Digested week: In defence of cat ladies (especially those with children) | Lucy Mangan

Monday

With apologies, of course, to Senator JD Vance – I have acquired two rescue kittens. Strictly speaking, I am not one of the “childless cat ladies” whom he so mocks and of whom he so disapproves, because I have a son. But it is my firm belief that childless cat ladyness is a state of mind, and in those terms I find myself fully qualified for the category.

For cats I can do. Cats I am good at. Cats are my level. They take as much as you have to give them on any given day – food, love, physical affection, attention – and then they go off and manage by themselves. It’s wonderful. If you’re having a bad or busy day, you can ignore them. They don’t care. They’ll eat your face as soon as you die. This is not – or only very rarely – true of children.

Children need everything, all the time, and it is never enough. It’s not really their fault, of course. It’s your fault for having them. Preternaturally wise women – the kind historically associated with cats, and we begin to see now how it all ties in – do not need to have a baby to discover this. The rest of us aren’t as fortunate and only come to know our limits when we have already birthed a long-term dependent.

Where was I? Oh yes. My new kittens are great! You should see all my photos! They are not occasioning long dark nights of the soul since they arrived at all! So cute.

Tuesday

Do you feel that? Do you? That tiny, delicious hint of a chill in the early morning air? It will burn off by 10 or so but it’s here – the first, precious, longed-for harbinger of autumn. The greatest of seasons is on its way.

Time for all the best things. Buying a 2024-25 diary. Bringing your thick socks and opaque tights to the forefront of your underwear drawer again – summer chafing is over. And I shall be heaving out of the bookcase Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light and curling up with it to the exclusion of all else (except kittens).

I have tried to read it every winter – its true season – since it was published four years ago. But winter has stupid Christmas in it and extra deadlines and stupid school Christmas events and then new year and depression and essentially only four good reading days. So I have at last come to my senses and am starting the giant tome on the very first day of September. Nobody ruin the ending for me.

Wednesday

My dad left the country to escape Charles and Diana’s wedding and the run-up to it back in 1981. Arranged some work and then a bit of holiday in the US (then a relatively safe haven from royal fervour), packed his bag and vamoosed for the duration. I’m thinking of doing the same now that the Oasis reunion has been announced .

I just don’t think I can bear it. All the speculation, all the middle-aged men buying new parkas and trying to recapture their youth. The possible resurgence of cod-Mancunian accents. The loading on to a pair of mardy brothers more cultural significance than they can possibly deserve or bear. The endless puns in headlines. All the retrospectives and then the reviews. How they are better than ever or a sad simulacrum of what they used to be. Young people either hailing their new discovery or dismissing our history with a sorrowing shake of their TikToking heads. I can’t stand it. Where should I go?

Thursday

Two gastro-abominations are about to be visited upon the world, if we are to believe the outraged takes that have greeted news from the food giant Heinz and – uh – whatever Terry’s counts as. The former is about to start selling canned spaghetti carbonara and the latter is launching the “norange”, which is a segmented milk chocolate ball without the orange flavour of that fine Christmas staple, Terry’s Chocolate Orange. “Norange” as a contraction of “no orange”, you see? A bit like how prosecco without the alcohol is called “Nosecco”? “Norange”. “No-orange”. You’re with me now, I think.

Anyway. Revulsion, fear and livid objections have greeted both announcements and so it behoves me to try to pour a little extra virgin olive and/or citrus oil on these troubled waters. To the panicked haters – ask yourself this and only this: is the canned carbonara/norange replacing all other carbonaras/Terry’s chocolate goods? Will you be forced to eat either to the exclusion of all else? Are we about to become a one-pasta-dish/one-segmented-ball state? Will your preferred dishes and confectionary still exist untouched on this or any other plane? Answer these questions honestly and I think you will find that all is still well in your culinary world.

Friday

Network Rail is having to erect fences round the part of a 200-year-old viaduct in rural Cheshire that has become a site of pilgrimage for Harry Styles fans since it was featured in a 2013 film about the rise of One Direction as the site of his first kiss. The paints and solvents used to leave messages are damaging the brickwork and some people have been trying to take bricks home with them. The fences will preserve the declarations of love and solidarity left so far and will provide space for new visitors (arriving at the rate of roughly 10,000 a year) to leave their own.

Which I think is all rather lovely. Usually fandom – especially teenage female fandom, which forms the core though not the entirety of Styles’ followers – is treated with disrespect bordering on contempt. This time, the powers that be have accommodated it as best they can. A rare grace note that almost made me shed a tear.