As I sat on the bed pondering the next move with these deformed little beauties of mine, my housemate arrived home with some very exciting news. She just so happens to work for an advertising agency in London that had very recently won the pitch for a new Free View campaign. In her infinite wisdom she had submitted the idea of using cats to recreate the shows available on Free View. To everyone’s surprise, Free View actually loved this idea and decided to run with it. Did you know that to hire a professional cat model it can cost up to £500 per hour, especially for some mega posh pedigree?

Now what is the point in spending that kind of dollar on official ‘model’ cats when between me, my housemate and a few other friends we have a whole tribe of mongrel cats going spare and of course – we would all appreciate the ££££ so much more. The advertising agency agreed to keep cost low and we would use the amateur pussy to get the shots – RESULT.

The day of the shoot was all very exciting – we had cars sent for us to transfer the cats around, pizza provided and a sizeable studio laced with a kilo of cat nip to lure the cats into a forced state of kitty euphoria. It became very apparent very quickly why professional cat models can charge such extortionate rates, because the reality of trying to entice your feline friend into embodying the spirit of Spencer Matthews from Made In Chelsea is a million miles away from a simple task.

It was now time for my cats to shine. Tuppence was up first, I plonked her on the little white table and very naively assuming she would just strike a pose, removed my hands.

☛ Next: Station Master Cat Saves Train Station From Bankruptcy 

A few hours later, I had barely any skin left on my arms, chest and back. I was melting under the set lights, my back and my knees here completely done in from crawling across the concrete floor trying to rack up lines of cat nip for my pussycats to mainline.

This was not fun, it was an extremely long day, the cats were more or less bald with stress by the time we left and so far all we had to show for it was a few toys we had half inched on the way out and a shredded torso that left me looking like I had just had a full body massage from Edward Scissorhands.

Thankfully the trauma of the afternoon wasn’t all done in vain, the cats did actually manage to produce one or two shots that were good enough to make it into the final cut. So next time you see a Free View advert online, and you see a cat looking like it has just been tasered as it sits there photo shopped onto the Graham Norton set, or another cat looking on the verge of suicide as it poses as Poirot, know this – I lost a lot of blood that day, my knees have not been the same since and I walked away with £60 worth of John Lewis vouchers.

Worth it? NO.

Most of the £60 went on washing powder as the cats then punished us by pissing over every item of clothing and bedding we owned.