I spontaneously bought a £100 cat on Gumtree – it was the best decision I’ve made

Two months after moving to London, and one night after sleeping with an ex, I made the most impulsive decision of my life.

At 2pm, I had low self esteem, a waning sense of joy and a tendency to overthink things to the point of inertia. By 6pm, I had all those things, plus a kitten called Otis – and an exciting new flea problem.

I was a Gen Z version of the ‘crazy cat lady’ stereotype, and I was totally fine with it.

See, I’ve always had an obsession with cats. It goes back as far as I can remember.

From the age of three, my biggest interests were my cat cuddly toys, having pictures of cats drawn for me, and watching the VHS tape of the middling Andrew Lloyd Webber musical nightly.

Every picture that was drawn by my mum, dad or unsuspecting family visitor was stuck to the wall of the flat. By the time my mum and I moved out the following year, that wall was completely covered.

The living room was also the dining room and the kitchen, so if you visited on any given evening, you’d have no choice but to spend it nestled between some toys, in front of a TV blasting out Memory, surrounded by various (no offence to my mum) haunting cat illustrations.

To this day I am thankful that cats don’t have opposable thumbs and therefore can’t file restraining orders. I’m also certain that even Lloyd Webber himself would have said: ‘Really? Couldn’t you have picked one of the good ones?’

So the process was simple. Following a few hours of crying, I googled: ‘cat’ and replied to an advert on Gumtree.

The ad was for one kitten, who was a standard black and white mix, not especially cute and £100.

I knew he was the one for me. He was the perfect mix of cheap enough that he didn’t risk getting stolen, but expensive enough that it probably wasn’t a complete scam.

So I stocked up on essentials from a nearby Pets at Home and went to collect him. All without stopping for a second to really consider what I was doing.

At first, Otis was just an incredible distraction. He was tiny, too small for his own fur, which spiked out like he was a cartoon who’d walked into an electric fence. He raced around the room and chased my toes like a perfectly animated Disney kitten.

I did also have to deal with the fleas. I didn’t know he had fleas until the lady I was collecting him from said: ‘By the way, he has fleas’ after I’d already packed him into his carrier/my heart.

That’s not the sort of thing you can complain about when you’re getting a cat in a four hour turnaround from Gumtree. It’s like going for a curry with a one star rating and being genuinely surprised about how much time you spend on the toilet the following day.

I do sometimes wonder whether I should’ve done the more morally superior thing and got a rescue cat. But as my relationship with Otis grows, it’s clear I made the right choice. I think the good deed has really been his. He’s done the morally superior thing by getting a rescue human.

He could’ve been with a young child: wide eyed and enthusiastic about the world, but instead he’s stuck with me: 25 and riddled with traumatic memories and cynicism.

Around a month after he arrived, I got my next bout of sadness. It was a ‘crying, unable to get out of bed, unable to breathe at points’ sadness that couldn’t be traced back to anything in particular.

I’d had similar experiences at uni, although I’d always chalked them up to exam stress, or friendship stress, or theatre society stress (and that’s the most embarrassing thing I’ll ever write).

It was scary not being able to locate the source of these feelings. That in itself made me cry harder.

I used the helpline SHOUT, a text hotline I’d turned to before. I’d heartily recommend it to those who think that the idea of talking to someone on the phone in a time of crisis would make matters worse. I am, after all, a classic Gen Z.

After recounting how I felt, the volunteer asked me if there was anything bringing me joy in my life at the moment. I told her about Otis, who was sleeping on the end of my bed. The tears began to subside while we texted for a little longer.

After the conversation with SHOUT, I wasn’t fixed – but I had swum out of the deep end of my feelings.

I still could’ve laid in my bed for a lot longer, hours or even days. But soon, Otis was meowing, demanding his food and then, in a dirty protest at my lack of promptness in his meal times, took a dump in his litter tray with a smell so profound it can only be described as ungodly. That got me out of bed.

And once I was out of bed, I managed to shower. After that, the cogs of my life began to slowly clunk into action again.

Otis and I have moved now, and been through plenty more together. He’s had treatment resistant fleas (the worst three word combination in the world), learnt the right position to meow at my head in the middle of the night to wake me up for attention, and sometimes goes exploring for days at a time.

If you speak to me at these points, I am equal parts frustrated and worried, but these feelings pale in comparison to coming home and seeing him in a loaf at the end of the sofa. They are nothing compared to the sadness I used to feel so profoundly.

I tell the story of my cat purchase a lot: anecdotally, and also on stage in my stand-up comedy. The humour comes from that four hour turnaround: the impulsiveness, the risk, the stupidity when you think about how wrong things could’ve gone if I couldn’t actually take care of him.

But I think what actually happened in those four hours was something else. It was my brain short circuiting and going back to my childhood comfort. I was fully tuned in to what I needed, and deep down I was always going to make it work.

It was a decision my brain didn’t need to get in the way of. It was the right one.

I’m limited to one cat at the moment, owing to Otis’ temperance and the price of cat food. But I can see a world in which I end up as the old lady at the end of the street with seven cats, all of whom she lets sleep in her bed and eat at the table.

There are plenty of explorations of why this negative stereotype exists and where it comes from, but I think there’s something to be said for the lack of ‘crazy cat man’ parallel.

And anyway, I prefer it to going down the dog person route. At least cats bury their mess. That’s more can be said for all dogs and most humans.

I love Otis. He is the best decision I ever made and I’ve never looked back.

All that being said, if he brings in one more live mouse this week he will be going back on Gumtree. 

Ania Magliano brings her debut hour ‘Absolutely No Worries If Not’ to Bristol, Brighton and Cambridge in April, and returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year with her new show ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’. For tickets and more info check out Ania on social media @aniamags

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