TWELVE WAYS YOUR LIFE CHANGES WHEN YOU GET A CAT

You realised you'll never be able to own a plant again. Even cacti. Despite the spikes, the cats will still eat through them. Expect to come home and find soil on your cream carpet. More than once.

You'll become a boring connoisseur of cat litter. You know off the back of your hand the ones that clump, the ones that don't clump, the expensive ones, the cheap ones and the Aldi one which everyone raves about.

You'll develop a weird baby voice that is only suitable to use when it's you and the cats. Strictly when no one else is around. Repeat, ONLY when alone.

Fancy knick-knacks, ornaments or anything that makes your home look half decent will be placed redundantly to the back of the cupboard. Forget having a nice house, it no longer belongs to you anyway. You simply rent it from the cats now.

You'll learn to live on less sleep. When the sun goes down, it's time to play. When the sun come up, it's obviously feeding time. And so the meowing begins.

If there's one room the cats are not allowed in, it's the one room they'll be desperate to get in. Whether that means pulling the carpet up to try and dig under the door, or scraping the door down, one splinter at a time, their life's mission is to discover exactly what lies behind that wooden barricade.

There will be a pair of eyes on you at all times, especially those awkward moments when your cat manages to open the bathroom door and sit there whilst you do...well, what you need to do. It's even more pleasant when the cat jumps to sit on your knee, like it's a time of relaxation.

You'll learn that a half empty bowl either means "more please", or "this food disgusts me, please refrain from buying it again".

Sunday afternoon snoozing will now no longer be complete without cat arse in your face. Plonk, there they go.

Despite spending your hard earned cash on bits like a "confidence tower" (WTF?), soft comfy beds and electronic mice, the cat will simply look at what you've bought in distain and dive into the cardboard box it came in.

Your social life will revolve around cat feeding times, and whether you can get a cat sitter. Long gone are the days of freely staying out all day and night. Nope, life as you know has changed for the next 18 years.

You'll soon forget what is was like before you had these furry little creatures in your life. I couldn't imagine life without Shirley Bassey and Audrey Hepburn now. They annoy the crap out of me sometimes, but come on, who doesn't love to be greeted with a little poo on the carpet when they come home from work? It's a gift from them to me.

*Partnered post - please read my disclaimer here.