Complain-y

On Tuesday I received a £20 voucher for a well known Italian-esque restaurant chain (ok, Prezzo) following some fairly robust feedback I had left on their website. The sticking point had been a "tomato and onion salad" that consisted of a fridge-cold supermarket value-range tomato cut into six, a small red onion hacked into thick rings, and approx 0.5mls of vinaigrette. Admittedly I have been spoiled by six years of WI-catered buffets at the village hall, but this still seemed sub-par.

Anyway. I was pleased with the voucher (just remind me not to order any side dishes this time!) but one sentence in the letter stuck in my craw a bit: "The duty manager informs me he would have been happy to replace any dishes you were unhappy with if you had brought this to his attention at the time."

DUTY MANAGER? I could barely find a waitress to take our order. They had three staff on between 70 people. We were in for a quick bite; I'm hardly going to wait 15 minutes to get a salad replaced that I will have to eat way after I've finished my main course, like some weird über-healthy dessert. And who's to say the new one will be any better? If that's what they think constitutes a salad, it's hardly like Jamie Oliver is going to race into the kitchen and show them how to do it better. Anyway, I have never lost The Fear that if you complain in a restaurant your meal will come back invisibly garnished with bogies and spit.

Bring it to the duty manager's attention. Pfft!

How to... Choose a pet

I am one of those hair-covered sorts for whom a house is not a home without a cat or three. I react badly to people who claim they don’t like animals, much as if they had told me they didn't enjoy ”Bullseye” or gin. Pets are brilliant, and here is a guide to choosing the right one for you:

Rabbits: there is something innately sinister about the thought of an adult owning rabbits. That said, baby rabbits are the softest thing in the WORLD. If you must purchase, try getting them from a petting zoo where they’ll be used to being handled and you won’t be guilt-tripped into buying Mr Bunny’s Dream Hutch, a pink diamanté water bottle and a pair of Emma Bridgwater feeding bowls, a snip at £314 the lot.

Reptiles/tarantulas: whilst their skins are undeniably great for taking to school for Show & Tell, I personally prefer a pet for whom the best outcome is something more than ”it doesn't bite me”.

Cats: God's way of telling you your furniture is too nice, cats are wonderfully soft, clean and self-sufficient. Unfortunately they are also contract killers who will deposit endless corpses on your pillow. Furthermore, they are shameless thieves of the glass of water you put by your bed in case you wake up thirsty in the night.

Dogs: if you want to own a dog, first consider your response to the following questions:

1) Do you mind if your clothes, home and car stink for the foreseeable future?

2) Can you watch 14 episodes of Blue Peter back-to-back without weeping? The relentless enthusiasm of its presenters will clue you into the mutt mindset, where almost everything is a wonderful new surprise. Oh wow, food! Oh wow, a shed! Oh wow, a pheasant! Oh wow, faeces!

Horses: I wouldn't know, because despite working hard at school and passing all my piano exams, my little sister was the one deemed worthy of a pony. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

The downside of being an animal lover

Tonight I think my cat is dying, so permit me a bit of self-indulgence.

I've known this little boy just about five and a half years - he was my husband's cat - and I really didn't like him to start with. Grumpy, noisy, inclined to brawl - I used to joke that he was the reincarnation of my grandfather, especially when he would come in at 2am making a hell of a racket, ensure that everyone was fully awake and then pass out for nine hours.

But just as I loved Grandad despite his foibles, I came to love our scrappy little Persian. An experiment in breeding that didn’t quite go to plan, he features an underbite worthy of a cartoon bulldog and fur the texture of cotton wool. He is chronically clumsy and famed for his ability to fall off tables when asleep. He will not tolerate being groomed and has to go off to be shaved under anaesthetic once a year, coming back looking like a little grey shammy leather, wobbly on his legs.

And I adore him. His fur is rainclouds over the sea and his little monkey face and black rubber lips - even that damned underbite - render him the sweetest, funniest-looking cat I’ve ever seen. He also has the most human personality of any animal I’ve met. Once, when I intervened in a standoff between him and a border terrier, he accidentally scratched me on the nose and I would swear to this day that he felt guilty - he sat and watched me for half an hour afterwards looking very contrite.

He is only 12 and I am not ready to lose him. I only took him to the vet because he seemed a bit short of breath, and the next thing I knew words like heart failure (at this point, the least worst outcome) and chest tumours were flying around the consulting room and favours were being called in at another branch to get him an X-ray first thing tomorrow.

I am on the sofa next to my boy, drinking him in, watching his little chest rise and fall at what is clearly too fast a speed, and I hope more than I have hoped for anything in a long time that he isn't lost to me just yet.