Julie C

A couple of years ago I noticed in the church notice sheet that someone was looking for a new home for their cat. St Barnabas is huge – it had about 700 members at the time – so I didn’t know the owner. The cat was described as black and ‘very timid, but very affectionate’, and it needed a child-free home because it was living under the sofa in fear of the resident toddler.

‘That’s my cat!’ I said. ‘Please, God, let me have that cat!’ I’d wanted a pet for ages.

I rushed home and asked my flat mate if she minded us getting a cat.

‘No way,’ she answered.

So that was that, and not much later the advert disappeared from the notice sheet. Someone else had obviously taken it.

Not long after it was time to move on and I was looking for a new place to live. A room was advertised in a church member’s house, and I arranged to go and see it. The owner of the house, Jonathan, showed me around.

‘Here’s the room,’ he said, opening the door to a bedroom. There on the bed was a black cat.

‘That’s Jemima,’ said Jonathan. ‘My girlfriend found her through the notice sheet at church.’

It was my cat.

I moved in. I’m the one who looks after her now and she sleeps on my bed with me every night.

I told this story at the women’s group and one of the people who burst out laughing was the woman who had originally owned the cat.