The Lady Magazine

22 April 2016

If you are not a cat-lover I can only hope that this week’s utterly gorgeous cover will convert you to join the 12 million of us who are, if not devoted, at least in thrall to our feline friends. Our cover star is the late Sir Thomas Mouser, so named I suspect because he was keen on nocturnal patrols. It’s a devotion shared with my own cat, Lulu Guinness, who hasn’t slept a night in her life for fear of an enemy attack on the biscuit tin. At dawn, she likes to turn her attention to ‘kneading’ my slumber-filled head. And no matter how many times I cry out: ‘Why are you doing this?’ she never tells me. But this week, finally, we discover what cats really think. Or what they want us to think. Because, make no mistake, like the silky undies revealed in the V&A’s new exhibition, we owners are only there in a supporting role. Sir Ben Kingsley, on the other hand, has transcended the constraints of humankind to become the biggest cat of all: Bagheera, the wise panther in the new remake of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Personally, I don’t envy him that elevation – all that dank undergrowth to get through and no chance of a relaxing bath at the end. The person I do envy, however, is the evergreen Diana Moran, our new Health and Wellbeing columnist. Every week she will be turning her experience as a nutrition and fitness expert to our dilemmas, no matter how small they might seem. Until next week, best wishes, ‘We discover what cats really think – or what they want us to think’ Sam Taylor,