How many furs does a cat actually have?

There is cat fur everywhere at the moment. It is spring, and the pussins are moulting. Gah!

This morning I put on my lovely new Ojay black drop-waisted skirt with box pleats (it's very 80s, I feel like I'm back in school), made out of one of those new-generation materials that is more like some kind of industrial plastic than an actual fabric - it's meant to be super-duper-never-pick-up-lint-fantastic.

And it had cat fur on it.

I teamed it with a beautiful new blouse from Anna Thomas, made in washed cream silk printed with a rare yellow, grey, black and petrol Liberty print, as pictured in the slightly crooked photo at the top of this post - you'll have to forgive me, I took this surruptitiously in the kitchen at work, hoping that no one would notice I was taking a photo of myself, and from a distance I expect it would have looked, to the innocent observer, like I was trying to get a good shot of my own breasts.

I love this blouse, it has tiny little self-covered buttons all the way down the front, and blouson sleeves that are pintucked at the shoulder - and it used to have cuffs when I bought it but I chopped them off and gave it a gathered wrist instead, because they were slightly too long for me, like most sleeves are, and made me look like I was five years old and flapping around in my mummy's blouse.

And the best bit? It was priced at $398 which I would never have paid, and I lusted after it in the shop all through last season, and two weeks ago I went into the boutique in Little Collins St they were having a sale and they only had one left and it was in MY SIZE! Reader, you know I bought it.

(By the way, herewith a major plug for Anna Thomas, who is a great Australian designer specialising in classic, properly tailored office and casual wear for actual women who have an actual bosom and actual waists and actual hips and who want to make the most of their assets. She does not design for stick-figure teenagers who can throw on any old hessian sack and look avant-garde in it but who probably prefer to wear an old crappy jersey t-shirt made in China with bad seams and puckering. No, Anna Thomas uses beautiful silks and wools and tweeds and linens and whatnot, and I adore just about everything she makes. Even when, like today, it has cat fur on it. If you visit the boutique in Little Collins St you'll meet Laura, who I love because she is an honest woman and will tell you when something looks crap on you. Tell her I said hi.)

But I digress. The actual point of this post was to wonder just how many individual little furs are on a cat?

Because right now it feels like most of them are on my clothes, andI worry that people on the train will think I'm like the crazy cat lady on the Simpsons who babbles incoherently and swears and throws cats at people.

And the furs that aren't on my clothes are floating around in my house, stirring up little whirlywinds that blow around our feet whenever My One True Love or I walk past. Have you ever tried to keep a polished wooden floor free of cat fur in moulting season??  Don't even try.

Sigh. Soon spring will be over, and the pussins will have their glossy new coats, and I will spend the next four months de-furring the entire house.....