That cat didn’t stay, so we adopted another one, Bluey, which was wild and browny-yellow and scrawny so I didn’t know why it got that name. We left saucers of milk out for it and propped open the bathroom door so it would have somewhere to go in out the rain. My dad said milk would attract visitors we didn’t want and my mum shivered and told him to stop, we didn’t want any more social workers. But Bluey knew it was a bargain and started to leave mice out by the back doorstep and I saw him once by the back wall shaking a big one by the back of the neck. So my dad had to be quiet and let us have Bluey as our pet.

He had bluey eyes as you started to look. He wasn’t for stroking but he followed you with his eyes down from the wall like what you were doing was going to be a spell to turn him back into being a prince. But he wouldn’t come into the house. He was wild and wet and walked alone along the walls of the backyards, smelling the drizzle on his nose and stalking the rain for small birds to be holding their wings in his teeth.

Missus got brought home by Manus in his jumper to be a cat for inside and he kept it locked up in his room for days to get it used to being there. I first saw it peering out his V-neck like it wasn’t ready to be born even though it was older than a kitten and had a deep cut by its nose just under its eye.

‘How’d it get that?’

‘She got in a fight,’ he said. ‘I’m rescuing her.’

‘She’s not really a mouser, is she?’ my mum said, but she changed when Missus reached out a paw to touch Manus’s nose and mewed at him like she was asking her mum what to do next. ‘We’ll have to let your father decide.’

She had soft white markings that made her look like a girl, and browny-red and black fur in swirls up to her tail which waved and twitched like a flag in the breeze, my dad said.

They didn’t say anything for days while Manus kept her up in his room except to ask where he was going with the white bits of his fish fingers. When she came out to us she was his cat, and you didn’t want to do anything in front of her because she’d tell him. She must have been deaf, though, because she didn’t hear any scrabbling and thought all she was supposed to do was play a bit with us while she waited for him to come home so she could sit on his lap.