It’s just over a month since my daughter appeared at breakfast with a scruffy black kitten and told my OH that she’d found him another birthday present.  ‘Oh, no you haven’t…’   We’ve been looking hard for a new home for Kevin and apart from an offer from Lucy at Literary Relish to post him to Manchester we’ve been met by a variety of ingenious excuses from English friends as to why they couldn’t give houseroom to a small kitten, one frank ‘We don’t do cats,’ and an appalled shudder from a French woman who was looking for a kitten at the very idea of having a black one.  So we took the decision today and booked him into the vet…

… for his vaccinations and microchip.  We’re now officially a three cat family.  The dogs are not pleased at being outnumbered and I doubt the ginkgo tree is going to survive much more of this treatment:

He’s up and down it about seven times a day and every day it has fewer and fewer branches and fewer and fewer leaves.  Bankie will be pleased though, having initially completely traumatised by this small intruder he suddenly realised that for the first time since we found him when he was four weeks old he’s got a feline friend to play with.

I, however, cannot believe that we’ve ended up with a cat called Kevin.  The name was a joke, we all thought we wouldn’t have a problem finding such an attractive fellow a home and anyway all animals in our household seem to gather nicknames like frogs catch flies.  All except Kevin that is, occasionally he’s called Kev, but that’s it.  He’s distinctly lacking in table manners too,

Bankie’s been known to sample water from a glass but he dips one paw in and sucks it and doesn’t try to actually get in the glass.  There’s also this:Kevin, take note.  We’ve been soft touches so far but there are some things up with which we will not put.  Sharing our evening tipple with the cat is one of them.