twice. The little dog leaps from one sofa to another and curls up in her lap. I tell myself I’m pleased not to have met the stray cat, because it means I will never have to think about it in the way I sometimes still think about Pearl.

“I said I’d get rid of the cat, and I did,” my wife says.

“You can get rid of anything,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “I can.”