We've been married for forty years and, until 2013, we always had cats. It must have been us, but none of our cats were ever aloof and they all loved us to pieces. Our last one, a lovely fellow, died suddenly and very prematurely in September 2013. We decided to go petless from then on as we wanted to do the holidays we could never really afford before and we never had the heart to put our cats in catteries. We live in the middle of nowhere in a half-acre garden away from roads, surrounded by fields, and all our cats were in their element. They were all good mousers and, I don't know why, they hardly ever bothered the birds that we attracted with our bird-feeding station. I can't imagine that we'll never have cats again. It will take just one fluffy kitten to catch Mrs Steve at just the right moment!