Cats are different. On the one hand we have these great tawny brutes that sit yawning under the hot veldt sun or burning bright in jungles, and on the other there's these little things that know how to sleep on top of off-peak heaters and use cat doors. Not much in between. is there? A whole species divided, basically, between 500lbs of striped muscle that can bring down a gnu, and ten pounds of purr. Nowhere do we find the Piltdown Cat, the missing lynx.

All right, there's the wild cat, but that just looks like your average domestic tabby who's been hit on the head with a brick and got angry about it. No, we must face it. Cats just turned up. One minute nothing, next minute Egyptians worshipping them, mummifying them, building tombs for them. No messing around with a spade in the sad bit of the garden behind the toolshed for your Pharaohs, not when 20,000 men and a load of log rollers were standing around idle.

Scientists working for the Campaign for Real Cats believe that, because of the Schrodinger experiments (qv), the whole question of where cats come from, and how, is now totally meaningless, since there appear to be some cats that can travel quite painlessly across time and space, and therefore this means that the only place/time we can be sure cats come from is now.

How to get a cat

1. Adverts in the Post Office

Five adorable tabby kittens, Just ready to leave Mum, Free to Good Home, Please Phone…

Yes. Please, Please Phone, because they're all big and fighting with one another and some of the males are beginning to take a sophisticated interest in Mum. Do not be fooled into believing that you will need to turn up bearing evidence of regular church-going and sober habits; good home in this case means anyone who doesn't actually arrive in a van marked