I'm not sure even I believed it ....

 ...when I said No More Cats after we lost Markko earlier this year. 

Anyway, meet Cosimo (and yes, it does appear we're working our way through the Medici family for our cat names)

There are very many pros to not having a cat, but it turns out that even altogether they don't outweigh the huge con that is missing having a cat about the place. 

It was with some trepidation that we took ourselves to the local cat shelter on Sunday to view their available cats. They had put up a post on their Facebook page earlier this week saying they had lots of cats in all of a sudden and if you were thinking of getting one maybe come along to one of their weekend rehoming shifts. 

We were worried mainly about the burden of choice but in the event we needn't have worried. We were asked what we were looking for and we said we weren't fussy really because all our previous cats had just turned up on the doorstep and then moved in, and when we said that the lady we were talking to said well let me show you Harley. Harley had been living as a stray for a while and hadn't liked it one little bit, and the fact that he had to fight lots of other stray cats to get himself anything to eat has apparently left him hating Every Other Cat in the Wurld. We are suckers for this kind of sob story so it was as well that we loved Harley as soon as we met him. We agreed to take him, subject to the necessary checks. We visited him at the Shelter on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday (yesterday), rather sooner than anticipated,  we were given the all clear to bring him home. So we did. And renamed him, obvs. 

He's very affectionate, a little bit vocal now he's home and the first long haired cat we have ever had. Luckily he loves to be brushed. He also appears to approve of having a large house to wander around with lots and lots of places to curl up unseen: we left him in the living room last night with a light, food etc and discovered him this morning under the spare room bed. Oh well, who doesn't love a game of cat Hide and Seek first thing?