Given that the cats have all become a bit strange (Bam is a scientist, devoted to toppling pint glasses of water and systematically liberating little purple pot pourri balls from a container upstairs and taking them downstairs one at a time (over 25 of them) at night, Lazslo is a weird freak of a cat whose only motivations in life are chicken (in all its forms) and planning out ingenious ways to escape from the house, whilst Moko is apparently frightened of babies), and their warranties have all expired, I thought it was time to research what other more reliable pets might be available on the market.
So I was at the newsagent stand in the local Tesco at the consumer magazines, which provide monthly roundups of a particular type of consumer product (you know the things: What Car? Which Digital Camera? Why Caravans? etc.), and rather intriguingly have attractive 12 month subscription offers (like there are a whole subclass of consumers who are shopping for a new digital camcorder all year round), but despite the plethora of audio-visual-camera-gadget titles, I couldn't find a single title dedicated to reviews of animals.
Enter the Internet. Hooray for www.animalreviews.com. If you are trying to decide between a pet rabbit and a pet otter, you can get expert opinions as to which is best (to save you some time, it is the otter, on the grounds of having a good name and Harold Faltermayer having (probably) owned one).
But, after an afternoon of careful research, we've decided to stick with the cats.