She woke up with a craving and the day went downhill from there. All through the breakfast ritual, something nagged at her yet refused to be identified. Instead it lurked in the pit of her stomach and sent out sneaky waves whenever she was concentrating and filled her full of want.

By lunchtime she was jittery enough to stomp all the way to the park, spread her arms wide and turn a circle beneath the sun. ‘Okay, tell me.’

And oddly, enough, she was told.

A kid trotted past, taking his cat for a walk.

She watched them out of sight, the slick black cat in the red leather harness and the kid in his floppy khaki pants and camo t-shirt.

‘That’s what I want.’

The ache of need settled to a happy bubbling in her blood and she looked around through narrowed eyes for a source or at least another sign. She was shown that too. A finger of sunshine flicked a hazy puff of cloud aside to linger on a wrought iron gateway across from the park. Two minutes power walk, a shove of her elbow and a sideways slide down the narrow alley and she practically fell into a courtyard.

It was full of cats and one large man in a Hawaiian shirt. Rather more full of man but it was the cats she noticed.

‘You here about a cat?’ The man shut his paperback romance and pushed out of his banana lounge. ‘I’m Jaman.’

Her fingers itched and she curled them into fists as she nodded once. ‘Oh, yes.’ Her gaze lingered on an elegant Siamese with a chocolate brown bandit’s mask and haughty eyes.

Jaman rubbed his jaw and the shadow of his stubble rasped. He looked her up and down, looked around the cats lounging at their ease. He crooked a finger and a cat leapt from on high to sit upon the pavers, tail curling round its haunches. ‘Meet Crouton,’ Jaman instructed.

She took a step back. ‘But it’s green.’

‘So?’

‘I want a cat, not some rampaging salad beast.’

The cat in question looked amused in that very cat way. And it was green and curly and healthy looking too, in an alfalfa kind of way, with points picked out in darker greens against a coat mottled with white.

‘You want,’ Jaman repeated slowly. He folded his arms. ‘That’s nice. Except you came to the wrong place. We have a deal, the cats and I. They pick who they want to adopt and I do the talking. Until I don’t feel like it.’

She heard the threat and stiffened her knees against the surge of need in her system. It was close, but her brain held out. ‘I’m just not sure that’s a cat,’ she admitted.

Jaman’s heavy jaw sagged. He reeled it in with a snap. ‘What else could it be? It’s got the stare, the tail, the paws and whisker and ears combo … I’ve been dealing with cats all my lives and I’m telling you, that’s a C A T … cat.’

She switched her suspicions from the quasi-feline to the merchant. ‘Lives?

‘Five so far, and I’ve got better things to with them then use up another one waiting around for you to make up your mind.’

She swallowed and skimmed a desperate stare around the remaining cats who blinked lambent eyes in disdain. The cat at her feet laughed silently and arched its spine.

Jaman knuckled his chest, ‘Look, lady. Are you here to find a cat or waste our time?’

Put like that…

She opened her arms and the cat jumped to fill them.

Jaman grinned and she wobbled in the reflected brilliance of his teeth. Her eyes watered and when the tears had evaporated so had the courtyard, the cats, and their Cat’s Paw. Except for Crouton, the green cat who purred a song of welcome home while shedding all over her cardy.