After failed attempts at sex selection, a mother copes with the new arrival

HELLO LOVE, brilliant news. We're having a baby." There was a deathly silence from the other end of the line.

"Only joking We're getting a kitten." He wasn't amused.

Tracking down a kitten at Christmas had been difficult. Copy writers have had a few successes in their time and ranking up there in history's top 10 advertising slogans has to be "a pet is for life, not just for Christmas".

In fact, those nine small words have been so subsumed into the public consciousness that I cringed with embarrassment as I worked my way through the pets' section of Buy and Sell

My shopping list of consumer demands would have been enough to put anyone off over 10 weeks old, tabby or ginger, for collection on Christmas Eve. I bent over backwards to ensure those people who offered me a feline lifeline in the midst of this kitten drought that, though the cat was for two children, I would love it and cherish it as if it were my own and that under no circumstances would this particular moggy be found loitering homeless and despairing on the streets of Dublin in the New Year.

And so late on Christmas Eve with the kids finally in bed, I waited for my partner to return with the new arrival. It was an unusual feeling, something I can only liken to the anxious wait that fathers used to endure in the unaccommodating waiting rooms of maternity hospitals. I smoked, I drank a glass of whiskey and favoured the moment. Ah, fatherhood a little worry, a little nervousness, but absolutely no pain.

Grandad he had been Dad, but now that his sons had family responsibilities he had leapfrogged a few rungs on the ladder came home with the kitten.

Having been completely unconcerned about the sex of my children I must confess to have practised a most odious form of gender selection when it came to the cat. "If we're getting a cat it has got to be a girl a tom might just push the testosterone levels in this house over the edge."

My daughter had arrived, but through circumstances beyond anyone's control, she was a he He was beautiful, I was bonding. "You always love what you get." There's truth in cliche's.

Dr Dreadful's Food Maker, the White Ranger Megasword yes, I got one and the talking animal push button yoke were forgotten as two thrilled little boys unwrapped (he'd only been in the crisp box for about 30 seconds, don't worry) their kitten.

We'd done it, in the face of our own resistance, we'd finally succumbed to our children's overwhelming desire for a pet.

He's pooed in the bath but that's nothing new in our house. The toddler has eaten the cat's food a wry pre verbal comment on my cooking skills and is at present walking around sporting the kind of scar that Action Man would be proud of. But Bubble, as he has been ceremoniously christened by a young boy testing out the theory about cats and water for himself, has been worth it. I just hope he thinks we are.