‘We’d like a cat, please, and we’ll have any colour as long as it’s black. Yes, we know they’re all cute, but we’re on a mission, and no other colour will do. So keep your ginger and your tortoiseshell and your Siamese, if you please.”

In normal circumstances we would have been only too pleased to take in one whose fur was any colour of the rainbow, or all of them at once. After all, a cat is a cat.

But we are seeing the problem of rehoming cats in a whole new light since our niece, Lucy, came out of university with an impressive degree in animal management and got a dream job working for the Blue Cross.

Her inside knowledge and expertise in behaviour has taught us a lot in the last few weeks, but it’s not cats that we are learning about. It’s people.

She has, of course, told us about some of the nasty things that people do to animals, but you sort of expect that from a nation that tolerates the pointless culling of badgers like that’s a normal thing for a civilised society to do.

Indeed, the cat we have given a new home to was unceremoniously dumped outside the Blue Cross rescue centre, along with two others, at midnight on Halloween.

So the staff called her Morticia, but we’ve renamed her Poppy.

What we find more surprising, in a way, than the blind cruelty that gets meted out by beastly humans every day, is the general attitude that thousands (and maybe millions) of people take towards black cats. Apparently, they are by far the most difficult type of cat to find homes for.

You might be expecting me to say there is some kind of bizarre feline version of racism going on, but there is another ridiculous notion afoot.

It turns out that people are much less likely to give a home to a black cat simply because of silly superstition.

I was actually under the impression that black cats were supposed to be lucky, but it seems that a lot of people wouldn’t touch one with a bargepole, presumably because of some irrational fear they have of the cat being in league with the local witch.

So, having started out saying we’d welcome any cat, we decided we’d like to stick up for the innocents and try to restore just a little sanity to the human world by not rejecting black cats, but rather insisting on one.

After all, we have more reason than most not to believe in mumbo jumbo in our house, because we have number 13 on the door, and out of the three properties I’ve owned in my life, two have been number 13.

True, I haven’t won the Lottery yet, but I do consider myself to be fortunate in lots of other ways, so rather than worrying about throwing salt over my shoulder and touching wood, I get a kick out of walking under ladders and talking about Macbeth when I’m at the theatre.

I am certainly not going to lose as much sleep worrying about a black cat crossing my path every morning as I will about all those people crossing my path who secretly believe in witchcraft.

We also decided to go for a rescue cat – partly because it’s a noble thing to rescue anything, but also because we got a lovely cat into the bargain last time we did it.

So not only do we have a new member of the family, but we are also feeling pretty proud of ourselves for taking the side of the underdog... Or rather undercat.