Cat-lover becomes cat-cautious after arrival of daughter

THE cats arrived first. Smudge, named by Cork Cat Action Trust for the black splotch on his nose, and his sister, ZiZi, whom we named after a cat in a Lebanese movie my husband had seen. They were three-month-old kittens, brazen and vulnerable, and we worried about them like they were children.

If we let them out, would they run away/get lost/be clobbered by a car/get into cat fights/have their eyes snatched out by magpies?

They slept in the spare bedroom and we took them for walks on his-and-her leads (red and blue) along our terrace on Cork City’s northside. (Yes, the neighbours laughed).