Cats

I don’t like cats. I don’t like their reptilian stealth, or the way their heads are set low and poke out from their bodies. I don’t like the constant showing off of their puckered bums, or their disregard for the normal rules of mammal eye contact. There are nearly 13 million cats in Britain – one in three of us owns them. There are roughly 74 million in the United States and until recently I found it inexplicable. Why would anyone choose to love and nurture a psycho that dismembers songbirds, often torturing them first in a casual, playful way? I’ve enjoyed in the past writing about the idiocy of ethical vegetarians who own cats.

Provence My older, adopted sister came to stay. She suffers from peripheral neuropathy secondary to diabetes and is registered disabled. It’s a worry watching her negotiate the cliff path and the 12 stone steps to the front door with her stick, but she adores it here. Since reversing her insulin-dependent diabetes with an extreme fasting keto diet, her mobility has improved and she no longer uses a mobility scooter. My sister got cross when I doubted the veracity of both his ID and love for her Obesity and diabetes killed her twin brother five years ago this week. He was 62. First he partially lost his eyesight, then sensation in his feet and fingers, and finally his legs. Anthony was a kind soul: a hardworking mechanical engineer who loved his family.

At your service Sir: National service is a contentious issue with many people including the Armed Forces themselves (‘Identity crisis’, 1 June). National community service might be a far better option whereby everyone reaching the age of 18 would spend a year working in a care home, hospital, day nursery, park, graffiti cleaning, litter clearance and so on – all areas in which help is badly needed. We have a generation of young people badly affected by Covid isolation and screen addiction and this might help them feel more integrated into society.

Free the C of E Sir: Patrick Kidd’s article on the shortcomings of today’s Church of England maintains the importance of the ‘volunteers in the pews’ who bind the church together (‘Miracle workers’, 18 May). He warns that these people ‘can so easily run away’. This is exactly what happened to the Church of Scotland in 1843 when the hierarchy got things badly wrong. The Great Disruption was caused by a disagreement over patronage: should a patron be the sole arbiter in hiring and firing ministers or did this undermine the spiritual independence of the congregation? The exit of more than 400 ministers from the Kirk’s General Assembly and the formation of the Free Church of Scotland (the Wee Frees) was the answer.

As Christopher Snowdon recently pointed out, the past few governments have had a habit of passing laws that are either wildly ambitious or incredibly trivial, while neglecting the real problems Britain faces, such as the housing shortage, the productivity crisis and the eye-watering dysfunction of the NHS. An example of the former is the net-zero emissions law passed in 2019, as if the energy policy of a small island in the North Sea can affect the world’s climate. An example of the latter is a bill that will make it a criminal offence to get cats to follow you down the road. Believe it or not, this had its second reading in the House of Lords last week and will enter the statute books later this year.

Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers her own question. Priti Patel told us it was our public duty to shop our neighbours if they had three friends to tea, and our previously invisible police force started to patrol parks and beaches with unprecedented vigour, with a threat of £1,000 fines for malfeasance. There was no eagerness, but the public were glued to the nightly broadcasts from No. 10, where the PM told us we would be little better than murderers if we didn’t obey the diktats. The fear all this created is still evident as I walk round Sainsbury’s every week and see masked shoppers disinfecting their trollies as if their life depended on it.