When I was a young girl, about 10 or 11, home from boarding school I accompanied my mother one day when she went to the fruit bazaar. While she chatted with the vendors and bought fruit, I idled. Then lo and behold! as if out of the blue I came upon a cuddly tiny kitty cat mewing piteously.

I immediately picked it up and he stopped crying and started purring; he looked at me with those enormous eyes and I was smitten. Did I mention he was adorable?

My mother, a serious cat lover, had no objection to welcoming the stray into the fold. The sticking point was my father. He too, was an animal lover, but since all my parents’ children were out of the house and couldn’t claim the pets as their own, Dad invariably became attached to them and was heartbroken when one of them died. Even as my mother was warning me about his newfound resistance, I was busily scheming to find a smooth way to introduce my new pet to its real new owner, with minimal friction.

I secreted the tabby in my bedroom for a few days, waiting to come up with an effective plan of action. And then it struck me: My parents took tea in the garden when my father came home from work, every day. It was failsafe – or so I thought – to let the kitten play in the garden; and by the time Dad noticed the little fellow, I’d pretend it had wandered in by mistake.

Fat chance! In the middle of tea, Dad noticed the kitten gamboling in the grass. Instant pandemonium! As he demanded answers to a variety of questions regarding the feline’s presence, all the while staring daggers at me. I feigned indignation, but he wasn’t buying it. He knew his daughter and her proclivities all too well. Then I had another brainwave. I scooped up the kitten and dumped him unceremoniously on my father’s lap. And as the human picked up the animal to set him on the grass, they looked into each other’s faces; the man’s heart melted instantly. Phew! Another save.