1. He’s not hungover but we have fish butties for lunch anyway.

2. I’m sticking together the most fragile, most collage-y part of my zine and the cat decides she must ‘help’. I enjoy the irony that I am, superficially, sticking down some pictures expressing how much I love the cats.

3. Friday evening: croque monsieurs, steam cleaning the kitchen and giggling from behind my hands while watching a new episode of Broad City. Rock n Roll.

1. I’m looking for a particularly picture of my old cat, Zoe but instead I find something better: a collage I made when I was 13, of photos taken across the twenty years before that. Back then, we’d have had to wait weeks for the pictures to be developed then I cut them out and sellotaped them together. Today, I snap a picture of the collage with the camera on the computer I keep in my pocket and by the time I walk downstairs, the image has been set across the world and arrived on the computer in my office, where I can correct the layout and colour balance with a click of a button.

2. I bob into Leeds to have a pre-Leeds Ruby Thing meal with John – something I used to do all the time before Lily but which seemed too much of a bother when she was waiting, anxiously, at home. We try to go to My Thai but it’s full, so go next door to Fuji Hiro (which is a long-time favourite anyway): it’s wonderfully convenient to have them right next to each other, both offering quick yet delicious food.

2b. We finish up at exactly the right time – just when John needs to go over to the pub, and three minutes before my bus is due on the Headrow. We chat to each other on the phone for the rest of our short, separate journeys.

3. I pass the rest of the evening sketching and re-sketching some more little portraits for my zine. When John texts to say he’s on the bus, I sit back and realise how hard I’ve been focused all evening – and how pleasantly tired it’s left me.

1. The smoothness of a freshly sharpened pencil (a Staedtler, naturally).

2. The ginger cat salutes us with its tail, inviting a cuddle. Its fur is so much softer than we thought it would be.

3. The cutting and pasting is considerably more fun than I’d expected. I see how it quickly becomes addictive.

1. A beautiful sunny day.

2. My desk is covered in bits of paper but here and there, it looks like it’s coming together.

3. The moment when, finally, the onions begin to brown. And the way that they do – slowly, turning from gold to caramel before settling into a nice nut – tells me they’ll be super sweet.

1. In decent daylight, it’s easy to see the two cats are completely different shades of black.

2. She starts off incredibly shy but by the end, she is running around the house, demanding we do all sorts of things.

3. The cheese is a little bit sharp really, but in tiny amounts, it adds an intriguing flavour.

1. I follow some guides for doodling cats and manage a few cute pictures. I shade in two completely with a 6B pencil but leave the third patchier to represent Strange’s calico coat. The rough paper adds even more texture.

2. Nibbling at my favourite biscuits.

3. Tilda has to decide between two of her favourite things – a tickle or a drink from a fresh bowl of water. She looks back and forth between the two then jogs over for the former before minkling back for the latter.