(1985), the Proprietary Cat Litter Row (1986) and what became rather disgracefully reported as the Great Bowl With Your Name On It Fracas (1987). As I said at the time, while of course the ideal Real cat eats its meals off an elderly saucer with remnants of the last meal still crusting the edge or, more typically, eats it off the floor just beside it, a Real cat is what you are, not what is done to you. Some of us may very well feel happier carting our cats around in a cardboard box with the name of a breakfast food on the side, but Real cats have an inbuilt distrust of white coats, can tell instantly when the vet is in prospect, and can erupt from even the stoutest cardboard box like a ICBM. This generally happens in dense traffic or crowded waiting rooms.

Despite the bad feeling caused by the Great Bowl With Your Name On It Fracas mentioned above, we should make it clear that Real cats do eat out of bowls with PUSSY written on the side. They'd eat out of them if they had the word ARSENIC written on the side. They eat out of anything.

Real cats catch things.

Real cats eat nearly all of everything they catch. A Real cat's aim is to get through life peacefully, with as little interference from human beings as possible. Very much like real humans, in fact.

Can I be pedigree and a Real cat too?

Of course you can't. You're a human.

The cat, I mean.

Ah. A thorny one, this. Logically, simply knowing your great-granddad's name should not be a bar to enjoying the full rich life, but some of the Campaign's more committed members believe that a true Real cat should be in some doubt as to its own existence, let alone that of its parents.

We feel that this is an extreme view. It is true that many of us feel the quintessential Real cat looks like the survivor of a bad mincer accident, but if people are really going to go around judging a cat's Realness by looks and fur colour alone, then they must see that what they are working towards is a Breed in its own right (“And this Year's Supreme Champion is Sooty, by ‘Thatdamngreythingfromnextdoorsonthebirdtableagain’ out of ‘We just Call Her Puss’ of Bedwellty”).