On Fancy Cat Breeds
or, why this little man absolutely deserves to be thrown in the river but hasn’t been

Eagle-eyed followers of my silly narcissism posts will note that in the last couple of years I’ve been joined by two white fluffy creatures. Let me share my usual point by point explanation of why we have ragdoll cats (for non cat enthusiasts: a type of overengineered soft toy that screams and shits).

1. My partner wanted cats.
2. We live on an estate full of foxes in central London, next to a road full of buses, and all of her childhood cats met sticky and premature ends outdoors.
3. Thus, we looked into indoor cats, mainly for the welfare of the cat but incidentally for the local wildlife (none of which we want killed or brought indoors as a present).
4. However, while the “indoor” thing is getting much more popular, it’s not nearly as popular or widely understood in the UK yet as it is Stateside. So shelters would not let us have healthy kittens unless they had access to the outside world, and would only offer cats with various seriously debilitating health problems.
5. I am sympathetic to sick cats but I’ve never lived with cats and we agreed it would be a bit challenging for a first cat to already be on death’s door.
6. Considerable research went into UK cats who would be good for our circumstances. Maine coons, the largest street-legal cat in the UK were ruled out on the basis they simply wouldn’t fit in our flat, leaving us with the choice of ragdolls or British shorthairs.
7. I took one look at the shorthairs and said “no, they look like merchant bankers”.

And I stand by that! Look, all cats are at some level snooty aristos, but there’s a difference of degree here. Ragdolls are the equivalent of tsarist-era princesses, so utterly out of touch and cocooned in wealth that they don’t even understand the extent of their privilege. Meanwhile, I look at a shorthair and I know it has opinions on the welfare budget and nods along to Telegraph articles about how tough it is to be a buy-to-let landlord.

And we live not far from the river, and I know enough about living with cats to accept that it is simply a longer or shorter period of waiting for them to commit some sort of heinous crime against a possession of significant financial or sentimental value. And I know that on that day, if I saw that bland, snotty, jowly face above a half-eaten baby photo album or widdled-on graphics card, I would have great difficulty not taking the little sod for a swim.

So we got these little fellas, and named them Leopold and Ferdinand because they’re posh and inbred, and they have been three years of very nice, surprisingly affectionate, company.

The punchline? Well, recently Ferdy went and bit clean through the screen of my laptop in a thoroughly terminal way. And, full credit to both of us, was not immediately delivered to the Thames for drowning practice.

(Disclaimer because that’s the sort of place the internet is these days: if this ever gets in front of someone inclined to whip up a self-righteous hatestorm, please note that this is a joke post, I love my fluffy idiots and have no intention of ever drowning them, and also you need better hobbies.)